I dreamt of Mary.....Oddly.

I awoke from a very odd dream this morning. I was looking at this man holding up a book he had written entitled “Mary, God of the Common Man”.

I thought catchy title. Bet it won't take off and then I started thinking; she should be.

I mean think about it. Here is some poor girl from a family where her father is a rabbi and there is some question about whether the mother is playing around with a couple of angel guys because after 20 years the old man hasn't delivered a single kid and is probably shooting blanks. Come Mary's 4^th birthday or so, the angel guys come back around and since she is cute and smart, they take her to the Essene school to be raised and you can bet her parents wound up paying the tuition. There were no free schools.

While she there being the perfect daughter, studying hard and probably washing floors (no mops or sponges or good soap and wax..we are talking rags and water in leaky buckets here) along comes the God Guy that runs the place and says he has decided she gets the honor of bearing his baby and none of the fun because he's not hanging around. Wow, I bet the other kids had a great time with that one taunting her. You get the idea: like mother, like daughter. They probably weren't buying the angel stuff 'so we get the best looking young girls and the best food' either from the angels.

The local Essenes aren't too keen on young pretty virgins being pregnant in their care so they marry her off to some old guy named Joseph, that she's never seen before, and he immediately takes off with whatever they paid him and doesn't show up until he finds out he needs her and the little bastard for tax purposes. She's about to pop and off they go, probably him riding the mule and her walking a respectful ten paces behind dodging mule poop, until she goes into labor and gets dropped off in a cave until the Joe man gets back from town with a midwife. He's gone so long, as he probably made a stop in the local bar, that by the time he gets back with the midwife (probably the other Mary's mother if you get my drift), this inexperienced little girl has given birth by herself, cleaned the baby up (no water), wrapped him in some rags and fallen asleep. Next thing she knows a bunch of creepy foreign guys with camels show up claiming this is the son of God, which is the story the Essenes gave her, with real practical gifts like air fresheners and they probably needed it to cover the odor of alcohol because I got five bucks they and Joe concocted this story in the bar to explain the wife of a couple of months he never slept with....and the baby. Didn't do to piss the local Essenes off if he wanted more money and business and lets not forget the tax man.

So for the next thirty or so years, she throws her heart and soul into being a good wife and remember we are talking about an Orthodox Jewish house with two sets of dishes to clean and two sets of food to cook for every meal along with those visits from the rabbi to make sure the house is clean and in order. You can bet every time there was a tiny slip up she got reminded of the 'virgin birth' and every time the little bastard slipped up it was all, “where's baby daddy when you need money for food and tuition?”

And let's talk about he who was no peach in this orchard. After wiping up poop, cleaning the little butt, scrounging food, staying up all night, and working her little ass off taking care of this baby, does she get the Jewish mother's dream of a doctor, a lawyer or even a carpenter? Heck no! She gets some layabout that hangs out with his 12 same sex friends and prostitute, eating (I saw a ham in one of those last supper paintings), drinking and claiming to turn water into wine or more likely they were too drunk to notice the cheap stuff he was passing off as wine, and pissing off the local rabbis and bankers to the point they have the Romans lock him up and execute him.

Then what happens? Do you read anything about Joe man getting him a lawyer? Oh, no, she has to provide the money for the funeral and the best she can do is a cheap cave with a big rock and then Baby Daddy shows up and steals the body claiming he's the Dad now...sure where was he at three in the morning when little son of god has colic and diarrhea? Or brings home a prostitute like he can't find a nice Jewish girl?....and declares son part of a holy trinity one of which is imaginary. The poor woman has worked all her life because this God guy rapes her to be an upstanding good Jewish wife and mother and not only does he blow the lie that this is Joe's kid but comes off the crazy uncle.

In the end what does poor Mary really get? She gets less mention in the biography her son's, probably drunken, friends write than the prostitute. When she has a book written about her, the 'priests' throw it out of the Bible because she's a woman and not good enough to have a chapter in their great holy book about the kid she raised because you know Joe wasn't hanging around the little bastard. The money for that gig probably stopped at the marriage certificate. I bet she had to save money out of the food budget to pay for school.

She gets screwed by the establishment (god), spends her whole life working her little ass off to pay for a meager life and tries to raise a good kid. What does she get? Nothing but the honor of birthing the “son of God”!

What does the kid get for spending time telling everyone to love one another: godhood. Oddly, that line didn't fly during the 60's.

And just to put the cherry on this sundae, who gets all the credit and press? Why, that would be baby daddy who claims to be God with his imaginary friend the Holy Ghost.

If she were sitting here today I think I know exactly what she would say to you. “Virgin Birth? It hurts just as much as unvirgin birth and I was in labor for nine hours. I had to walk into Bethlehem. You ever try to balance a squirming, screaming newborn and hold onto a donkey? No can do and the old bastard kept saying his arthritis was hurting him and he needed the mule. Arthritis? More like his hangover? I wash, I clean, I cook, I scrimp and save for that boy's education and what do I get? Criticism because I can't afford a nice supper and funeral. That water to wine crack was about me not having the good stuff for his hoard of drunken friends. And after all these years, who shows up playing crazy god? Huh, who?? His daddy and steals the body to do who knows what!”

Yes, she should be the god of every women who has ever given birth and had to raise a baby. She should be the god of the common man: screwed and then has to spend her life cleaning up the consequences of the establishment (god) and paying to do it; then pink slipped with a bad review for the last office party. And all she gets a couple of lines...birthed him...buried him and no credit in the final corporate report.

And you are worshiping the corporation and the CEO...real smart.