Message given at Durham Friends Meeting, January 4, 2026

The end of the myth – the end of a storyline

I sit in my little comfy chair looking out over the field of snow onto the frozen tidal river. I wonder how we’ve all survived. How we’ve managed to keep our humanity in tact during this past year’s constant assault on our sense of justice, equilibrium, and plain old morality.

I know I have done my fair share of crying from frustration and sadness. My gut is constantly inflamed, roiling with swallowed anger. My sleep regularly interrupted with unsettling dreams tinged with cruelty.

I do contribute to lessen the suffering through money and time but I wonder how much my nervous system can take before my health really takes a dive.

This is the story line in which we are currently living, especially as Quakers, members of the Society of Friends, with a history of pacifism and abolition of slavery. Love thy neighbor, no exceptions, our banner proclaims. I believe this in my core being.

2025 has shown us what I believe to be the pinnacle of hubris and cruelty by our current leadership. But in many respects, it’s the same old story. A repetition of humanity’s pattern of suppression, violence and power grabbing.

These were the conditions under which Mary of Nazareth bore her first son, Jesus.  I don’t pretend to know or understand the complexities of the numerous struggles for power there and in those times, but I do know it was brutal. Crucifixions by the reigning Roman Empire happened frequently and publicly as a warning to the Jews to stay in line.  

And out of this struggle the “Jesus Movement” emerged. A movement professing loving one’s neighbor, no exceptions, rose up, led by a young carpenter, Jesus of Nazareth. I can speak of this to you today only because I just finished a book about the “Jesus Movement” written by a dedicated historian. A professor of religious studies who has written many books about the birth and rise of Christianity in the ancient world. And he participated in a number of archaeological digs in Galilee, produced films and documentaries about those years of strife and the movement proclaiming that peace and love were the way of God.

I’m not suggesting that this will happen here and now but I do suggest that this story gives me hope that humanity can rise above the despair and direness of the oppression and move us into a place of peace and relative tranquility.

But what of this story? The story whose beginning we just celebrated on Christmas Day – the story of a young woman, a virgin we’re told, who with her betrothed must find refuge in a manger for her to give birth to the child that will be humanity’s savior, a gift from God, in fact, the son of God.

The book I just finished is called The Lost Mary by James D. Tabor. He spent ten years researching Jesus’s mother, having felt confounded by her near erasure from the sacred texts after she gives birth. Only to show up again 30 years layer at the foot of the cross at elder son’s crucifixion. Who was this woman, Professor Tabor wondered, really, who was Jesus’s mother?

From his research into the woman who gave birth to Jesus, we find out that Mary was not from Nazareth but from the capitol of Galilee, Sepphoris, some short kilometers south of the town of Nazareth. And that she was born into a family of means, with a royal lineage, traced from the Kingdom of David, as well as a priestly lineage – from Aaron, Israel’s first priest. With this information in mind, it is unlikely that she gave birth to Jesus in a manger or barn. Moreover, there is evidence to suggest that Jesus was the oldest of 8 children that Mary bore and raised. James being the second child who took over the “Jesus Movement” after Jesus’s crucifixion.

This makes sense to me. And I can imagine it and relate to it. Mary, the head of a bustling household, busy mothering her brood. Ensuring her children’s nurturing and education. That is what a mother looks like to me, and has throughout millenia.

Professor Tabor writes about Mary’s erasure from the human condition by virtue of the story line we’ve been given of not just the immaculate conception but also that she remained a virgin even after the birth of Jesus. He speculates that the powers that be in the early Christian movement had no use for Mary once she had given birth to the Savior and therefore relegated her to a place unattainable by mortal women.

Despite feeling the truth in this new version of the story of Mary and Jesus, I still believe in the holiness of Jesus, not only his message of peace and love, but his healing abilities. And like many Quakers, I’ve had my own lived experience with Jesus. His presence has come to me in times of great hurt and sorrow bringing light and hope.

But what of this erasure of Mary, the mother of eight? What about the version we’ve been fed that has served to continue the subjugation of both women and men. Because we mustn’t forget the damage done to men by the story of the Virgin Mary. They have also suffered by the binary depiction of women. Good or bad; virgin or whore, don’t mess with any in between possibilities.

The myth of Mary, now dashed, validates the misgivings I had around this story. I just plain didn’t buy it.  And that made me uneasy, I was trying to wear the mantle of Christianity but without saying the word “virgin” associated with Jesus’s mother. I couldn’t logically understand what being a virgin had anything to do with anything. Of course, I know that this storyline is directly linked to subjugation of women.

And this is where I take up the theme of 2026 and new beginnings.

We have been lied to by a multitude of people and entities, over centuries. But this past year has felt, to me, particularly insulting and devastating – mostly because of the immoral and cruel actions by our leadership that are in plain view. I know that I can no longer pretend that our system works towards justice and egalitarianism.

So where is the hope for 2026? The hope lies in the truth and the truth of the corruption in our country and the world at large is undeniable. But once we have shed our naivete we can move towards a more responsible vision of a structure that benefits all of us. A vision that allows us to love our neighbor, no exceptions. 2025 has shown us, in no uncertain terms, the devastation caused by the unequal distribution of power and money.

As we dismantle myths, we dismantle entrenched ideas of how to operate which can bring a fresh and new perspective around potentiality.  We strip away the untruths to uncover the truths about ourselves. We have long obscured our capacity to love, our yearning for peace and inclusivity, with individualism and ego focused goals.

So armed with the truth we can move toward revision.

Because I did not buy into the myth of the Virgin Mary I had to find my way forward as a woman outside of this construct. I had to try out new ways of thinking and new ways of acting. This required a deep dive into my core being as a human and all the complexities involved in my humanness.

I had to take a deep dive into what I believed about myself and my capabilities, my innate talents and what I could learn and cultivate. I had to throw out myths and belief systems that no longer served me. I had to ask the questions: How should I treat myself and how should I treat others, how should I treat where I live and the land on which I live? How would I earn a living and what would I spend my money on? Who would I allow into my life? What would I watch and read and eat? 

As an individual human, I am a microcosm of our country. And I believe truly that as the dust settles around the destruction of the governing systems these are the questions we must ask ourselves and others.

How do we want to revise how we look at our place on this earth.  This is a question for all of us as we move forward.

I, of course have no answers. Yet that does not diminish my hope for our future. If the Jesus movement could rise up out of the death and destruction wreaked by the Roman Empire, a ground swell of love and peace could move us all in the direction of self reflection and transformation on an individual level to then be transposed at the national and international level.

But I come back to the ground level, the level of mothers and families and children.

And I would point to Mother Mary, who kept her children safe during the Roman rampage and supported her son Jesus as he led a movement that proclaimed that love and peace were holy messages, that the kingdom of God could be found in each of our hearts and here on earth.

In this message I do not claim to give you answers but I do claim to give you a sense of solidarity in the struggle to revision and rework. The solidarity born of our shared humanity to make this place, this gift from God, a better place.

Leslie Manning’s message at Durham Friends Meeting on December 7, 2025 concluded with this poem by Brother David Steindl-Rast:

May You Grow Still     by Brother David Steindl-Rast


May you grow still enough to hear the small noises Earth makes in preparing for the long sleep of winter, so that you yourself may grow calm and grounded deep within.


May you grow still enough to hear the trickling of water seeping into the ground, so that your soul may be softened and healed, and guided in its flow.


May you grow still enough to hear the splintering of starlight in the winter sky and the roar at Earth’s fiery core.


May you grow still enough to hear the stir of a single snowflake in the air, so that your inner silence may turn into hushed expectation.