Penelope Duckworth - Mary: The Imagination of Her Heart

Mary
The Imagination of Her Heart

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Mary

The Imagination of Her Heart

Penelope Duckworth

2004 Penelope Duckworth

All rights reserved.

Published in the United States of America by Cowley Publications, a division of the Society of Saint John the Evangelist. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any meansincluding photocopyingwithout the prior written permission of Cowley Publications, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles and reviews.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:

Duckworth, Penelope, 1947

Mary : the imagination of her heart / Penelope Duckworth.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN: 978-1-56101-260-2

1. Mary, Blessed Virgin, Saint. I. Title.

BT603.D83 2004

232.91dc22

2004007161

Scripture quotations are taken from The New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, Copyright 1989, by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission.

From The Manger is Empty. Copyright 1989 Walter Wangerin, Jr. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Prayer by Stuart Thomas. Copyright Stuart Thomas. Used by permission of the author. All rights reserved.

Excerpt from Family Prayers, by Nick Aiken and Rowan Williams. Copyright 2002 Paulist Press, Inc., New York/Mahwah, N.J. Used with permission of Paulist Press. www.paulistpress.com

Cover design: Jennifer Hopcroft

Cover art: Mother and Child, by Alejandra Vernon. 1999. Used by permission. www.avernon.com

This book was printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper.

Cowley Publications

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Cambridge, MA 02138

800-225-1534 www.cowley.org

For my husband, Dennis,
and our daughter, Clare,
and to honor Mary

Acknowledgments

I am indebted to my husband, Dr. Dennis Gordon, for his abiding support, thoughtful comments, and editorial acumen; and to my sister, Pamela Duckworth Gudish, for help with the manuscript in the early stages. I am also indebted to Cynthia Shattuck, who helped me conceive the book; Vicki Black, who helped critique the proposal; and Kevin Hackett, SSJE, and Michael Wilt, for completing the process with Cowley Publications. I am grateful to Rev. Margaret Schwarzer for help with the initial editing of the book and to Ulrike Guthrie for the patient and skillful editing that brought the book to birth. I am indebted to Rev. Dr. Rosemarie Anderson, Rev. Richard Foster, Samuel Deputy, and Dr. Joseph Grassi for reading and critiquing the manuscript. Others provided support and expertise in their fields, for which I am very grateful. They are the Very Reverend Alan Jones, Rev. Canon Douglas Williams, Dr. Roberta Ervine, the Most Reverend Carlos Touch Porter, Rev. Melitios Webber, Rev. Susan Rodrgues, Rev. Steve Wilson, Rev. Dr. Robert Gregg, Dr. Ebrahim Moosa, Dr. Hester Gelber, Rev. Dr. Ann Winsor, Rev. Phina Borgeson, Nancy Greenfield, Rev. Dr. Gary Brower, Rev. Dr. Arthur Holder, Rev. Portia Mather, Rev. Katherine Lehman, Rev. Leilani Nelson, Dr. Sarah Boss, Rev. Martin Warner, Rev. Beth Hansen, Lydia Lopez, Rev. Marcia Lockwood, Rev. Jeff Millican, Donald Wheland, Rev. Gurdon Brewster, Billie Jean James, Dr. Brigitte Cazelles, Dr. Janet Flammang, Dr. Judith Dunbar, Karen Wallace, Gail Albutt, Rev. Richard Fabian, Betsy Porter, Dan Bradkovich, Dr. Brett Wells, Dr. Harold Perry, and Dr. Jennifer Colby. Cathy Baker, Dr. Georgianna Farren, Anne Hootman, Rebecca Niven, Sarah Peterson, Carolyn Grassi, Dr. Lucretia Mann, and Barbara Ann Long, OP also helped. Any errors in scholarship are entirely my own. I am also grateful for the love and support of my family, especially my daughter, Clare Gordon; my mother, Alice Duckworth; my sister, Claudia Duckworth Dorr; and my great friend Lucy Mack.

I also wish to thank Theology Today, in which the poem Annunciation first appeared. The poems throughout the book, unless otherwise noted, are all my own.

1 Reconsidering Mary

God sent his son, born of a woman. (Galatians 4:4)

MESSENGER

There was an angel at the beginning,
a messenger like a mirror
or a mirage, who shimmered
with the noon and the movements
of her young soul.

There was also an angel at the end,
imposing by the upturned rock
reflecting her stunned silence
then telling her
that blessing drenched and covered
even her astounding losses.

It was the same refracted light but
at first she did not know it:
all she knew was
the brightness shone back
her younger face,
the words echoed
her younger song.

Mary came into my life gradually and through others. Many of my formative years were spent in the South, where Mary was understood simply as a scriptural personage; but as an adult, I have served in an Anglo-Catholic parish that reveres Mary, and I have been influenced by that piety and point of view. During the seventeen years I served as Episcopal Chaplain to Stanford University, people gave me artistic depictions of Mary and books about her. I cant quite pinpoint what spurred my imagination, but as I try to recollect, it may be a copy of the Vladimir icon from Russia that a student brought me from a visit to the Soviet Union in the 1980s. Or it may be a large coffee-table book of the life of Mary, rich with images from Pontormo, Giotto, and Piero Della Francesca, that a visiting professor friend gave me; or a picture of the Madonna of Czestochowa, a dark Madonna with scars on her cheek that the father of a Polish-American bride sent me after I officiated at his daughters wedding. Each image provoked my curiosity about Mary. Each time a colleague suggested that we study Mary together, each time one of my students asked me to teach him or her the Rosary, Marys influence on my life was deepened.

As life unfolded, it seemed one image of Mary led to others. A parish gave me a reproduction of a Renaissance Madonna after my daughter was born. A colleague brought me a colorful refrigerator magnet of the Virgin of Guadalupe when he visited New Mexico, and another friend gave me a book on Mary in Mexican culture. Soon I began finding other images on my own. Having images of Mary in my home led me to think more of Mary and to reflect on the various stages of her lifethough it led my husband to ask me wryly if the house was becoming a shrine! Actually, I think the images were helping me forge a new understanding and appreciation of Mary. Through those images I was conducting an internal conversation about Marys role in the biblical story and her role in Christian culture. In the Gospel of Luke, Mary is described as pondering difficult realities in her heart, and through images of her, I was pondering how best to understand her in these times.