Mary and Martha: What’s the Better Part?
When I taught high school girls, we routinely had a conversation with seniors about Mary and Martha, focusing on the story in which Jesus comes to visit their home and Martha is a busy-bee host, intent on making sure everything’s ready for the party, while Mary is content to sit at his knee and listen to him speak.
Martha gets annoyed and basically asks Jesus to scold Mary for being lazy and not helping, but instead Jesus chides Martha, telling her that Mary has chosen “the better part.”
It’s a lesson on the importance of being fully present to others and yourself, a lesson on celebrating contemplation.
We talked with our students about finding Mary moments in a Martha world. Our society encourages busyness; we celebrate it. Finding moments of mindfulness, of quiet, of appreciation can be tough. How can you set aside time to get in touch with your inner Mary when the world demands that you act like Martha? There’s deadlines, people. There’s social media feeds to catch up on, homework and work to do, spaces to clean, meetings to attend, errands to run, food to eat, and we all have to document it for Instagram or it’s like it didn’t even happen.
I’ve even caught myself documenting my Mary moments for Instagram. Sometimes writing Mary moments into my planner, though I don’t call them that, of course…