Gentleness and plenty

I haven't blogged for a while, more than a year or so it seems. The truth of the matter is that I haven't blogged a lot since my kids were born. Thomas was joined this last February by our daughter Madeleine and life has been, well, busy. I thought back of this blog as a spot where I used to gather the things that were little elements of the life of faith as it happens to me. A fair few things have happened but none of them I felt compelled to keep a record of. But of late a reading of Colm Tóibín's "The Testament of Mary" has been a minor cataclysm. I guess he put into words a few things I didn't know I thought. In this work of fiction he depicts the early followers of Jesus as a bunch of hysterical malcontents, each with a warped agenda of their own. The author makes this historical period and place seriously unattractive, full of heightened emotions and out-of-touch fanaticism. In this book, the narrator, Mary, heartily dislikes the various bands of zealots that seek contact with her. She ends up dropping Judaism in favour of the gentleness and plenty of a Greek Goddess because he heart yearns for calm and abundance. So now, I wish I could pinpoint exactly what it is that I absolutely loved about this novella. But at the bottom I think it is a plea for gentleness and plenty above orthodoxy and heroism. These last qualities are so demanding they make failures out of pretty much everyone. In the process we can forget how much we too yearn for calm and abundance, not just for ourselves, but for all.