As we take time this week to celebrate Mary, we offer you a reflection on the Annunciation story, told from Gabriel’s perspective.
Gabriel’s Annunciation
by Jan Richardson (adventdoor.com)
For a moment
I hesitated
on the threshold.
For the space
of a breath
I paused,
unwilling to disturb
her last ordinary moment,
knowing that the next step
would cleave her life:
that this day
would slice her story
in two,
dividing all the days before
from all the ones
to come.
The artists would later
depict the scene:
Mary dazzled
by the archangel,
her head bowed
in humble assent,
awed by the messenger
who condescended
to leave paradise
to bestow such an honor
upon a woman, and mortal.
Yet I tell you
it was I who was dazzled,
I who found myself agape
when I came upon her-
reading, at the loom, in the kitchen,
I cannot now recall;
only that the woman before me-
blessed and full of grace
long before I called her so-
shimmered with how completely
she inhabited herself,
inhabited the space around her,
inhabited the moment
that hung between us.
I wanted to save her
from what I had been sent
to say.
Yet when the time came,
when I had stammered
the invitation
(history would not record
the sweat on my brow,
the pounding of my heart;
would not note
that I said
Do not be afraid
to myself as much as
to her)
it was she
who saved me-
her first deliverance-
her Let it be
not just declaration
to the Divine
but a word of solace,
of soothing,
of benediction
for the angel
in the doorway
who would hesitate
one last time-
just for the space
of a breath
torn from his chest-
before wrenching himself away
from her radiant consent,
her beautiful and
awful yes.
