“Only one thing is necessary.” (Jesus to Martha in Luke 10:42)

I’ve always felt busted by the Mary/Martha story. As a sensing, practical person, I’m not a natural contemplative like Mary who Jesus says has “chosen the better way” when she sits at his feet, soaking in his teaching. Yes, Martha’s gifts of hospitality and attention to detail were needed and valued, but Jesus noticed she was anxious and distracted about the million things on her to-do list. 

I get her. She’s in my DNA. It’s not so much the hands-on temperament that’s the problem. It’s the monkey mind takeover that I really identify with. Even as I scribbled away at this very blogpost, I wondered why I felt so anxious despite the meaningful content. Then I realized. It’s the million things. Maybe it’s the coming cohort, maybe it’s the January “resolution” feeling, maybe it’s just human nature, but I often slip into that “look busy” modality. Honestly, I approach pretty much everything like Martha, including my spiritual practices, trying to accomplish many things. 

Who am I kidding? I’m no Mary.

How exactly will this Martha become Mary? Will my pilgrimage to Dallas help me in this lifelong fight between action and contemplation? 

Rohr says that becoming Mary is not easy for any of us. Our minds by nature are intent on judging, controlling, fixing and analyzing instead of just loving God like Mary did. We do this because it’s easier. It’s the ego that is interested in control. But reality (aka the naked now) never really gets fixed. It’s far too messy for starters. We can’t love reality and God with the judgmental mind.

It’s not that Jesus was asking Martha to turn off her common sense and stop doing things. He was pointing to something deeper. There was a fundamental yes she was being invited to. When we say “no” to reality in our judgments, we usually get some form of no back. The Apostle Paul said, speaking of Jesus, “With him the answer is always ‘Yes!’” (2 Corinthians 1:19) If we start with yes, like Jesus always did, Rohr says we are more likely to get a yes back.

An early memory came to me this week which helped me flesh all this out — a time when I first said no then yes. When I was 16, my mom, bless her, got me my first job as a cashier at our local corner store, Wiebe’s J-Mart. I  loved it. I was good at bagging  groceries just right, giving correct change back (thank you mental math), and privately making tallies of the most popular cigarettes (because, why not). 

But one day, I forgot to get someone to sign their cheque. It was a large amount, over $100. The store owners were livid! If I didn’t find the person and get them to sign their cheque, it would come  out of my pay. At only a few hours/week, this would take forever. Cue the shame. I still remember how my legs turned to rubber and I wanted the earth to swallow me. When my shift ended, I went to the park at the end of our street and bawled for hours. What kind of a person would forget such a thing? There had been no address on the cheque and now the solution seemed out of my grasp. I was distracted and anxious.

But something came over me…a certain calm that Jesus was with me there in that park and that things would be ok. I felt consoled. Like Mary, I felt like I could have sat there forever. Finally I got up and went home to sleep, gathered strength the next day and knocked on several doors in the area until I found the owner of the cheque. The problem was resolved and it hadn’t even taken long.

This was a good example to me of how my initial firm no (all my hysterics) dissolved into a yes when it dawned on me that Jesus was there. Looking back, this would become a template for many similar situations to come in my life — where my end-of-the-rope no’s mercifully melted into Jesus’ yes. 

What does it mean to love reality; or rather, to love God in our reality, and to let God love us? Rohr  says, “Just try to keep your heart open, your mind without division or resistance, and your body not somewhere else. Once your presence is right, you grow from everything, even the problematic.”

Jesus was fully present like this. Most of the people were looking for religion, but he was just a human being, prayerfully living in full reality. Like Jesus, we have to simply willingly (as opposed to willfully) pass through some rings of fire. Yes, not no. It’s called the way of the cross. We can’t get there by trying harder. Jesus called it the “narrow path that few would walk upon.” 

Maybe all Mary was doing was resting in “Yes”. Like teenage me in the park so long ago, she knew Jesus was there with her, and that all would be well. Maybe I can stop judging my inner Martha and let Mary…and Jesus…befriend her.

January 9, 2023