Anna and Simeon

 


Just returned from a retirement party, and finding myself wistful about what I do and who I work with and all the memory that comes with that. This rumination has taught me a lesson of late: never underestimate what the power of waiting can yield in your life, in your perspective. There’s not a need to be right, or the best in the room, or accomplished in a way that takes anything away from anyone else—just a need to be who you are and give what you do to those who surround you, in the sure knowledge that in some way you have made a mark in their lives that may stand the test of time. 

The party came on the heels of reflecting on the passages of my current study for the 19th Annotation, the passage about Simeon and Anna, waiting in the temple for what had been a long time, after much experience and daily striving in their own lives, to faithfully meet the Christ-child entering in nestled in his mother’s arms. Simeon gets a worded statement, and Anna does not, but both, clearly noted by the scriptural writer, speak. 

 And it’s clear they speak from a place of joy, having waited this long to witness the entrance of this long-awaited One. 

 That they maintained the fortitude to stay, to wait, to know that their lives, which may or may not have gone as planned, had meaning. I’m especially drawn to Anna and wish I’d known what she’d said upon the entrance, what may have bubbled up to her lips upon realizing who she was looking at. In the passage she is described specifically through her lineage to the house of Asher, but more interestingly, that she’d had seven years in marriage, and then was a widow until she was 84. What a life she must have had, both conscribed as she was to the mode of culture women endured or adapted to in her time, yet being present in the temple regardless of what others thought of this. The writer chooses to make her details of experience sharper than her words, and that spoke to me in a way it hadn’t before. 

 I still wish we could hear what she said, but I can surely feel her confidence in her experience breathed into that space of encounter. Feeling grateful for that and for being heard, and hoping I can make my voice speak for especially those who have none.

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