Blessed. Jerusha Matsen Neal

you never knew was ready to begin. They may interpret something you never knew was obscured. They may say something you never knew was true or even yours to say. That is what great art does, and that is the gift Jerusha Matsen Neal has given the church.

      What we do next is our gift to God.

      Anna Carter Florence

      Columbia Theological Seminary

      Holy Week, 2012

      Preface

      In 2008, I received a phone call from a friend who was putting together a conference for women scholars and artists on making space for God in their work. She was specifically drawn to the image of Mary, pregnant with the Word, unable to find space to birth the gift inside her. “So many woman are in this situation,” she said. “They have a word to share and are in labor. They are wandering the streets, with no space in their busyness, academic guilds, or religious communities to birth what God has given them.” She asked me to tell their stories. My friend did not realize that she had already done something remarkable. She had sketched a line between the person of Mary, popularly remembered for her maternal excellence, submissive silence, and capacity for suffering and the modern female academic. She had connected the experience of writing words on a page and the birth of the Word that is Christ by a female body.

This connection between Mary and words is not new. Medieval scholars often show her reading a book—sometimes in the Bethlehem stable itself!2 Birgitta of Sweden, unique among medieval mystics in that she gave birth to eight children, explicitly connected the experience of Mary’s pregnancy to the proclamation of the Word in the world.3 But somewhere in Christian history, either through an emphasis on Mary’s passivity or our nervous silence about her generally, this connection between Mary and words—writing, preaching, and pregnancy—was lost.

      And the loss was not just a loss for women. To talk about creativity and inspiration—or worse, to talk about the Word of God’s entrance into the world—without talking about the bearing bodies of ordinary persons ignores the way that the mystery of grace touches down in human hearts. It ignores the love of God in the grit of life. Through my Protestant eyes, Mary is a woman who is finite and flawed—even as she struggles to be faithful to her calling. And from my perspective as a clergyperson, her struggle seems all too familiar.

      Whereas the first set of monologues in this collection deals with the challenges and joys of Christian vocation, I found that I couldn’t stop by describing Mary’s moment of calling, as if her story ended the moment Christ was born. Similar to my own experience of preaching, Mary does not simply birth the Word; she has to live with it. And living with the Word changes her, frustrates her, and calls her identity into question. The second set of monologues in the book grew out of this disjuncture between ecstasy and disappointment in the work of love. Organized around the question of what constitutes a family—as well as the gospel texts that sketch Mary’s story—the collection presses into Mary’s feelings of loss and bewilderment as the child she bore distances himself and challenges her. The pieces are not meant to retell her story, but reimagine her questions and protests in light of our modern ambivalence about who we are and to whom we belong.

      Metaphors matter. The metaphors we use to talk about theological concepts shape our understanding of what is possible—and theological concepts press us toward metaphor because of all we do not have words to say. Reclaiming the metaphor of Mary’s struggle to birth Christ and bear his resemblance as the struggle of the church and its leaders is only part of the picture. Finally, Mary’s story invites us to take seriously the complicated questions of the body for theology—or more correctly, it invites us to take seriously the questions of many different bodies who are trying to figure out if and how they are related to the body of Christ. It invites us to have mercy on families that seem like strangers and the strangers that become family, as we wait together for the Spirit’s shadow.

      How to Use this Book

      Space for God and Promised Land were written to be separate pieces of theater—though the biblical account of Mary is a common thread throughout. In past performances, music, dance, and visual projections have been used between the monologues to enhance the unity of the whole. The pieces have been performed in secular as well as religious settings. If you would like more information about these past productions, or would like permission to produce the pieces yourself, please contact:

      Wipf and Stock Publishers

      199 West 8th Avenue, Suite 3

      Eugene, OR 97401-2960

      Several of these monologues have also been performed as stand-alone pieces in seminary classroom settings, women’s retreats, and worship services. I welcome these not-for-profit performances and would be grateful to know how the pieces are finding expression. I have found these smaller readings effective in sparking discussion on vocation, women’s stories of faith, ecclesiology, and the relationship between theater and proclamation.

      For those who would like to use these monologues as conversation partners in small group bible studies or for private devotions, I have included a list of reflection questions to facilitate the process. These questions are not designed to point the reader toward a single textual meaning—but instead, underscore connections with the biblical witness and make space for diverse testimonies of faith.

      Finally, though I did not write these pieces to function as sermons, the monologues may be of interest to those with an eye toward the use of theater as sermonic speech. For those interested in these homiletic concerns, I offer several cautionary reflections as well as some suggestions. As an example of the challenges involved in such hybrid performances and in hope of continued conversation, I conclude this section with one of my own attempts to use drama in a Sunday worship context.

2. See Susan Groag Bell, “Medieval Women Book Owners,” in Sisters and Workers in the Middle Ages, edited by Judith M. Bennett et al. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989) 160ff., for a collection of such images.

3. Claire Sahlin, Birgitta of Sweden and the Voice of Prophesy (Suffolk: Boyden, 2001) 107.

      Acknowledgments

      Many friends and colleagues have been instrumental in moving this project to completion. Special thanks to Sharon Gartland and InterVarsity Graduate Fellowship, Diversionary Theatre, and Innermission Productions for supporting this work in its early stages—and to the Brehm Center, for its continued commitment to artists of faith. Thank you to Clay Schmidt, Anna Carter Florence, Dan Kirsch, and Scott Erwin who heard small portions of the whole and encouraged me to keep writing. Thank you to Sally A. Brown, Michael Brothers, Richard Lischer, and Charles Campbell for finding a role for these pieces in their seminary teaching. I am especially grateful to Anna Gillette, Wendy Mohler, and Austin Shelley, who brought Space for God to life at Princeton Theological Seminary in 2010—and to all those who attended the 2012 reading of Promised Land. I am blessed to have a learning community that enriches my writing with insight and Spirit-filled feedback. Over the course of five years, Patricia Loughrey and Annie Dominguez read multiple versions of these pieces with patience and care. I thank them for their careful attention to both the text and my heart.

      Most importantly, I thank my family of flesh and families of faith—particularly, Wes, Mercy, and Josiah. You fill our home with milk, honey, and daily joy. You make me brave.

      Space for God

      Author’s Note:

      Space for God is a trilogy of monologues commissioned for a women’s conference on the relationship between art and faith. Women scholars, scientists, and artists gathered for a weekend retreat on making creative space for God in their lives and in the world. The final piece, the most sermon-like, was performed as part of the closing worship service.

      These