I am not a religious man, but...

I'm not religious, but a song i was listening to today got me thinking about a woman I often pass on the way to town, and the way so many Christian legislators are attacking women's rights lately. Even though this travels elsewhere, that's where it began. This is what I unpacked:

Mary

What if Mary was indeed the mother of God?

And what if she was standing on the corner

like the woman I passed today, holding the cardboard,

“Kids and I Need Food,” or the one she had last week

“Need $60 for Rent”? Why $60? Was that all it took

to rent a manger? A stable? A twenty-first century stall

lined with straw? How much more did she need for the food?

No, she wasn’t pregnant. But what if that meant

She was already born, an infant in swaddling clothes,

hungry and alone in the bushes behind mother Mary, 

who tucked her out-of-sight for fear of DSHS or worse?

What would happen if the state took away the Child of God

from her loving mother, and put her in the foster system?

What kind of God would that child grow up to be?

And where would that leave us? I wish I could say

I rolled down my window and handed her a dollar.

Or sixty. But I didn’t. I was in a rush to get to the store

before it got too crowded. Too embarrassed to look

another Mother of God in the eye, I pretended to be more

of a conscientious driver than I am, and checked the traffic

hard behind her before pushing the pedal down,

speeding away, echoes of a crying child ebbing behind me.