An Open Letter to the Virgin Mary

Posted on April 8, 2003 in Myths & Mysticism

Every time I see a woman wearing a hijab, I think of you. Modest and unassuming, not pressuring the world, just being a mother and going about your business.

I know that my friends, who know me as an agnostic, will find it odd that I am addressing you, you who may be only a shared thought in this existence beyond the grave.
Religion has trashed their lives, sometimes, with ridiculous restrictions on the way they live and ludicrous reversals of conscience which teach that Christianity or Islam is a way of life dedicated to seeking revenge and conducting vendettas against the unbelievers. They don’t trust their icons or their holy texts.

Things haven’t been helped by the cadre of believers who cluster around you. They invent miraclous cures and images that Science finds quite easy to explain by other means, bleeding statues made in your image, voices in the dark that counsel hatred. I know this isn’t you, Mother Mary. You don’t stand on street corners collecting dimes for causes intended to keep the poor miserable and unhappy. You don’t rant about sins of the flesh and extol the violence we are perpetrating in the Middle East. You love us as we are in the world and your love is unbounded, forgiving, penetrating to the most twisted and unyielding points of pain in our souls — if we allow it to go there. I’ve turned to you in many darknesses. You’ve never worked a palpable miracle for me that I know of, but I sense your presence and I am grateful that you are there.

The world’s gone mad with this war in Iraq. I’ve spoken to people who didn’t think that your son came for peace among men. They grant justice to the powerful; villainy and infamy to the weak. A rich man who mocked a woman about to die by lethal execution is now the president of our country by means that would have shocked the prophets of the Bible and brought them to the gates of Washington D.C., our Jerusalem, bearing scrolls that denounce his making war and letting the widows and children starve. Like Jehoiakim he burns our letters of protest. And his people call us Jeremiahs, which I take as a compliment, though they do not mean it as such. He calls himself “inspired by God”, but when I review the Scriptures, I find no evidence for such an affirmation. What he does is contrary to the Way and the Light. He brings darkness to the bright sands of Iraq, so he and his friends can enrich themselves by taking out the sky-polluting darkness beneath those sands.

My allies come from many traditions and faiths. They include other agnostics, Christians, Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, atheists, and others. I trust the wisdom of my heart — taught in part by you — which teaches that every one of them is your child.

You do not divide people or castigate them for consenting facts of the flesh, Mary. As I have come to know you better, I have realized that you affirm life in all its diversity. You are well beyond nationalities, religions, and politics. You take the side of the people against oppressive dictatorships and de facto oligarchies. When Father Hildago proclaimed Mexican independence in 1810, he unfurled your likeness on a banner and cried “She is with us.”

Today, to all my friends who struggle against the evil perpetrated in the name of false liberty by the despot in Washington, I want them to know what I feel: that you, Mother Mary, are with us in this struggle, nonviolently, and with a mind for the welfare of all your children. You take form for me in the modest women who wear the hijab and the more flamboyant ones — including the braless feminists and the dykes — who carry posters down our streets crying “No war! No war!” In these, I find your holiness and your truth.

She is with us.