lupa | journal entry } losing my religion.

GG has the M and cross of a Miraculous Medal tattooed on her right shoulder. And this is why.

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Written in 2007, in Italian- with breaks for Quebecois swearing.

It's not so much Mary the Virgin Mother of Christ, Our Lady the Star of the Sea, The Mother of All Sorrows etcetera. It's more like- she just seems good. To me.

The M under the cross- it's Mary at the foot of the crucifix. She's watching her son die. That's what's on my arm, not some saintly virgin. Just a woman who had a son, and he died.

She might have died to have him. She was only about fourteen when she got pregnant. Wasn't she? Anyway, who knows what it was. I don't want to think it was a virgin birth because it makes me want to punch God in the teeth and I'm fairly sure that's not approved of by His Holiness. Giving God a well-deserved smack is Not Allowed. But crisse, man! (Appropriate). You knock a woman up before she gets married, in that time and place? You give her 'it was a virgin birth' as an excuse? You appear out of the blue- no, sorry, you send a monstrous angelic emissary, because that's really sensitive- and you use her faith in you to throw her into the deep end? God, in this story, is the dick who refuses to use a condom and then says he doesn't want to pay child support.

God was pretty lucky Mary put up with that. He's lucky she was brave. There wasn't any Jesus before there was Mary being brave. That's what's on my arm.

It's Mary at the foot of the cross, and she's watching her son do brave, heroic, insane things. Everyone around her can barely contain their urge to martyr themselves, apparently. It's the new thing. Everyone's praying at this, that and the other, there are ten thousand Messiahs to choose from and some of them do a custom service for the disciple who wants it all. Everyone's proclaiming their faith in something or other. It's gone dark (they say), the temple curtain rips (they say).

And Mary holds the key, doesn't she? To this particular riddle, that is, the one that got a bit out of hand. Or the real thing, possibly. The yes or no. Was it a virgin birth? Is he God's son? She's not telling.

He was definitely hers, at least. And he's being crucified.

They paint him very nicely, don't they? They paint him pretty white, too, for a guy from Nazareth- probably the genes from God, who as we all know is a white guy with a long grey beard. They paint Jesus looking holy and glowing and dignified instead of screaming and writhing naked on the cross. What blood there is runs in well-behaved little drips, even from the marks on his forehead from that crown. It never gets in his eyes or mouth. Well, blood doesn't do that and I should know. It gets everywhere. Jesus died horribly. You heard it here first.

I like Mark's account here. I often do. He's much more vivid, much less clever and careful. Other evangelists skip around the word of God and mash it up for their own purposes. Mark can't tell a story, but at least he's being honest. So. Mark. "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

Poor Jesus.

But poor Mary. Standing at the foot of the crucifix while her world crumbles and folds in like a photograph in a fire. And her stupid self-sacrificing son's dying, for the sins of other people she's never met who she never taught to walk or talk, who she never kissed goodnight. And she knows it's for the best, but he's crying out that his God has forsaken him and she can't help him. And she stays there. She doesn't run. She stays looking. Because she knows how that feels, being thrown into the fire and told that it's up to you not to burn, that if you're good enough you'll stay unharmed, and she won't forsake him, not even if his bigshot deadbeat dad has, not even if she's just a woman in a dowdy blue veil, if she's not exciting or godly or omnipotent or omniscient, if she's just one more pointless little person on this pointless little planet, she won't move. Won't leave. The world is full of martyrs and monsters and Roman soldiers but her son is killing himself for strangers and she goes nowhere, the last woman standing.

That's what's on my arm.