Icon of the nativity- Greek
See Midwife with basin lower right.

Well after reading my latest so called escapade in the shifting sands of time I thought I will say a little more about myself, SEX indeed!  Paul you shame me. I am Mary Ever Virgin(NOT)

Now that rant is out of the way I would like to tell you a different story, out of the East or Arabiic, Egypt, Copts and hops – he Ha!

I never really knew my parents, having been packed off  at 3 to join the “Pure virgins” in the Temple, from  Levites there I learnt about two older parents, desperate for a child. That mum used to pray for a child with the promise to give the child into the service of Hashem in the Temple. They say that dad was very depressed because he was the only Israelite not to have children, so he went to pray in a cave. Along comes me conceived immaculately, Bernadette Soubirou was to reveal. As I’ve just said I didn’t get to know them, nor hardly saw them again. They say mum almost apologise to Hashem for having a girl, but  He is supposed to have said something that made it right, I would be chosen.
I actually really enjoyed being a handmaid in the Temple instead of being stuck out in the Court of the women. I learned how to weave fine purple and to maintain the draperies near the Most holy Place. Of course I would have died if I had gone anywhere near the entrance. The years went by very quickly and soon the curse was upon me and I was in the grip of the moon.

They sort of auctioned us off to the widowers as wards or wives , but we must remain pure virgins forever, well soon the saga began.Me, pregnant out of Wedlock, to a dove. His name was Joseph,the man not the dove, he had been summoned to the Court of the men to win a wife by lot. A dove landed on his staff, or others say that it flowered like a Lily of the Valley,  either way I was taken to his place, betrothed.

The day the dove landed, with an angel, Jibril or something like that and told me Hashem had chosen me to bear his only begotten son who would save his people from their sins, I was too flummoxed to say no and said something like ” Let it be unto me according to thy word” Meaning God knows what I am getting myself into?

Joseph had been to Lebanon to fetch cedar for some new panels in the temple and by the time he returned it was obvious that I was heading for the stoning pit, so was this ‘ according to his word’ a quick exit from this world and the death of this son of his? I’ll hand it to Joseph that he did try to have me put away quietly for the storm to pass – divorce. Then this same Jibril cosies up to him and tells him not to be afraid to marry me because the baby I carried was to be the son of the most high – or something.

I went to visit my cousin Elizabeth who was also pregnant, she was about mums age, if mum had still been alive. She and Zachariah had also been unable to bear children until Zachariah was struck dumb in the temple because he didn’t believe the angel that said he would have a son. They always blame it on us women – they say she was barren what about his nibs?

The way the Quran tells things is more romantic and has pathos.

In fact the Quran makes very sure that I was neither maligned nor set for target practice or that there was even a hint of it.

All that guff about me giving birth and remaining intact, how stupid men are, this is more like it  “And the pains of childbirth drove me to the trunk of a date-palm. I said: “Would that I had died before this, and had been forgotten and out of sight!”” Surah 19

O and I have a whole chapter to myself in the Quran not just enter stage left or right business in the Bible popping in and out of the gospels as some afterthought.

The Quran has prettier language than the bible and my son actually had something to say for himself other than lying in straw and gurgling.

BUT that ain’t the end of it, there are so many stories written about me, that I might be suffering from D.I.D. and the things they say, I may as well laugh as cry. One of these  ,a hu, gospels, says that on our way to Bethlehem I went into labour and Joseph left me in a cave while he went off to find a Hebrew Midwife. That while I was alone, though apparently Mary Magdalene was with me, I gave birth to Jesus. I don’t know how this old crone ( midwife ) ever got it into her head that I had given birth while still intact, anyway she wanted to peer up my skirt and **** to see whether it was true. And for some odious reason I was. Then everything becomes a muddle sifting through those other myths – apparently someone came to see me who was very ill and touched my son’s foreskin and was healed. Apparently the odious crone, or was it Mary Mags used to carry it around in a casket to heal others with.(1. There were at least 12 Holy Foreskins in churches across Europe during the Middle Ages.)

Well strike me pink! The Aussie connection. (Our Lady of the Southern Cross and was it cross, I mean the Cross?) There it was, all alone doing its job of pointing south when someone hangs a Lady on it and makes it OUR.

Everytime I turn around there is a new me, Our Lady of the Southern Cross, Our lady of the Sacred Heart, Our lady this and Our lady that. Our Lady Queen of heaven – I don’t know what my step husband or the dove have to say about that one. There is only room for one Throne in heaven, that was made clear to me when those idiots unravelled the Apocalypse and found the  verses  in Chapter 12

1 A great sign appeared bin heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars; 2 and she was with child; and she cried out, being in labor and in pain to give birth. Verse 1 makes me Queen of Heaven and verse 2 is a little more honest about my laborious time in the whichever story you read.

More coming if I am not struck off.