I am BOTH - Mary and Martha

 I am BOTH - Mary and Martha

  Luke 10:40-42

"Martha, who was busy with all the details of hospitality, came to Jesus and said, 'Rabbi, don't you care that my sister has left me all alone to do the household tasks? Tell her to help me!' Jesus replied, ' Martha, Martha! You're anxious and upset by so many things, but only a few things are necessary - really only one. Mary has chosen the better part, and she won't be deprived of it.'"

A few months ago, I had the privilege of performing Laura Funk's Midrashic monologue, "Mary's Martha" - based on Mary Schertz's commentary on the passage above. I got to share the stage with Steve Bell and his sister, Dorothy Fontaine for the launch of Laura's book People and Places of Sacred Interior Spaces - Midrashic Monologues and Guided Meditations. In preparation, I opened my own heart to the monologue to experience what Spirit was speaking to me, and in the process I found a measure of healing for myself. Healing from the relentless tug of war between two natures named Mary and Martha which are personifications of my feminist desire to have the same right to gain  wisdom through knowledge and contemplation and my desire to be a "good" (Dietsche) Mennonite/ Christian wife and mother. It is also the daily fight within myself of having ADHD and a Type A personality.

First though, what is a Midrashic Monologue? The Midrash is a Jewish collection of interpretations of Biblical texts. In the Midrashic Jewish tradition, scripture becomes living by engaging with it through dialogue and imagination. It is the way to bring the Torah (first 5 books of the Christian Bible) into the wrestling ring of our lives. Laura's monologue imagines , within the cultural understandings of the day, Martha's interaction with Jesus that appears in Chapter 10 of Luke.

The first part of the monologue which struck a nerve was when Martha is getting ready for Jesus and his disciple's arrival and has engaged Mary's help. Martha says - "At first, this all went well. But after a while, my stress grew and I stopped seeing Mary as a friend and companion and I started to boss her around and get more critical." Zing! Ouch! I always knew, in my head, that people were more important than getting something done, but I just couldn't make it a reality for most of my life.

Things only began to change for me when I entered my late 30s; before that I struggled with being the nagging, bitchy wife whose husband wasn't doing much of the housework or home maintenance. This was a result of a combination of a lot of things: me making him feel inadequate early on in our marriage by criticizing anything he attempted, and both of our own undiagnosed mental health issues and neurological "disorders." When children came along, I struggled with how to engage them in helping out in household tasks - how to invite them into the process without being "the angry mommy." I was full on "Martha" with a martyr's complex and all, until a diagnosis and a revelation.

Hearing stories from my husband's childhood and having worked with, what was then called "children with special needs," we knew he had ADHD as a child. This was the late 90s, it was thought that kids outgrew their ADHD as they learned to "control their impulses." But in his 30s, still unable to sit down and have a discussion with me for more than 5 minutes, and feeling unable to manage in many areas of life, he sought help. Amen and hallelujah! Guess what? A child with ADHD will have ADHD in adulthood. Some things can be managed and many others things, not so much. This, I was learning, through reading literature on adults with ADHD. I wanted to understand what was going on in his head, but as I was reading I began to tick all the boxes for myself and wondered, "Do I have ADHD too? Or am I just over identifying?"

A year or so prior to my husband's diagnosis, I succumbed to burnout. Too much everything for a very high strung individual such as myself. I started therapy and medication to control my overwhelming anxiety and panic attacks and depression. I was finally able to step back a bit and reflect on what was going on internally. It was with this new found clarity that I began to connect all the dots that led me to  be subsequently diagnosed with ADHD as well. The more I read and observed in myself and my spouse, I came to understand that it was actually the underlying, life-long, unmanaged ADHD that led to my mental illnesses and burnout. I can still remember sitting at the dining room table when I came to that realization and just weeping, "It's not me!" I thought, "I'm not a horrible person for forgetting everything, for taking on too many things, for always being late and never able to leave a place when I get there, for being too loud, too direct, too sensitive, for never getting anything done on time, for losing track of time when I'm hyperfocused while reading and writing, why it was such a struggle to do a Master's degree (taking 6 years instead of the "normal" 2) and why I subsequently gave up on my dream of getting a PhD, and why I felt I was failing as a worker, as a mother and as a wife." These weren't excuses, they were answers. To give something a name, like a neurological "disorder,"  gave me power over it. It helped me begin to understand and accept my personal limitations, but also how being neurologically atypical or divergent, also makes me the "interesting," creative, funny, and paradoxical person that I am. This diagnosis gave me insight into being much more gracious with myself and consequently with my husband and my children. With therapies of all kinds, medication and determination - of which I have a lot - I had turned away from being a critical, bossy Martha...except for a certain time of the month.🌕 But what really hit the nail on the head...and no it's not about the nail!!! was when I recognized that I was not a 2 on the enneagram, as I had previously thought, I was a (dun, dun, dun) ....One!!!!

A One, for the uninitiated, is known as The Perfectionist or The Reformer. I prefer the latter. What this combination means is that I have extremely high standards for myself and those around me in all areas of life including work, Christian faith, relationships, being a mom, a wife, etc. But because of my ADHD, I was constantly failing to maintain my standards. My ADHD caused my hyper-critical Oneness to perceive those around me as also failing to meet my standards - my poor husband and children.

Most people, I am told, who finally figure out which number they are on the enneagram, cry and cry. I was such an individual. I think we cry out of relief, like I did when I was diagnosed with ADHD, "Finally! I have a name for this...whatever this is that I am." Again, it's not trying to make excuses, it's providing explanations and then a pathway forward. But I also think it's a cry of confession, of how, I, with this particular "One" personality, have harmed myself by being so self-critical, and those around me by being so very resentful - "Oh Martha, how resentful were you?" 

So on that day last fall, when I read that line about Martha not seeing Mary as a "companion" and being "bossy," I cried. I cried for all the ways I have been unable (because of ADHD and being a One) to treat those around me as companions in the journey of the household life. This "Martha-ness" is in me, this wanting to have things a certain way, thinking that it is the only way, and wanting to please others or appease their perceived judgement of me. Martha reminds me of my shadow side, the log in my eye to which I must pay attention.

Laura writes that what matters is "someone's orientation of the heart," whereupon I bawled once again. My intentions are not always pure, but I've begun to understand that a little good intention is enough. That Jesus, as I see in Laura's writing, looks with such tender compassion upon my heart that longs to be of pure intent even if not able to be realized, and "help[s] me come back to myself." God knows I have ADHD and that I am a One. God knows about my Marthaness and doesn't blame me for any of my misplaced intensions but wants me to find and be filled with joy.

This Marthaness also bumps against my Maryness - "He [Jesus] looked at Mary, sitting at his feet, and told me that her heart was true." I love reading, studying, thinking, contemplating, wondering with others who long to do the same. If I could have two hearts, one would be a Mary heart. She is being true to herself, not caring what others think of her, a (insert shudder) woman learning with men! I always find this part interesting since women, in general, in Christianity have not been encouraged to do this, but instead told to "get back in the kitchen with Martha." It always warms my Mary heart to know that it's not what Jesus said. Unfortunately, when I've spent this time in reading and thinking, I berate myself for all the things left undone, because no matter how much I long for it, there is no such thing as house-elves.

This though, is deeper than my own personality and chemical brain makeup. There's also another layer, a way of being that is also about the internalizations of societal expectations for women and expectations of being a Dietsche Mennonite woman. Coming from a Dietsche (conservative Low German Mennonite with a history in colonies in Latin America) background, gender roles are clearly defined - there is no room for Maryness. But I was raised in Canada where feminism had begun to change what women could do, and being a Reforming One, I knew that things had to improve for the women in my community and I was empowered to go to University and pursue the path of knowledge and self-discovery, I was an adamant Mary all the way. But I couldn't shake my Dietschness. I wanted to live an egalitarian life but ingrained patterns of behaving between married women and men made this a struggle. I became a feminist in a time (in the 90s) where women were "supposed to have it all." I could be Mary, but I also had to be Martha, again...no house-elves. And this is also no ordinary Martha of the city, but a Dietsche self-sufficient Martha that grows a garden, preserves, bakes and makes all food from scratch, again...without the aid of house-elves. And for some reason, the husband and the kids did not want to be my house-elves. This is the way of Dietsche families as in many conservative traditions, the kids are a bunch of house-elves. It's about getting things done, over and above relationship, very transactional as opposed to interpersonal. And at one level, that's just what I wanted. I just wanted to tell someone what to do and have it get done, my way.

The next part of Laura's monologue imagined Jesus telling his disciples to do the work in the kitchen so that Martha could also sit and learn. Can't you just picture that happening? Literally, I cried again. I had experienced the failure of trying to have it all and saw the patriarchal mode of recent feminism with its lauding of places of privilege and power and devaluation of the work of the everyday. Caregiving needs to be given priority in life, so that no Martha is ever alone. Priority needs to be given to caring for ourselves, our loved ones, the members of our communities, our employees, and our neighbours near and far. Empowering everyone needs to be given priority, so that every Mary can sit at the feet of wisdom.

The Church, thanks to Constantine - Thanks Constantine! - perpetuated the Greco-Roman cultural worldview of inherent difference and hierarchy between the sexes, between races and cultures. Instead of being transformed to live like Jesus, the Church was transforming the cultures it dominated to live like Greco-Roman patriarchal, hierarchical, difference oriented and dualistic culture. Laura's envisioning of male disciples cooking and cleaning up while women sit at Jesus' feet to learn, demonstrates what Jesus was doing throughout the Gospels, upending ALL cultural constructs of dominance and hierarchy that seek to divide and assign worth based on externalities.

Yeah, I know, perhaps that's a bit too much weight to put on poor Mary and Martha. But this is the baggage that I bring to the text and to which, when I listen closely it, reveals the lies society tells me about myself and the inner truth of who and whose I am.  I need not judge myself based on others' preconceived notions of what I "should" be or what is important according to society's standards of success. I need not be either Mary OR Martha. I am both. I am paradox.