Mary’s Breasts: On Flesh, Faith, and the Terror of Love
Reflections on a Titillating Poem by a Quaker Minister
The poem Mary’s Breasts arrived in my inbox via the Daily Quaker newsletter from theeQuaker.org. And you know, with a title like that, I had to read it. Scroll down to the poem if you would like to read it first.
I read the poem twice before I understood what stirred in me, and then it hit me. The poem felt like a more sentient version of the Hail Mary—or at least how I’ve come to understand that prayer from a mystical angle: Mary’s body as the embodiment of life itself—both womb and tomb—a revolving door ushering life — and maybe all of existence — in and out.
And Jesus?
He represents the perfect life lived in love. I suppose that would be surrender. But the more I sit with it, the more I sense a divine duality between them. Mary is love incarnate in its most primal, generative form—the source of love, the wellspring. Jesus is her creation—love given voice and agency.
If Mary is the field, Jesus is the seed that grows in it.
If she is the ocean, he is the wave.
Together, they are love and love made conscious—Mary as unconditional, generative love; Jesus as love awakened to itself, love stepping into history, taking form, choosing action—love as a discipline.
Mary holds the mystery of becoming.
Jesus becomes that mystery made visible, or shall I say made metaphor, as humans can perceive only so much in their finite form.
Jesus is heaven made flesh.
I’m a Quaker—of late, hence Jesus in the present tense.
I’ve never been Catholic. But I’ve always been drawn to the theater of Catholic ritual. There’s something dark and alluring in it—a flash of gold, a clink of old brass keys, the scent of frankincense and paraffin, a candle’s elusive flame flickering through the shadows of human history, the steady ohm of ghostly prayers caught between stone walls.
It dances too seductively close with death while claiming to offer life.
When I think of Catholicism, I think of the catacombs in Paris, the rabid fervor of the Knights Templar. I don’t associate peace with cathedrals, unless it’s the fleeting kind—a momentary refuge from the modern world, from the cacophony of deconstruction across the street, an old apartment building leveled, soon to rise out of the rubble as a 5 star hotel named Sanctum Suites — But cathedrals are also vessels of captured sorrow, of grief and suffering so old they’ve thickened the silence. A silence that sometimes gets mistaken for peace.
And though some of the brightest people I know are Catholic—or ex-Catholic—most of my personal encounters with Catholicism have taken place in hospitals. Long white corridors bathed in starched light, footsteps echoing like omens. A deacon in black robes, flapping like the wings of some dark bird. I remember one in particular: gray-faced and silent, pulling a bottle of holy water from his backpack at my father-in-law’s bedside.
It felt less like a rite and more like gothic cosplay, the backpack an unfortunate condition of needing to carry one’s laptop and a book for those times in the hospital when business is slow.
I know Catholicism, too, through history carved in stone: cathedrals, relics, saints, kings who wore their instruments of torture like jewelry.
Should I wear a guillotine around my neck?
Tell me this isn’t a blood cult.
And yet—the Hail Mary is etched into time. Whispered by grandmothers, mothers, and daughters. A 2,000-year-old spell spoken in kitchens and churches, over babies and bedsides.
Maybe it was their only hope.
A fragile golden thread of womanhood woven across generations.
I have a confession to make: I sometimes pray the rosary.
Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee…
If my mom had known this, she would have admonished me—just like she did when I wore cheap lace and a cross around my neck inspired by the other Madonna. How dare an atheist do such a thing?
It’s sacrilege!
I didn’t appreciate the irony of that back then. Why would an atheist care about sacrilege?
And why did she assume I was an atheist?
She was really talking about appropriation, but we didn’t have that language back then. Funny how the words for blasphemy change over time to meet the desires of new Gods.
But why do I still pray the rosary? Is it appropriation?
Maybe I just want to belong to something bigger than me.
Or maybe I want just a tiny bit of spiritual romance, theater.
Or maybe I want to attach myself to the ancient river of devotion that flows through all of us—and Catholicism is the main highway for that. The Route 66.
(Just don’t pick an extra six up along the way.)
And maybe—just maybe—if I join my living voice to the spirit-voices of all the women who uttered its words and worried the beads, echoing the prayer with intention and openness, our collective will might bend toward something holy.
A heaven made here on Earth.
Love-driven.
Fearless.
The poem that started all this mental meandering—Mary’s Breasts by Quaker minister and professor Paula Lippard Justice—is both unflinching and tender. It invites us to imagine Mary not as icon or doctrine, but as woman—as mother, as sacred vessel. It doesn’t shy away from the body. It leads with it.
It reminds me that our hearts, like Mary’s, must split open to receive the terrible beauty of love and grief. That we must feed the world from our own tenderness—and sometimes, from our own despair. That real love—true love—is the ultimate sacrifice of self, the final offering that ends all sin.
Mary’s Breasts
by Paula Lippard Justice, 2013
Recorded Quaker minister and professor
Imagine Mary’s breasts,
warm brown as the earth
pale gold as the moon,
the breasts of a young girl
ripe as perfect plums.
Imagine the angel who came to her – blinding!
How beneath her breasts her heart opened like a mouth
to receive the host,
how her belly nest-like
encircled the seed.
Imagine how she labored
and how they lay, wet and spent,
against each other’s skin,
how mouth and tiny hands reached for the milk taut breasts
for the sweet purpled nipple.
Imagine how in all the years that followed,
there in the pocket of her heart
she knew what was to come.
See her before the cross,
how her breast split open like the sky
and left a wound where her heart had been.
Imagine Mary’s breasts
how they are like your own.
How beneath them your heart
must open to receive the terrible gift of love,
how you must nurture the child within your own darkness
bringing forth in travail.
See how you must feed the least
with milk of kindness.
Imagine in the end
how your breast will be rent,
how love’s wound will consume you.
Thanks for reading.
The Curious Quill is where I write to think out loud—about faith, culture, and the quiet revolutions happening inside us all.
If you felt something stir, share it. Or whisper it to someone who still believes in tenderness.