March 29: The Heart’s Treasury
♫ Music:
Day 25 - Saturday, March 29
Title: The Heart’s Treasury
Scripture #1: Luke 2:19 (NKJV)
But Mary kept all these things and pondered them in her heart.
Scripture #2: Luke 1:38 (NKJV)
Then Mary said, “Behold the maidservant of the Lord! Let it be to me according to your word.”
Poetry & Poet:
“Scale”
by Chelsea Wagenaar
I am soft sift
In an hourglass
—Hopkins
Against the darkening winterplum sky,
a lone contrail whitens—loose thread, untufted
cotton. A perfect inverse of me:
Lenten moon
of my belly taut, halved by a slurred gray line.
Linea nigra, the doctor says, my belly button’s
new ashen tail a ghostly likeness of the cut cord
that once bound me to my mother.
These days I am a solstice, a season begun
in your germinal dark. Measure me now
in months, in so many weeks, all the streams
of my body downrivering
into the estuary that is you.
That is you—
there, the tick of your limbs, a second hand,
a second hand, fingers whorled and filling
with bone, numbered one by one,
as are your days in that luminous book.
Nameless one, I know you in numbers.
Your parts, your gathering weeks, the 145
of your heart. The thrum of kicks
in an hour is as many as the sparrows
that flit in the bare snarl of vine and hedge,
as many as the houses that line our street,
my trips to the bathroom in the night.
I think, in those small, bleary hours,
of the hand that pens the book of our days,
turns the page. Nameless one, only once more
will you be numberless, when you begin again
at zero. Day you quicken toward, cold sear
of light, fugue of voices. You’ll be cut
like yarn from the skein, your skin unshined
of blood, your heels grasped and slapped.
Cry, numberless one—for now you are laid
upon the scale, the 0.0 you’ll shatter,
your life weighed against a feather,
already counted up.
THE HEART’S TREASURY
Our passages today come out of order. The annunciation of the incarnation read during Lent, a juxtaposition that allows us to consider life from birth to death. The two statements, filled with hopeful anticipation of the life that is to come, are set against artist Philippe de Champaigne’s depiction of Mary bearing witness to her son’s death. Her hands are folded in her lap, her feet comfortably crossed. The expression on her face is clearly one of sorrow as the title describes, and yet her posture does not appear anxious or fraught. It is as though she still holds in her heart the posture acknowledging, “Let it be unto me according to your word.”
I, who am afraid of roller coasters, used to read this as a muster of courage, the one momentary act of locking in for the ride, the rest will take care of itself. Now, I read these words and wonder how many times throughout her life Mary responded with, “Let it be unto me according to your word.” When Simeon said her son would cause her own soul to be pierced? At the trial? The agonizing hours of Jesus’s crucifixion? When she packed her belongings and moved into John’s house?
It is striking that Mary spends three decades watching Jesus grow up, herself aging alongside him. During those years, was her mind opened to understanding the Scriptures as would later happen to the disciples? Those years of hidden existence, living life out of the spotlight come to a close at Cana where Mary’s instructions to the servants of, “do whatever he tells you,” bear the echo of her initial words, “Let it be unto me according to your word.” She has pondered miracles in her heart, has been told of rises and falls, and encourages others toward the conclusion she has come to, that his word is trustworthy.
Today’s music, entitled “Love and Suffering,” comes from the film A Hidden Life, which tells the story of one man’s refusal to fight in the Nazi army, and his resulting execution. His life is depicted as a continuous string of small moments, each one seemingly insignificant in the grand scheme of things, though each entered into with a posture of, “may it be unto me.” His death went unnoticed to most of the world. His wife and children, however, bear witness to, and so become the evidence of, his life. The incarnation does not stop at birth but continues into the intimacy of life’s seen and unseen moments, and even into death itself.
Today’s poem, “Scale,” meditates on the weight of impact that one life has on another, reshaping it. I wonder about the way Mary’s soul, like her body, might have changed over the three decades of life as she became a silent presence to Jesus’s ministry; from a youthful teen mothering in place of little import, to a middle-aged woman somehow grappling with the familiarity she has with the Son of God. I wonder if in her later years, she could see Jesus in her adopted son, John, a ponderer perhaps like her, who took his time in writing down his life of testimony.
This is a stance that trusts God’s action as trustworthy, and so will allow it to fill us so greatly that our lives begin to bear witness to it even in the smallest acts of ordinary living.
Prayer:
Father, give me the posture of heart that is open to your word moment by moment, in those that are seen and in those that feel insignificant, unnoticed, or even futile. Allow me to be transformed and conformed by a life in communion with Jesus and may those transformations in me bear witness to others. Make me aware of that witness in those around me, becoming more attuned to your intimate presence in others.
“May it be unto me according to your word” (Luke 1:38).
Amen
Stacie Poston
Adjunct Instructor
Torrey Honors College
Biola University
For more information about the artwork, music, and poetry selected for this day, we have provided resources under the “About” tab located next to the “Devotional” tab.
About the Art:
The Virgin of Sorrows at the Foot of the Cross
Philippe de Champaigne
1657
52 x 42.6 cm
Louvre Museum
Paris, France
Public Domain
Philippe de Champaigne paints Mary seated alone at the foot of the cross in a deeply private moment of reflection and grief in his painting The Virgin of Sorrows at the Foot of the Cross. In the lower right corner next to Mary’s bare feet, which signify her humility and piety, can be seen instruments of the passion—a crown of thorns and several nails. In paintings, Mary is usually portrayed in blue garments. Traditionally, blue in Christian iconography represents transcendence, mystery, and the divine. Blue pigment in medieval and Renaissance Europe was derived from the rock lapis lazuli, a stone imported from Afghanistan which was considered of greater value than gold. Hence, it was also an expression of devotion and glorification to swathe the Virgin in robes of blue, a hue which came to be known as Marian Blue.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marian_blue
About the Artist:
Philippe de Champaigne (1602–1674) was a Brabancon-born French Baroque-era painter, a major exponent of the French school. He was a founding member of the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in Paris, the premier art institution in France in the eighteenth century. Champaigne produced a large number of paintings, mainly religious works and portraits. Influenced by artist Peter Paul Rubens at the beginning of his career, his style later became more austere. Philippe de Champaigne remains an exceptional painter thanks to the brilliance of the colors in his paintings and the strength of his compositions. He portrayed the entire French court, the French high nobility, royalty, high members of the church and the state, parliamentarians and architects, and other notable people of his time.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippe_de_Champaigne
About the Music: “Love and Suffering” from the soundtrack to the film A Hidden Life
About the Composer:
James Newton Howard (b. 1951) is an American film composer, orchestrator, and music producer. He has scored over one hundred films and is the recipient of a Grammy Award, an Emmy Award, and nine nominations for Academy Awards. His film scores include Pretty Woman (1990), The Prince of Tides (1991), The Fugitive (1993), Dinosaur (2000), The Village (2004), King Kong (2005), Michael Clayton (2007), and the Fantastic Beasts trilogy (2016–2022). He has collaborated extensively with directors M. Night Shyamalan and Francis Lawrence, having scored eight of Shyamalan's films since The Sixth Sense (1999) and all of Lawrence's films since I Am Legend (2007).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Newton_Howard
Lyrics: Instrumental
About the Performers: Xander Rodzinski, James Ehnes, and Andrew Armstrong
Xander Rodzinski is a composer for film and television. His most recent work includes the Lucasfilm TV series for Disney+ Willow, which is a sequel to the classic Ron Howard film. He also recently scored the Western Dead for a Dollar, directed by the filmmaker Walter Hill. The film premiered at the Venice Film Festival and his score was nominated for a Hollywood Music in Media award. Other recent collaborations include writing additional music for James Newton Howard on the Lawrence Kasdan–directed and Ron Howard–produced docuseries Light & Magic, which illustrates the history of George Lucas’ visual effects company Industrial Light and Magic. He has written additional music on several projects, including Terrence Malick’s A Hidden Life, as well as the Netflix series A Series of Unfortunate Events. He has scored commercials for many top brands, such as Nike, Google, IBM, Lenovo, Polaroid, Bloomberg, GE, Motorola, Skillshare, Benefit Cosmetics, Away, and the Boys and Girls Club of America. Xander is originally from Fort Worth, Texas, and graduated from the University of Southern California with a degree in music composition.
https://www.xanderrodzinski.com/about
James Ehnes (b. 1976) is a Canadian concert violinist and violist. Ehnes began his violin studies at the age of four and at age nine became a protégé of the noted Canadian violinist Francis Chaplin. He studied with Sally Thomas at the Meadowmount School of Music, and also studied from 1993 to 1997 at the Juilliard School, winning the Peter Mennin Prize for Outstanding Achievement and Leadership in Music upon his graduation.
https://www.jamesehnes.com/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Ehnes
Praised by critics for his passionate expression and dazzling technique, pianist Andrew Armstrong has delighted audiences across Asia, Europe, Latin America, Canada, and the United States. Andrew’s orchestral engagements across the globe have encompassed a vast repertoire of more than sixty concertos with orchestra. This 2024–25 season, Andrew will perform Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 5 with the Manitoba Chamber Orchestra in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, and Rachmaninov’s 2nd Piano Concerto with the Waterbury Symphony in Connecticut. In addition to his performance activities, Andrew serves as artistic director of two flourishing series in South Carolina—USC Beaufort’s Chamber Music Series and Columbia’s Andy & Friends, presented by the SC Philharmonic. In 2020, Andrew founded New Canaan Chamber Music in New Canaan, Connecticut, where he serves as artistic director of the series now entering its fourth season. And since 2023, he directs Fabbri Chamber Concerts in New York City at the Fabbri Mansion, a 1609 Italian Renaissance library that seats eighty, and which was brought across the ocean and installed on the Upper East Side.
https://www.andrewarmstrong.com/
About the Poetry and Poet:
Poet Chelsea Wagenaar received her B.A. from the University of Virginia and her Ph.D. from the University of North Texas. She is the author of Mercy Spurs the Bone (Anhinga Press, 2015), which was selected for the 2013 Philip Levine Prize in Poetry. She is currently a Lilly Fellow at Valparaiso University in Indiana. Wagenaar's poetry has appeared in such journals as Southern Review, Blackbird, Image, and Crazyhorse.
https://poets.org/poet/chelsea-wagenaar
About the Devotion Writer:
Stacie Poston
Adjunct Instructor
Torrey Honors College
Biola University
Stacie Poston completed her graduate studies in biology, focusing on cell and molecular biology and immunology, before taking time to raise her family of four kids with her husband. She enjoys stepping onto Biola's campus to discuss great books and loves to see how God's hand is evident in all the big and small parts of life.