Act IV.

The Testament of the Mother

Passion

The entire stage is dark. Upstage left, barely visible, the chorus, back to the audience, witnesses the crucifixion. In right downstage corner, Mary kneels down illuminated by a blue wash light. Long silence (1 and 1/2 min), interrupted only by the pounding of first nail. The silence must be heard loudly and fill the stage. Mary reacts physically to each sound.]

MIRIAM: [Miriam alternatively addresses God and addresses herself mixing the most opposite emotions, that follow one another, anger and sadness, hope and despair, in an ambiguous message that sometimes blames God and other times blames men who blame God. But first, she blames herself. Raising her arms to heaven, in a desperate request for help] Father, have you forsaken your son?! Oh, what is dear to me brings hurt and misery, suffering and despair... What have I done my God, to deserve this punishment? What have I done!? [Pounding of the second nail, that continues less loudly while Miriam recites:]

Oh, how much more can You suffer

nailed to the cross?

How much more, answer me, God,

can you look at your Son,

tortured and bleeding?

Where is your justice?

Where is your love?

For this did You ask me

to be the mother of your Son?

Answer me, God!

Don't you see my pain?

How can you meet

this much suffering, and remain silent?

What kind of a man are you

to let them so kill your Son!

FEMALE CHORUS: [with their backs to Mary and to the audience] May God above me not seek the blackness of this day, nor allow the light to shine upon it. May this day not be included among the days of the year... My life is a sentence, I struggle in these chains! Guilty or not guilty, disaster strikes mixing innocence with despair. May the day perish on which I was born, and the night in which it was said "a male child is conceived".

MIRIAM:

No! I will not be silent!

I will not mute my cries.

You will have to hear me,

even if my voice is small

in the oceanic void of space and time.

Your Scriptures call me to silence,

reminding me that, in the infinitude

of Your universe,

I am, as all, dust and ashes.

Weak I am, and much alone,

but the immensity of your stars

does not make me fear.

Or respect.

How can the depth of the heavens

serve as argument for your ravings?

Under the shadow of the cross,

Your threats do not terrify me.

Your will is a hurricane

stripping the earth,

but I am stone

already naked.

I defy you,

arrogant God.

I was not born to hate,

nor to doubt,

why do you force me

to question your commandments?

Should you stop to contemplate my fate,

and look at the paths through which you have led me,

You would know that I end with His suffering,

and that beyond His pain, or my own,

I am oppressed by this immense doubt I feel,

the fear that with Him ends all I loved.

Look at me, God, look at me, covered with tears,

rendering the air with my weeping!

More painful than to see Him hurt

is to see Him hurt by Your own hands.

Contemplating something infinitely bigger than myself fills me with reverence and awe.

You call me to co-create with you..., how could I know then that I would have to repeat Job's laments? I feel reduced and humiliated. I am nothing but dust and ashes. [defiant] But there is greater glory in the sublimity of my own child, of my Joshua, because He does not make me feel that man is lowly dust and ashes.

But now Joshua, You suffer...! Was your goodness wasted? Was your goodness an error, a miscalculation, a form of guilt for which our world has no forgiveness? [answering herself] It was the one thing that made You who You are. Your unmerited suffering makes me realize in all its magnitude the evil of this universe. I do not understand why there is evil. I refuse to accept it as the will of God, balanced by a reward in heaven! My intelligence cannot solve this quandary, but I know what I am to do. I say No. I fight evil. I do not accept this world. It would be more prudent to say Yes, but it is not up to the mother of Joshua to say yes to this world. No! I do not believe this is God's will! It is blasphemous to attribute inexplicable evil and innocent suffering to God's Providence. They are indeed the work of evil men who ask for our humble submission simply to satisfy their greed for power and profit! But, Divine Justice exists, and its time will come. [Pounding of the third nail, with ironic and tragic resonance]

MALE CHORUS: How could God the all powerful create sickness and misery. How can God the all benevolent allow for the torture of Joshua, for the torture of men and women, again and again, throughout the centuries...

FEMALE CHORUS: I hate you, I despise you, you are as despicable as a father who murders his son, and you still want me to take you for a God! Your universe is evil, not just unfair, but evil.

MIRIAM: No! [more calmly] No, I said to Joshua, we cannot understand, but understanding is not all. I told Him. There is no answer to Job's questions, but they do not really matter when we face the real issue before us. We do not know why the universe is filled with pain. In our desperation sometimes we may even think God too is full of evil. [With a spasm of pain and guilt] I told him the story of the Suffering Servant,* who always did his duty to others in spite of his own misery. I told him to learn from it, to learn that it does not matter that we cannot answer our doubts and uncertainties. We still have our duty to our people... [suddenly feeling pain and guilt] Did I make Him die the life and death of the Messiah when I gave Him the Suffering Servant as a model? Am I responsible for His death, for this terrible torture of the cross? How could I be so wrong? I am the guilty one. I can forgive them all, but for myself? I find a excuse for each.

CHORUS: For the people who chose to save Barabbas...

MIRIAM: ...their faith in his armed struggle against the Romans.

CHORUS: For the priests...

MIRIAM: ... because they condemned one man to save

all the people.

CHORUS: For the cowardly disciples..

MIRIAM: ...because they are vulnerable, weak men.

CHORUS: For the Roman soldiers...

MIRIAM: ...because they were saving the Roman peace and order. Even for Pontius Pilate, who ordered the execution of thousands of our people because it is difficult for the powerful to resist the corruption of power.* [pounding of the fourth nail; sudden return to a desperate reality; the stage becomes darker] Also, you God! [addressing her Son] Please die now! I do not want you to suffer any more! [covering her face with her hands, in horror of herself] What am I saying?! [pause] I rest, because there is no more hope. I can only wait for God. [Mary's face lightens up, as the light that illuminates her becomes softer and pinker. She cuddles an imaginary child in her arms]. O my child... How beautiful you are...[the chorus turns to face her, with an air of great surprise]

CHORUS: [recitative] She looses herself, she is flying into the past, she relieves her pain by plunging into madness.* Look at her, she imagines herself to be a young woman raising Jesus as a child. As she mourns, she is also healing herself and resurrecting Jesus in her spirit.

MIRIAM:

Oh, kiss my breast...,

let my sweet milk

pour into your mouth.

My child, my child,

you look at the world

with your big eyes,

and you see me,

and Joseph, lying quietly,

waking up, surprised

to see you standing...

[singing a nursery song]

Sleep. Sleep,

in the sea of the sky

where angels go sailing,

disguised as clouds and stars.

Go to sleep, my child, sleep and dream,

[speaking again as a mother to a child:]

Do you remember

those long afternoons,

singing and playing

in the streets warmed by the sun?

Do you remember the music

of Joseph's saw,

and of his hammer, making

a table, a chair, something

of a toy that made you smile?

Do you remember the pallid sun

of winter mornings

shivering its light

over a frozen fountain?

My milk, my warmth, my perfume,

do you remember, my child,

the clear water

and my tenderness?

Do you remember what it is

to live enlivened by one who loves you? *

[she reacts, startled] Perhaps God is also a child.. a powerful child who knows not what He is doing ... Perhaps God also needs to be forgiven because He is still growing .... eternally growing... [From a distance, with increasing volume, we hear Mozart's Requiem (variation)]. The chorus breaks up and move quietly away, with accented slowness and formality. After a long time, Mary gets up, trying to get people's attention with her looks, and only after a long time she bursts out crying:]

MIRIAM: My God, my God, why have You forsaken Him?! [She reaches out with her hands as the entire chorus leaves the scenario. Mary Magdalene, Eli and John, approach and embrace Mary, and lead her slowly to John's house, down scenario left, as the scenario becomes more illuminated. Helped by John, Mary sits at the door. Mary Magdalene sits by her. Eli brings Mary a drink. Eli and John leave unobtrusively.]

MAGDALENE: Nothing hurts more than the death of a child. When I lost my child, I wanted to die. I wanted to put an end to my life. Death just happened not to happen. It did not measure my pain. * [Mary and Eli sit. As the Requiem continues in the background, light changes signal the passage of night and the beginning of the new day. Mary Magdalene and John go out silently.]

Resurrection

[The children enter the scenario and look at the two women with fear and reluctance, too sad, too disturbed, too upset to say anything. Then they look at and talk with each other in a very low voice, until one says:]

BOY ONE: Grandpa told me He is in heaven.

ROMAN SOLDIER: Ave, Mary, God be with you.

MIRIAM: Who is it? Oh, it is you, I recognize you. You talked to my son, you were good to Him...

ROMAN SOLDIER: No! He was good to me! He converted me into a man.

MIRIAM: Tell me, my son.

ROMAN SOLDIER: I never knew my mother... she died delivering me. My father got drunk every night, and then he hit me.* I escaped to the streets, among the unemployed men, the maimed soldiers, the drug dealers, the prostitutes and the insane. I tried to become a priest, but then the Pontiff embraced me and kissed me as a woman. I became a soldier. I can tell it to you in a few words: You kill to survive the battle, and if you survive, you get drunk, rape the women, young or old, torture some, mutilate others, and fall asleep in the arms of someone who hates you, dirty with blood and vomit. [with new pride] Now I have found in myself a man, a man who can say No, a man who can think by himself, a man who is responsible for each of his actions, a man who can be proud again, and love.

MIRIAM: Thank you for your kind words...

ROMAN SOLDIER: I come to thank you. Now, I am alive... while He has been killed, tortured, by us..., the soldiers of the Republic... capable of destroying an entire village, "to save it from our enemies". And yet, I still envy Him. I envy His mother, you. Ah, what must it have been to be the son of a mother like you with so much love and faith in yourself, that you created a great soul! I hope you know that for all times there will be men and women imitating the Christ, and imitating you... [He leaves.]

MAGDALENE: [Mary of Magdalia enters the scenario, running, agitated, hysteric, her hair, her garments, her arms floating.] I have seen Him! I have seen Him! The grave is empty!

WOMEN FROM THE CHORUS: [almost simultaneously]

-Who?

-What do you say?

-Who have you seen?

-Who's grave?

-Speak up, woman.

MAGDALENE: I went to Jesus' grave with spices and fragrant oils, very early in the morning, with certain other women who had come with Him from Galilee, but we found the stone that closed the tomb rolled away. When we went in, and His body was not there. And then...and then...I think I saw two ...two angels, in shining garments.. They spoke to me.

VICTORIA: (woman-angel) He is not here, because He is risen.

ISABEL*: (woman-angel) Go quickly and tell the disciples, that you may go to Galilee where you will see Him.

MALE CHORUS:

-Nonsense.

-These are idle tales.

-Who can believe you? You are the madwoman of Magdala.

-You have always been one to believe in ghosts and charms, and talk of miracles. That is not what Jesus' message was all about.

MAGDALENE: I am not possessed! He cast seven demons from me a long time ago...

MALE: [ironically] You see what I mean.

[Lights go off downstage left. Downstage right, the scene with Mary and the children continues:]

CHILDREN CHORUS: "Grandma told me He is with the angels" [recitative, anxiously, staccato and fast:]

I was so afraid.

He lay so still.

My good friend

didn't speak to me.

Will he ever do?

Will he play and smile?

Where is he now?

Will he ever rise?

I am so afraid.

Am I going to die?

BOY: Grandma told me He is with the angels.

[change mood to a lighter tone, as the scenario also becomes illuminated with happier, brighter and softer mood colors]

CHORUS: [slowly]

Grandma told me

He is with the angels

playing and singing.

Oh...I am not afraid.

My good friend

now plays with the angels.

GIRL: Is He in heaven with the angels, and the Good God?

MIRIAM: [sadly] Yes my child ... [to herself] Angels always help when there is pain and fear ... [the children leave]. Resurrection...God is eternal.. but my Jesus...my son..He is dead... [Mary gets up and starts walking slowly]

SECOND ROMAN SOLDIER: [mockingly, intercepting Mary] Where were the angels when the time came? Why didn't they save your Jesus from our Roman legions? [Mary avoids him]. Perhaps you believe the stories that his followers are spreading around, that he has risen. That is good for political reasons, but for a mother...? I'll bet you blame them for not defending him... [Mary still tries to avoid him and get through to the other side]. Have you seen his ghost around any place?

MIRIAM: [indignant] You may have killed my son on the cross, but He has risen. I spoke with Jesus. I speak every day with Jesus. Did you think that you could kill His Spirit? You killed His body in the cross, but what do you have now? The grave you have is empty. Where is Jesus there? Jesus is here with me, He is here with Mary Magdalene, He is here with James, He is here with Simon Peter, He is here with every woman and man who believes in Him. Do you want to see Jesus?

MALE CHORUS: You can see Jesus any time you want, any time you stop being small, selfish or afraid, every time you want to get in touch with the divine that is in you...

FEMALE CHORUS: It depends on you whether Jesus is dead or alive; whether He speaks, or remains silent; upon you alone, whether you find an empty grave, or a powerful will that moves mountains.

ELI: I promise you, Mary, I will remember your son Jesus, and I will tell His story to my children, and to my children's children.

[lights off upper scenario, on lower scenario]

Role reversal with Jesus

LYDIA: Did she keep her promise?

ANTONIO: Yes, she did. Mary and Jesus are in Muslim's Holy History.*

ERNEST: Did Jesus really rise again?

ANTONIO: Of course. [turning to the audience] Do you believe in the resurrection of Jesus? I do. So I talk with Him once in a while, real conversations. I don't just pray, doing all the talking, but I also listen to Him.

CHORUS: Imagine if people went to church and instead of rituals and prayers, they would reverse roles with The Christ, and see the world through His eyes? It would change the world!

ANTONIO: [to the children] Most of my patients are Christian, but many times they forget it... When they forget to forgive ..

ERNEST: You send them to have a talk with Jesus?

ANTONIO: When they become proud of their riches, and despise the poor on welfare...

ERNEST: [happy as having reached an insight] You send them to have a talk with Jesus!

ANTONIO: When they become proud of war..

ERNEST: Yes, you send them to have a talk with Jesus.

ANTONIO: They say, "How?" I teach them to reverse roles, to become Jesus for a few minutes, to try to feel and think like Jesus.

CHORUS: Talk with Jesus. Ask Him:

-What do You think of Palestinians and Arabs?

-What do You think of war for oil?

-What do You think of greedy empires and bankers?

-What do You think of the priests

-Who bless those who live by the sword?

ANTONIO: And then become Jesus, and answer your own questions.

CHORUS: Beyond atonement, confession, praying, then resurrect Jesus! His spirit is a form that can also be embodied in you. Imitate the Christ. You will be full of God.

[lights turn up slowly on upper scenario, where we see Mary standing by the door of the same house as before]

Mary becomes Christian

MIRIAM: When I was a young girl, and dreamed, like many others, that my son could be a Messiah, I did not just hope and wait. I asked myself, "How do I teach a Messiah?". When He was a grown man, I knew He could become the Messiah we needed and wanted. I asked myself "How can I help Him to be recognized as a Messiah?" Now I have to ask myself: Were His life, and His death, in vain? If the fate of the Christ is to die tortured, do I want to be the mother of the Christ?

CHORUS: Peter and James, Socrates and Bruno, Hypatia and Joan of Arc, Martin Luther King and Gandhi... *

MIRIAM: Now that He is dead, why shall I go on living?

FEMALE CHORUS: What right has a survivor to live? What right has a survivor to go on living, and to do what other people have done, or might do as well? The covenant of Moses has been broken to pieces. A new covenant is needed, a personal and intimate covenant, written in each person's heart.

MIRIAM: [having an insight and thereby changing mood, to an assertive one] Yes, I still am the Mother of the Christ.. There is work to be done. Now. The question is... what to do next? [pause] To teach His gospel, of course ...but, what can I do? What is my special role? I will discover it. Now what is important is to start working, to become God's accomplice. The Mother of Christ shall become a Christian [in a more conversational tone, as she walks out to another house] although Joshua was a Jew like any other, and never thought Himself as a Christian.* He was The Christ, you see. His thought was always evolving, always growing. To die is to stop changing. Do not die before your time.

[The interior of a house where women and men disciples discuss. Mary stands a little apart, observing.]

OLD JEWISH MAN: He is defeated. There is no glory on earth. Read the Scriptures: Vanity of vanities, said the Preacher. All is vanity. Man is an animal, and dies like any other beast. All are of the dust, and all turn to dust again.

MAGDALENE: The Scripture also says I perceive that there is nothing better than that a man should rejoice in his own works; for that is his portion.

MAN FROM THE CHORUS: Jesus wanted us to submit to indignities without retaliation.

MAGDALENE: Jesus wanted us to be disarmingly good. The stress is in disarming, giving up the violence of arms and weapons. He wanted to dumbfound the Roman oppressors, and induce them to see us as persons, not as enemies

MAN: Resign yourselves to the will of the Lord. Submit to the landlords. Give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar.

MIRIAM: [approaching the group] If we were created by God, it was for the express purpose of acting. That is our fate: to choose and to act.

MAGDALENE: [rapidly adds] And we must choose to be on the side of the innocent, and the oppressed, beginning with the children abused by their parents....

MAN: Discipline is not abuse. Our Holy Scriptures advise us not to spare the rod. These stories of abuse are just uterine fantasies of hysteric women...

MIRIAM: Ignorant! The rod of the Scripture is the staff with which the shepherd guides, not the cane that punishes.*

WOMAN: The Christ came to teach us humility.

MIRIAM: No! He spoke against the arrogance of privilege, but He exemplified the pride of dignity. We must love others as we love ourselves. Those who do not love themselves, do not love others. Love and self-love grow together.

MAN: Joshua was crucified to redeem our sins.

MAGDALENE: Yes, He died for our sins, for our cowardice not to fight to save Him. That is our sin. But mainly He died for THEIR sins: the greed of the Romans, and the complicity of our lords and priests. The Christ was crucified because He wanted to save the world. To stop Him, they killed Him. And to stop us, they tortured Him, so as to fill us with fear.

MIRIAM: She is the most articulate of all of us...

MALE CHORUS:

-Men and brethren, what shall we do? How shall we be saved from this corrupt generation? We shall defend ourselves. We are called atheists because we do not believe in the Gods of Rome, and in the divinity of the emperor!*

-We shall continue steadfastly in our beliefs and fellowship. We shall sell our possessions and goods, and divide them among us all, as anyone has need.*

-Let us cast lots to see who will replace Judas. Perhaps we should draw straws. Will the Holy Spirit inspire us?

-He is with us, we feel him in our hearts...

MIRIAM: They will cast lots to choose a new apostle,* but they will never think of Mary Magdalene. Women just don't count. They have gone so far as to change the sex of the Holy Spirit. They call Her as a he; they have not learned to read Hebrew, so they do not know that in our Sacred Scriptures Her name is Rooach, a feminine word. You will see, they will even ignore me when they go away to spread the Gospels. As they forgot Joseph. To celebrate the Son, they forgot the father.* But the children are created in the love of the parents.

WOMAN: Joshua died to redeem us from original sin.

MAGDALENE: How can a grown up woman say that Jesus had to die tortured because Adam and Eve made love!

MAN: Fear the Lord!

MIRIAM: [to herself] Now I understand the unique role I am to play. I still must be the Mother of God. And I must teach the children that God is not a Lord, but a parent; and not only man, but also woman.

MAN: Here you are again, Mary. You'll never learn. Why do you insist in things that nobody wants to hear?

MIRIAM: To me is a question of truth, of justice, and of love.

FEMALE CHORUS: A question of justice..

MIRIAM: ...because in recognizing that woman shares as much in the divinity as man, we proclaim justice for all the oppressed.

FEMALE CHORUS: A question of truth...

MIRIAM: ... because we are born of man and woman, her womb is our first world, and mother is the first smile, the first love, the first milk, the first authority, the first person with whom to identify, and the first mirror for our own identity. Woman has priority in the life of man.*

FEMALE CHORUS: It is a question of love...

MIRIAM: God created us man and woman, so we could feel love even with our bodies, and through their pleasure learn that to give and to receive are one and the same thing.

MAGDALENE: What kind of a man is one who claims for himself human rights, and a soul that shares with the divinity, while he denies them to his mother, his wife, and his daughter?

WOMAN: [with contempt] Such man is to be pitied.

MIRIAM: Some say "Fear God". The world I fear, and its Creator. I love God, the Attractor who calls me to co-create a better world. Perhaps God made us in His image, but certainly we imagine God to resemble our own image. I do not fear God, because no-one should fear me. I am a mother. So is God.

The Goddess Temple.

Templo de la Diosa.

Mary rediscovers in Ephesus that God is a Child

MAN OF THE CHORUS: These were hard times. Many Jews went into exile because the Romans oppressed them so fiercely in their own land. Sometimes they were welcomed, and sometimes they were persecuted.

MALE AND FEMALE CHORUS: You dirty Jews, why do you come to take our jobs? Why do you come here, if you disapprove of our ways?

MAN FROM THE CHORUS: The Jews were the spearhead of the resistance against the empire.

JOHN: Rome is the new Babylon, and this empire, like the other, will be put to an end by the hand of God!

WOMAN FROM THE CHORUS: Joshua's disciples also went abroad to spread the gospel.

JOHN: I, John, went to the Greek city of Ephesus, with Mary, because Joshua had asked us to take care of each other.

WOMAN: Ephesus, the city of the Mother Goddess and the craddle of the science of evolution, became the first capital of Chritianity.

[Helena (a Greek grandmother) and her two grandchildren Lydia and Ernest join John, and all four enter Miriam's house in Ephesus. Miriam is now Mary, an elderly woman for whom the years have transformed her pain into wisdom.]

ALL FOUR: [simultaneous but not at unison] Ave Mary/Hail Mary.

MOTHER MARY: Ave Helena. Welcome, children. How was your gospel received, John?

HELENA: It was magnificent. I took the children to hear it. I hope you don't mind I brought them along. They love to hear your stories.

MOTHER MARY: Certainly not. They are welcome in my home, just as you made us welcome in your city.

JOHN: We feel welcome among you. Here I learn much. I am taken with the most excellent your philosopher, Heraclitus, who long time ago taught that God is a child, growing, and the world is a river, flowing.

HELENA: Yes, I noticed that you began teaching the gospel by speaking of the Logos described by Heraclitus...

JOHN: In the beginning was the Logos, and the Logos was with God, and the Logos was God.*

MARY: I know that Logos means word in Greek, but what does it really mean?

JOHN: Logos means science, as in physio-logy, the study of nature, and psycho-logy, the science of soul.*

MARY: Oh, yes. You do well, John, in learning science. The book of nature is also a revelation of the Word of God.* But it is so strange for me to hear you and the others talk about us.. and it is not us. We no longer are Joshua and Miriam, but two cosmic characters, Jesus and Mary. They all philosophize here, mixing Jesus' teaching with Greek doctrines. Sometimes, I fear, they change what He said.. Some who did not even know Him set themselves up as His apostles, and wish to control how we live ... *

LYDIA: [bored, pulling Ernest's sleeve] Let's play. I was bored enough at the synagogue. [turning to Helena, as her own words reminded her of a previous decision] I don't want to go back to the synagogue.

ERNEST: [supporting Lydia assertively]: It is not good for Greeks to enter a synagogue.

MOTHER MARY: [piqued] Why not? I was glad you went. Jesus loved all persons, regardless of nationality.

LYDIA: [assertive, to Mary] John does not think so.

MOTHER MARY: ?

ERNEST: [to Mary] John told us that only Jews will be saved the day of the last judgement.* [to John, looking for a friendly fight] Will God send me to hell?

MARY: [reassuringly] No, my child.

LYDIA: [pugnaciously, now that she knows she has the upper hand] John said that only Jewish men will be saved. [Ernest makes faces at Lydia] What about girls? What about me? [to John] I thought you were my friend. [making faces at Ernest] Boys are no better than girls...

JOHN: [uncomfortable] Of course I did not mean..

HELEN: I heard you saying that God will save only virgin men.

LYDIA: What does virgin mean?

MARY: [to John] Virgin men! Are we to have no children?!

HELENA: Sometimes men act like youngsters who cannot accept that their mother conceived them in love.[to the children] John is single; don't pay too much attention to John in these matters...

ERNEST: John is not the only one who speaks against love, grandma. They also read the letter of another man who advised men not to touch women.

JOHN: Yes, Paul advises men against marriage, but he says that if they cannot exert self-control, let them marry.

LYDIA: [pugnaciously] My mother told me not to let men touch me. And she wants me to get married. Is she bad?

MARY: Oh no! People should marry! How else would we have children? My Son celebrated marriage.. [nostalgic] I remember what a good time we had at the wedding in Cana... [to Helena] There are many things I do not understand.. It is all Greek philosophy to me. It has nothing to do with Jesus.. The kingdom of God is not the renunciation of the flesh, but the incarnation of the spirit. That is why Jesus spoke of reincarnation..

HELENA: These poor men don't know that in the innocent ecstasy of love we can experience a spark of the divine..* They separate flesh and spirit. Because they see the debauchery of the Romans, they renounce their sex. Ascetism has become popular among us since our civilization entered into decadence.. *

LYDIA: [insistently] But if I get married, it would be no good. The letter also said: Wives submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord.

ERNEST: And he says that the workers should obey their masters.

JOHN: Here I do not follow Paul. Jesus wanted the freedom of women and of workers.

MARY: Freedom for all, that is the only way to live in harmony.

LYDIA: [emphatically, grabbing Helena's arm to get her full attention] Grandma, I do not want to be a Christian. I don't have to, if I don't want, do I? I like it much better with the old religion, where women were also Goddesses.

ERNEST: I love my mom, and grandma Helena, and you too, Mother Mary. I want God to be a mother too.

The Goddess (sculpture by Calabrone, Brazil).

Diosa (escultura de Calabrone, Brasil).

HELENA: [explaining to Mary] You must understand them, and forgive them, Mother Mary. Ephesus is the city of the Mother Goddess.* In Her temple, Heraclitus left his book.* [becoming sad] Now his book is lost, and Her Temple is in ruins. The Greeks are forgetting Her... They have forgotten so much that they now call Her the Virgin, She who is the Mother...

MARY: Like the Christians who are forgetting that Rooach, the Holy Spirit, is a woman.

ERNEST: [argumentatively] Besides, the history they tell at the synagogue is not true. They say that God created the world four thousand years ago, but in Egypt, there were men thousands of years before.

HELENA: In this, he is right, Mother Mary.

ERNEST: [pedantically] And what about the creation in

seven days? In the textbook my teacher gave me,* it says that the creation still goes on. [as Ernest talks, John takes out a parchment]

JOHN: [looking at the parchment] It is a wonderful book written by an Italian physician, Empedocles. It says that the world, the life, the soul all is like a fire full of energy. And everything comes in twos: two logs are needed to make a fire, a woman and a man create children, and the balance of opposite forces of Attraction and Repulsion to erect buildings and the make things from stars to our own bodies and our own souls. Creating never stops. *

MARY: I would like you to read it to me.

JOHN: [reading from the parchment]

Just as painters, when they decorate offerings

take the many-colored pigments in their hands, *

and, harmoniously mixing them, some more some less,

make from them shapes resembling all things,

creating trees and men and women

and beast and birds and fish that live in the sea

and even Gods, long-lived and highest in honor:

So let not deceit persuade your mind that there is any other source

for the countless mortal things we see.

"I will tell you a two-fold story. At one time they grew to be alone

from being many, and at another they grew apart again to be many from being one-

fire and water and earth and the endless height of air,

and cursed Strife apart from them, balanced in every way,

and Love among them, equal in length and breath.

Her you must regard with your mind: Do not sit staring with your eyes.

She is thought to be innate also in the limbs of mortals,

by whom they think thoughts of love and perform deeds of union,

calling her Joy by name, and the Goddess of Love."

[John gives the parchment to Mary, who keeps it in her hands]

MARY: It is a very beautiful poem. Our story of the Creation also has poetic truth. It teaches us that even God made things in steps, every day moving a little further, and beginning with the simple, light and darkness, what we see and what we do not know. Only later, from the simple emerged the complex, and from dust, man.

ERNEST: [more pedantically, but still charming] Empedocles was as famous as your son Jesus is now.* He was always surrounded by admiring crowds, asking for advice, for prophesy, for healing words to cure them from disease. People thought he could raise the dead, and expected him to create a just world. But my teacher says that he was just a physician who became a democratic leader. What about Jesus?

HELENA: Oh, forgive them, Mother Mary, they are children.. they do not know what they say ...

MARY: I understand, Helena, do not worry. My Jesus also said, (and did!), some wild things when He was a child. I think that the Creator was a child.* I had a Child who was also a God. He was not always wise, or even well behaved. Children sometimes do things that appear cruel, but they are just innocent. I think that God must still be a child because the world is still full of pain. I expect God to grow to be the Divinity of infinite love and wisdom, just as Jesus grew up. Jesus as a man had much better understanding than the child Jesus. He did not remain tied to the old traditions. He created anew. In the same manner, God will create much better things, but we need to help Him. [Helena reacts, astonished, and fearful; to Helena] I know, it surprises you. Having had one God as my own child, gives me a unusual perspective, a certain familiarity with the Spirit. [to the children] It is necessary to become an accomplice in God's creation, and to make our own soul.

HELENA: Oh! [thinking aloud] Perhaps souls may not be things we are born with. Each of us may have to make her or his own personal soul. [reaching an insight]

That may be how we gain immortality!. It makes sense. What would immortality mean to me, if my soul would not have my own individuality?

MARY: Perhaps we are to make more than just an individual soul. Perhaps we co-create the spirit of the universe. It gives meaning to my life to think that I still contribute to the creation of the Spirit of God.

JOHN: Some believe that Jesus will return, but I think that it will be the Holy Spirit. So I say in my Gospel.

HELENA: Perhaps to contribute to the creation of the Millennium of God is the only way to save your soul.*

JOHN: I will also contribute to the happiness of the universe. [to the children] Come to play.

LYDIA: Now I know you are my friend. Let's play. I shall be the Goddess, and you shall worship me. [John, Ernest and Lydia leave]

HELENA: I admire your spirit. You must have suffered so much when you lost your son, yet now you irradiate an inner peace.

MARY: I have come to an understanding, which sets me at peace, even if nothing can relieve my sadness. I think that the fire of the world creates God. God is not the creator of evil and death, but the Attractor that calls us to do good and to create life. In this manner, I can explain to myself why the world is so full with evil and suffering. Believing that we all, women and men, animals and stars, contribute to God's creation, I find meaning in my life, in my Son's life.. and death.*

CHORUS: God is not a Supreme Being, never changing. God is a Supreme Becoming, always growing. [one voice at a time]

-Creation was not a single act. Creation is an ongoing process, that reaches infinity of time.

-The universe evolves from particles to atoms to molecules to plants to animals, and from animals to humans, who have a spirit, not only flesh.

-How can universal evolution stop with man?

-Where does this rising process go?

-To God! To the Attractor! *

-As the earth attracts the apple, that by falling becomes a tree. The earth and the tree both attract the apple. Inthis manner, the universe creates its own spirit, who we call God. [pause].

ENTIRE CHORUS: [at unison, astonished] If we are part of the creation, are we part of the creation of God?

MARY: Yes, this is what I have come to think, perhaps because I am the Mother of Jesus. If I could be His mother, I think that others can also co-create God. *

CHORUS:

-Creating keeps alive in ourselves the Spirit of God, the Creator. -Creating God is a collective enterprise.

-God is not the creator of evil, but the Spirit that overcomes it. Conceiving God as the final creation of our struggles answers the paradoxes of evil, the quest for meaning, the contradictions with science, and the conflict of beliefs.

HELENA: You are becoming philosophical, like our men..

MARY: At my age, what else can I do? I am too old to be walking the roads to spread the gospel, but I am young enough to become a philosopher. I always wanted to learn. My Jesus also liked to study. He was not a mystic. He was an intellectual, a man of books and of reasoning.

MALE CHORUS:

-This is too much philosophy, particularly for a woman.

-Women must cook, clean and wash for their men.

-Philosophy does not become you.

-Philosophy is the enemy of religion.

WOMAN: You have always been the same, Mary. You can never agree..

CHILDREN'S CHORUS: [walks through the main scenario, chanting in sing-song:]

Old Mary, red Mary,

rebel and contrary,

can't you think like all of us?

[sudden stop of music and movement]

Guess not.. Guess not!

You're the Mother of God..

MALE CHORUS: How shall we reconcile these ideas with our traditions?

MARY: We shall keep our traditions, because they express our love for our parents, but we shall not be afraid to think anew. When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a woman, I put away childish things. And what we think today is also child's belief, because how can we, with our simple minds, understand God? Only those who lack education, believe that they are not ignorant.

HELENA: I'm afraid this vision of God as a growing child is only for the strong. I need also a Mother and a Father in God. I need a God who makes miracles. I need a miracle for me. I need .. my son, who has disappeared years ago, kidnapped by the police of the emperor. I am Christian because I want resurrection for my son. Please ask your Son for this miracle!

MARY: [sad] I wish to have the power to give him to you.. I'll do what I can do now: I will pray. [consoling] God will hear. The universe is not empty. God, I am sure, is not just a child. God must also be a Father... [reflecting, to herself] Perhaps God is Father and Child, Man and Woman, Creator and Attractor, a union of opposites, as two logs make fire...

MAN: [with angry, reproving, and dominant voice] What do you teach, woman? Keep your place.

MARY: [getting up, assertive] I am taking mine. I am writing my gospel.

Mary announces the Third Testament

MARY: My son did not write His message. Perhaps He thought that only the spirit matters, whereas words may actually confuse people who take things literally. How could one person write the Word of God for all times, and all places? It is up to us, to all of us, to write it, once and again, in a manner appropriate for each time and each land. [epic, using the parchment as an extension of her arm]: My gospel is for a time to come. [narrating to the children who have approached to listen] The first men made God in the image of Mother, because her womb, her breast, her love make our first world. *

MALE CHORUS: In her womb we once were on with the universe and with God.

FEMALE CHORUS: The Mother Goddess will always be present. Christians will remember Her by celebrating you. Your image as the Virgin Mary will be seen by women and men, in the same places where people had adored the Mother Goddess, the Pacha Mama, the Mother Earth... *

MARY: [continuing in the same narrative tone] When father Abraham and father Moses led our people across the desert, we imagined God as a Good Father. We are no longer led by wise patriarchs, and noble kings. We are now the subjects of murderous empires and greedy lords. We need a gospel of hope because the law of God has been replaced by the decrease of the empire. [again defiant and epic] The time has come for the New Testament of the Son, who defies the lords, and remembers the Good Father.

CHORUS: Now is the time to raise the cross to denounce to the world the world that kills the Christ.

MARY: [becoming sad] Now is the time to speak of my Son's death. It is as yet no time to speak of Christ alive, and to imagine God as a child who grows, and as a Mother who awaits. [assertive] That day will come, when we will be strong and wise, when we will govern ourselves, and choose our leaders by our own will, so we can construct, there and then, the kingdom of God and its justice.

HELENA: This is Mary's testament: to create with God, as she did.

FEMALE CHORUS: The Messiah must be released from the cross!

MALE CHORUS: When the Christ was crucified, His disciples did not despair, but continued the struggle. They fought, and lost the battle, and yet Christianity succeeded in spite of their defeat. It turned out not to be what they meant, and other men have to fight for what they meant under another name.*

FEMALE CHORUS: His teachings became distorted. The women He loved and protected were put down. His proud rebellion against the empire was turned into submission to Caesar.

MARY: We must write a Third Testament. One that says that the creation has not ended, and that we have a place in it. That from our spirit the Spirit of the Universe will grow. That we can put an end to needless pain and suffering. That together we can co-create the Millennium of God. The Christ will be coming, and we shall be the Christ! [to the audience] Also you can have angel thoughts..

FEMALE CHORUS: Mary, the Mother of God is our beacon!

HELENA: [to Mary] You do bring about miracles. You awoke the Messiah. We should all reverse roles with you, and co-create with the Creator. If we bring the law into the world, there will be no need for other miracles to save my son ... Justice will be the milagro.

FEMALE CHORUS: We need also to see the Mother in God. We must write a Third Testament celebrating the Holy Mother, the Third Person of the Holy Trinity.

MALE CHORUS: For twenty centuries the Holy Mother was made to wear a veil, and we called Her Holy Spirit. Now that women are laying away their veils all over the world, it is time to proclaim again the Holy Trinity of the Egyptians and the Orientals: Father, Mother and Child.

LITTLE GIRL: God is like a family.

FEMALE CHORUS: The Holy Trinity is an image of God as a family: our Father, the Creator, the God-Child who will be the Messiah of the universe, and the Attractive Mother, the Holy Spirit who the Hebrews called Rooach and the Mexican humanist called Mary.*

MALE CHORUS: We shall create the Millennium of Mary, a world at the service of persons, not profit or power.

MALE AND FEMALE CHORUS: Women and men, we shall co-create the Messiah in the multiple faces of our children.

HELENA: Who said that our covenant with God has all been written? Who has proclaimed the end of history?* All these poor starving people have no future because history has ended?

The Chorus (sculpture by Mimi Singer).

Coro (scultura de Mimí Singer).

[Starts the variation of the Heroic Polonaiese starts here, and continues as background music throughout the following scene.]

ADULT CHORUS: [marching, displaying the flags of all the American nations, or whatever belongs to the place and time of the representation; at the end of the recitative, they climb choreographically, the higher stage]

History has not ended [recitative]:

Do not believe the last words were written,

and the age of miracles has come to an end.

Do not believe the vital fire was a thirst that has been quenched.

Do not believe the music of the stars has been muted.

Perhaps nobody listens to the voice

that speaks in the high mountains,

and in the bottom of the seas;

in the throat of the winds

and the bottom of the soul.

Perhaps there are no prophets,

but there