A season for solidarity

We’re right in the thick of Advent, the four-week season that adherents of many western Christian traditions use to prepare for Christmas. The narratives of this season include that of John the Baptist, the ascetic Jewish prophet who carried out baptisms and proclaimed messages to prepare people for Christ’s coming.

Usually in the last week of Advent we celebrate the story of Mary and Joseph and the visiting Angel Gabriel. But there’s a part of the Advent story I’ve always loved that I wish was highlighted more often at this time of year: the coming together of Mary and Elizabeth.

These are the women chosen at inconvenient times of their lives to bring two rabble-rousing children, Jesus and John, into the world. As the story goes, Gabriel tells Mary of an additional miracle happening alongside her own: her elderly cousin Elizabeth, after a lifetime of unanswered prayer and now well past her childbearing years, is also pregnant. Mary goes to see Elizabeth for a while. Their time together is known as the Visitation. But I think the tale of their companionship might offer many of us perspective, courage and encouragement in ways perhaps more readily accessible than other parts of the Advent narrative.

In the early 16th century, the Italian master Raphael was commissioned to paint the scene of Mary and Elizabeth’s meeting. In the work — thought to have been drawn by Raphael and painted by one of his assistants — the two women are large figures in the foreground of a landscape. Elizabeth reaches to greet and welcome the younger Mary, who approaches her with head cast down, looking both resigned and contemplative, one hand cradling her belly.

It’s a poignant image that suggests much through the expressions of their faces and body language. Elizabeth extends one arm around Mary and with the other grasps her hand firmly. She peers straight into Mary’s smooth youthful face with a look of both resolute strength and empathy. She knows what it is like to carry something that should feel like a gift but perhaps also feels a burden. Her face suggests solidarity with the young woman. They will get through this time together, even if they can’t yet find the words for it.

I am taken by the painting because it shows these two brave, humble and faithful women as committed witnesses to one another’s journeys. Stepping bravely into roles that neither expected, yet that both understand the weight of, they are allowing themselves to be vessels for circumstances that, as the story goes, will eventually change the world.

We catch a glimpse of that future in the landscape. The foreground appears to be somewhat barren, but in the background there is a river. Here the artist drew two small figures, the sons of the two women: John the Baptist baptising Jesus. We know what happens to those men, and that Mary lived through it; we know there is heart-searing pain ahead of her. But, as with the nourishing river, the women are channels for life that will nurture the world.

The world is on the brink of a power shift that will shake everything up in society, and these two ordinary women are literally carrying the power shifts within them

It seems this is the way it has always been with women, whether they give birth or not: to tend to their environments and communities in ways that often turn dry land to life-giving abundance. It is work that can happen in mundane ways and that frequently goes unacknowledged. But in this painting the women are in the forefront and their work is visible and undeniable. And with God and the angels in the background sky, I can’t help but ponder that the seemingly commonplace daily work of most women is not just generative but sacred in its own right.

What is beautiful to me is the women’s instinct to weather this together, to wonder at the miracles of their lives and to navigate the challenges those miracles bring with them. It makes me reflect a little deeper on the complex nature of some of the most beautiful gifts we can be invited to receive.

In French artist Philippe de Champaigne’s mid-17th-century painting “The Visitation”, the two women appear more like defiant, empowered co-conspirators, aware of their value in God’s economy — if not in their patriarchal world system. They are huddled together, centre stage in the canvas, whispering between themselves. Mary clutches Elizabeth’s hand and with the other points a finger in the opposite direction, as though suggesting their departure. The men around them pass by unaware, unthreatened by and uninterested in their presence. You can barely see the rim of the nimbus above each woman’s head.

This is what makes this painting so powerful. It feels subversive, as if Mary and Elizabeth are colluding with the ultimate power source. The world is on the brink of a power shift that will shake everything up in society, and these two ordinary, unassuming women are literally carrying the power shifts within them. I am caught up in their intimacy and in their awareness of the gravitas of what is happening in their lives.

Today, in the age of social media, we are trained to share almost reflexively everything that happens to us, from what we ate for breakfast to relationship break-ups to the tragic loss of loved ones. At times it feels as if no news is sacred or worth holding close for a season with just those walking resolutely beside us. Sometimes I wonder if our transformative life experiences are endangered when we release them to the world too soon; if there are things these experiences have yet to show or teach us within the closed-off privacy of simply sitting with the new realities. I feel there was deep wisdom in these two women choosing to steal away by themselves, alone with their life-changing events.

In a stirring contemporary work by Vermont-based artist Janet McKenzie, the two women stand together, holding one another but still in their separate internal worlds. McKenzie’s work blends her pull towards spirituality with her commitment to highlighting the supportive journeys of women and a diversity of people.

In this painting, Mary and Elizabeth are majestically tall and slender, wrapped in swaths of scarves. Mary’s signature blue covering hangs from the cradle of her bent arm. There is a quiet dignity to both the women as they stand with their eyes closed, almost meditating on their realities. Elizabeth has her hand resting on Mary’s belly, and Mary’s visible hand is held against her own cheek. Behind are two lines on the wall that shape a cross. There are also crosses painted on Mary’s shawl, symbolic of the unimaginable pain and sacrificial love to come. For now, in a sense, these women are saying yes to their own sacrifices, choosing the unknown but trusting that the disruption of their lives will be worth whatever is to come.

For some of us, there are responsibilities we’ve been called on to assume, even when we don’t feel ready for them. But life has invited us to show up

I am moved by this painting because it illuminates the powerful act of simply standing as a witness to the trials and triumphs of another person’s life, even amid one’s own. It seems there must be a strengthening in that for both of them.

I think the shared companionship of Mary and Elizabeth feels especially powerful to me this year because I believe we are still all going through our own adjustment to new realities. The past two years have brought a bizarre mixture of pain and blessing, sometimes in the same package. There is a sense that if we are still here, still standing, it is a miracle of sorts, to have weathered the world of late. And for some of us, for a variety of reasons, there are roles and responsibilities we’ve been called on to assume, even when we don’t feel equipped or ready for them. But life has invited us to show up.

I hope there’s a way we can each figure out how to be an Elizabeth to a Mary in our lives, and vice versa. That we can step forward with someone else into that uncertain space of a transforming life mixed with blessing and challenge, to stand alongside another person’s journey, trusting that in that act we too are somehow fortified and encouraged on our own walk.

Email Enuma at [email protected]

Follow @ftweekend on Twitter to find out about our latest stories first