The .Plan

One of my favorite prayers is the Magnificat.

What has always appealed to me about this passage is that it is a beautiful expression of Mary’s long memory of God’s lovingkindness. I can appreciate the the politics of a minority bastard child born, to a father descended not just from David but also from Rahab and Ahaz, in a tiny corner of the Roman Empire, whose arrival frightened a ruler of awesome geopolitical talent who built his regime through repression and persecution (and who assassinated Caesar and his royal father and 45 Sadducees en route to consolidation of his power). He was not executed as a political criminal for being nice and telling other people to be nice.

Occasionally the Magnificat is referred to by its Latin name, the Fiat mihi, “let it be to me according to thy will”. That is a pretty remarkable gut response to a divine interruption. When we think about interruptions, they always seem to be far off into the future, and our willingness to respond to them is conditioned on our plans: I will be willing to do Z if and when X or Y happens. X or Y might include completion of a training program or graduate degree, or a promotion to a position of seniority; Z might include standing firm on prescribing emergent mifepristone/misoprostol, or taking a detour on pursuing a particular career path. Of course, we tend to overestimate our willingness to entertain these deviations from our controlled, linear trajectories.

But what about the smaller interruptions? Call nights tend to be full of these.

Come, ye weary, heavy-laden,
Lost and ruined by the fall;
If you tarry till you’re better,
You will never come at all.