What I am being led to write about today (much earlier in the morning than I generally write) is a thought that I have tried to swat away like a fly, but it keeps coming back.
The centerpiece of every choral evensong service is the singing of two canticles, the "Magnificat" and the "Nunc Dimittis". The Magnificat presents the words of Mary, the mother of Jesus, from the gospel of Luke, when she visits with her older cousin Elizabeth, who is also pregnant -- with John the Baptist. This is one Bible story that I have always loved because the image of the two pregnant women embracing then chatting together is so poignant and yet so normal and real. No matter the future importance of their boys, at that moment they are simply pregnant women, uncomfortable, anxious, yet probably also filled with wonder.
Mary's words as reported in Luke ("My soul doth magnify the Lord...") are sung every late afternoon all across the UK, in cathedrals, abbeys, school and college chapels, royal chapels, and churches. (The musical settings may differ, but the16th century text is the same.) They are sung (perhaps less regularly) in evensong services across the globe, and sung or said in countless other churches and monasteries of other denominations. So, for somewhere between five and seven minutes every evening, choirs worldwide are singing (or priests and congregations are intoning) the words of a woman. And through the long generations that women were excluded from these choirs, the men and boys were singing the words of a woman. Mary's words.
This thrills me no end.
