My soul magnifies the Lord,
and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior…
God has shown strength with God's arm,
and has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.
God has brought down the powerful from their thrones,
and lifted up the lowly;
God has filled the hungry with good things,
and sent the rich away empty.

This is a portion of the song Mary sings during her pregnancy with Jesus. It is an improvisation of the song Hannah sang after the birth of her son Samuel.

It is not a sweet lullaby.
It is a battle cry, bold and defiant.

Mary sings for the weak and the lowly, the poor and the hungry. Every hurting son is now her son, every hungry daughter is now her daughter. Before, they were simply among her; now, they dwell within her. And the song erupts from that place deep down where she carries them, where she bears them in her own body.

It is not necessary to be a mother, or even a parent, to feel such empathy. But one of the gifts and curses of pregnancy and motherhood for me is that I sometimes experience the pain of the weak and the lowly and the hungry and the hurting on a physical level. A cellular level. I never did before.

Something terrible has happened this week to the loved one of a loved one, a beautiful and brave young woman. I cannot say what right now. The details are too fresh, the emotions too raw. What I can say is that the song I sing today asks, begs, demands that God be strong in God’s gathering and filling and lifting up.

As I sing my magnificat, I am carried back two and a half years, when I was eight months pregnant with C. A friend of mine, also quite pregnant, was attacked on her way to work. A man hit her car from behind and suggested they pull off the busy main road to exchange information. He knocked her to the ground and began beating and kicking her. She turned her body inward around her pregnant belly and yelled at him to stop, to not hurt her baby. The attack continued.

Back on the main road, a woman was driving by, finishing a pre-work cigarette, her window down in the January chill. She heard a voice cry out from a shady side street. She continued on her way. Then this woman, who does not believe in voices, heard a deep-down audible NO. She turned her car around to investigate. When she saw the scene unfolding before her she screamed and began ramming the man’s car with her own. He jumped into his car and sped away.

The man was caught, and the baby was born sometime later, healthy, but early and small.


Exactly one year ago last summer, when I was preaching at mondo youth conference, a member of the planning team, L, came to me distraught. Her son, a college student in a nearby town, had just confided to her that a friend of his had been raped by someone in her apartment building. The victim felt broken and ashamed; L’s son felt bereft and useless. The mother felt everything. She talked, and we wept.

During week two of the conference, L told me that her son and his friend would be attending worship that evening. The stress of preaching to 1,400 youth paled in comparison to wanting to speak a word of comfort and hope to these two young adults, or failing that, at least to do no further harm. L told me later that the young woman had felt peaceful and calm during the service, more so than she had felt in several days.

God is indeed strong in the gathering and the filling and the lifting up.


Last night we saw the Indigo Girls in concert. I carried all these women with me as I went.

I have always preferred Emily Saliers’s songs to Amy Ray’s. Emily’s are more interesting musically, more textured. Her lyrics operate on many levels. Amy’s songs are more straightforward (I can actually play them on the guitar, which is saying something). They are linear, direct, sharp like an arrow. Both women write powerful songs. Emily’s songs are powerful in their beautiful complexity; Amy’s, in their defiance.

So Emily is my favorite, but last night, Amy was singing to and for the women whose stories I carried in my body, whose pain I felt. Amy sings the magnificat the way it is meant to be sung—thunderous, proud, piercing the soul.

I saw a woman on the sidewalk…
she was beaten by a stranger.
Danger Danger Danger.

Amy holds the audience rapt.

Let it ring
in the name of the man that set you free
Let it ring

And the strife will make me stronger
As my maker leads me onward
I'll be marching in that number
So let it ring

One day we'll all be free
Let it ring.

The crowd loves her; she sings their song, and she sings it strong.
They chant her name: Amy… Amy.

Thanks be to God for Amy.