Stereoscopy ~ The "Martha and Mary" of Faith

When I was a child, my father invited the neighborhood children over to our house.  We gathered around the computer in the basement and watched with wide-eyed anticipation as my father picked up a black plastic bucket.  He moved along the mass of kids, his eyes twinkled with mirth, and we each reached in and pulled out our treasure.  I inspected mine curiously—a pair of paper glasses, blue on one side and red on the other.  I tried them on.

“Nothing’s happening!” I squeaked.

“Just wait.” My dad said.

When at last we all had our glasses as firmly in place as possible, a picture appeared on the screen and the slide show began.

All at once we were transported to a faraway world… a world of swirling dust and jagged rocks, of icy canyons and towering spires.  I reached out with my hands; the Martian landscape seemed to be coming straight at me!  Yet, when I took my glasses off, a tangled mass of grey blobs moved across the screen amorphously.

I was utterly enchanted, and I asked my father to show me the 3D pictures of Mars again and again.  What I fancied to be a magic trick was actually a lesson in the genius engineering that went into our human brains.  A 3D image is comprised of two identical images superimposed on each other, one in red and one in blue.  This sort of image is known as an anaglyphic picture.  The 3D glasses (more accurately called ‘anaglyphic glasses’) filter the different images chromatically.  Therefore, the brain sees two different images which it merges into one to create the optical illusion of a three-dimensional picture.  The human eye operates stereoscopically under normal conditions to give us a sense of depth in our surroundings, which is why this little trick works so well.

I find it fascinating that our brain can merge two differing images if they are close enough together.  It makes me wonder if something similar can happen in the spirit.

The other day I was reading in the book of Luke, and I came upon the passage in chapter 10 where Jesus goes to visit some friends… 

“Now as they went on their way, Jesus entered a village and a woman named Martha welcomed Him into her house.  And she had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet and listened to his teaching.  But Martha was distracted with much serving.  And she went up to Him and said, “Lord, do you not care that my sister has left me to serve alone?  Tell her then to help me.”  But the Lord answered her, “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is necessary.  Mary has chosen the good portion, which will not be taken away from her.”

I used to read this passage and think that Martha was being chastised somehow for her behavior.  Yet as I read it now, I hear the gentle tone of Jesus voice as He smiles and softly says, “Martha, Martha…”. Martha was not wrong because of her service.  We are called to service.  Jesus told His disciples to wash each other’s feet.  Why then should Martha be rebuked for washing the feet of her friend as He entered her house?  I’m not sure this is what happened at all.  It seems to me that Martha is being corrected because she was distracted, not because she was serving.  She was anxious and troubled because of these distractions, and that is where the problem arose.  She had forgotten what was necessary.  And what was that one thing?  The love of Christ.

One of the ancient church mothers, a woman called Teresa of Avila, often wrote about the joining together of the Martha and the Mary in our souls.  In her work The Interior Castle, Teresa writes,

“Martha and Mary must join together in order to show hospitality to the Lord and have him always present and not host him badly by failing to give him something to eat. How would Mary, always seated at his feet, provide him with food if her sister did not help her? His food is that in every way possible we draw souls that they may be saved and praise him always” (The Interior Castle p. 192).  

In Teresa’s view, our inner ‘Martha’ represents our desire to ‘do for the Lord’ while our inner ‘Mary’ symbolizes our desire to ‘be with the Lord’.  As we mature spiritually, our Martha and Mary function together in harmony.  It’s like those two lenses, the one blue and the one red, each working together to give a fuller, richer, deeper picture.  When we learn to constantly be with the Lord, while at the same time serving Him continually, we begin to see a dimensionality to our faith. Our spirits are stereoscopic!

Lord, teach us the mystery of loving You with all our actions and all our being.  Amen.