“Mary.”
The Teacher had spoken my name.
Only He, among all others,
had no fear of me that day.
Standing alongside those demons,
He was able to see my light.
His light.
The Light.
My tortured spirit wanted to be silent.
To simply stop screaming and die.
Hope was dead and dark as cave air.
In my heart, I cried out…
“Rabbouni, please help me!”
Then He called me. “Mary.”
The embittered one.
How had He known me?
I will never forget that voice.
It was completely still
yet stirred my soul to dancing.
And I made a vow to follow Him forever.
I saw many, many others, like me.
He fed, healed, forgave, and loved them.
They were poor, lost and unheard.
All of them were Mary to me.
He told us He would die. We didn’t understand.
His mother knew. Oh, the pain of her silence!
I stood beside her, beneath His cross.
My crushed heart could hardly offer support.
It was the most horrible thing I’ve ever seen.
My God, His poor mother’s heart.
“It is finished,” He said, and He died.
We had His blood on our clothing.
I wanted to leave this heartless world
and go to Him again, wherever He had gone.
They took His body and anointed it,
laying it in a new tomb sealed with a boulder.
I knew this finality. I felt the stone-shut soul.
Wanting to die with Him and all my hopes,
I came back early and wept.
But the stone had been rolled away.
The tomb was empty. The soldiers…
They had taken the beloved body.
I ran to tell the brothers.
They came and saw it, left the last shards
of their peace and walked away.
I stayed and cried in the gardens outside the tomb.
He had wept in a garden, too. What had He known?
What had He felt? Had anyone spoken His name?
Oh, how I longed to tell Him,
“Teacher, you mean so much to me.
Thank you for loving me, for saving me,
for seeing me, for calling out my name.”
Drawn to the tomb, I saw something white.
Two strangers in gleaming robes
sat where the body had been.
One asked me why I was crying,
and I told them it was because
they had taken Him to another place.
Then I heard it, coming from the garden.
The only one there was a gardener.
I had not noticed Him before, in my grief.
Dawn’s first light was behind Him,
and I could not see His face.
But then He spoke.
“Mary.”
How could I forget the sound that had saved me,
the only One who had known me for who I am?
How could I return a portion of the blessing
He had given to me the morning my life had begun?
“Rabbouni!”
I spoke His name.
My Lord and My God!
Hallelujah! Hallelujah.
I think I may never sleep again.
The Wooded Path 