The Lord created me the beginning of his works, before all else . . . Alone I was fashioned in times long past. (about Lady Wisdom in the Book of Proverbs, chapter 8)
Imagine a story in which a young man is seated in a subway car. Diagonally across from him, amid other passengers, is a not old, not young woman. He’s staring into nowhere when he notices she is looking at him, indeed with a personal interest. The subway car comes to a stop; he turns to look out his window to see what station it is. When he turns back the woman is gone. Two years later he is waiting at a bus stop after work, it being around 5 pm, when he sees the same woman boarding another bus – but before she enters she looks at him with, again, a personal interest, then disappears behind the closing doors. Ten years later he is at a conference on some work topic when, as he leaves the auditorium, he is startled to see that same face, looking with interest toward the podium but then turning toward him with that same not too intent but interested gaze. Other people exiting shove him along and he loses touch again. Imagine this happening not infrequently even as he gets older: the same mature woman, the same look.
The over 2000 years old biblical Book of Proverbs speaks of Lady Wisdom (who was God’s “darling and delight” before the world began) “standing at the crossroads, by the wayside, at the top of the hill; beside the gate, at the entrance to the city” calling aloud, “I appeal to every man: understand, you simple fools, . . . what sense means. Listen! . . you will have plain speech from me; for I speak nothing but truth.”
I was re-reading the social scientist W. Lloyd Warner’s 1961 book The Family of God recently. It is a study of the mid-century culture of Newburyport MA disguised in the study as Yankee City. Among the cultic celebrations of this very Puritan town was Mother’s Day (started in the U.S. in 1908 and widening in import ever since). This was remarkable because the Puritan foundation of America had always placed masculinity far above the feminine; the men made the decisions, took the responsibility; women did not vote, etc. And yet since Mother’s Day’s inception women have risen to the highest rankings in every aspect of business, politics, even Protestant church ministry, a once exclusively male domain.
Even back when Warner did his study of Yankee City, Puritan churches began to recite a Mother’s litany: “From slowness of heart to comprehend what is divine in the depth and constancy of a mother’s love, Good Lord, deliver us. / From the unreality of superficial sentiment, from commercial exploitation, and from all lip service to motherhood while we neglect the weightier matters of justice and mercy and love, Good Lord, deliver us. / . . . That it may please thee to open our ears that we may hear the Savior’s word from the cross, “Behold thy mother.” And so it goes.
What I asked you to imagine earlier comes close to what I have experienced as I have, I hope, become more mature and wiser into my old age. How many women have I met in my life here or there, at chance meetings, professionally, even romantically, who with their genuine attention, their personal gaze across a subway car made a person of me instead of a shallow clone – starting from Mother Donata, my eighth grade teacher who insisted I try for a high school scholarship that set me off to regions unknown to me at the time. When I think of minor and major turning points in my life I can identify them as women I have met as the many appearances of Lady Wisdom who seemed to be waiting for me “at the crossroads, by the wayside, at the top of the hill; beside the gate, at the entrance to the city” . . . at a bus stop. Happy Mother’s Day everybody.