Enya and Mary

I've received a letter from a Revd T.R.Ellis of North Wales. She writes:

Dear Ms Vorderman

I note that you spent the festival of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary celebrating instead that other famous icon of the Irish, Enya.  How do you propose to explain yourself on the last day, heretic?

Love to Hnaef. We studied together. Hope his Imitation is coming along.

Kiss, kiss

T.R. Ellis (Revd Dr Mrs)

Well, Tracey. What can I say? Not to God, but to the Great British Public - a famously less forgiving judge. I mean, just look at Red or Black.

The Nativity of the BVM is a nuanced and intriguing festival. Ann holds in her hands this child who will one day hold the Universe. This precious bundle who, in just a few short years, will receive the terrifying news that God is with her and that she is blessed among women. A choice - for I am sure it was a choice - is before her. To choose the path that leads to potential shame, to pain, possibly to divorce and estrangement and ultimately, definitely, to her own form of passion that day at Golgotha - or what? To run from the will of God, to play happy families with Joseph, to bear many children - which of these two will she choose? How can so tiny a spark already such a world of potential? And what do we bring into the world - what potential, what choices make us in our own way God-bearers: those carry God into our own places? There among the pain and the joy and the shadow of death all things are played out - albeit unknowingly except for One.

And faced with that, I thought it might be safer to light a tea light and play some nice Irish New Age music. Beaker People don't like hard theology and tough decisions. They make them fall over.