At the end of the novel A Canticle for Leibowitz, Walter Miller presents a disturbing character named Mrs. Grales, a tomato farmer who hawks her tomatoes to the cooks at the abbey of St. Leibowitz. But Mrs. Grales is more than just a farmer; she is a freak. On the side of her neck grows a second head, and she has a dog with six legs.
Miller describes her in this way: “As for the woman, one head was as useless as the extra legs of the dog. It was a small head, a cherubic head, but it never opened its eyes. It gave no evidence of sharing in her breathing or her understanding. It lolled uselessly on one shoulder, blind, deaf, mute and only vegetatively alive. Perhaps it lacked a brain, for it showed no sign of independent consciousness or personality. Her other face had aged, grown wrinkled, but the superfluous head retained the features of infancy, although it had been toughened by the gritty wind and darkened by the desert sun.”
A few pages after introducing Mrs. Grales, Miller says this: “The conflict of Martha and Mary always recurred.”
It’s worth revisiting the story of Mary and Martha. Mary sat at the feet of Jesus, adoring him and listening to his every word. Martha, on the other hand, was trying to make dinner and was upset that Mary wasn’t helping.
38 As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. 39 She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said. 40 But Martha was distracted by all the preparations that had to be made. She came to him and asked, “Lord, don’t you care that my sister has left me to do the work by myself? Tell her to help me!”
41 “Martha, Martha,” the Lord answered, “you are worried and upset about many things, 42 but few things are needed—or indeed only one.[a] Mary has chosen what is better, and it will not be taken away from her.”
Notice that Miller says the head was useless. Indeed, in the physical realm, so it was; It had no concern for the preparations needed to care for the body. However, at the end of the story, when all has gone awry in the physical realm, the head, who we find out is named Rachel, is not only awake but offers, in a Flannery O’Connor style twist of fate, viaticum to a priest who was pinned down under rubble and who had dropped the Eucharist.
Though one seems to be doing nothing in the eyes of the world, a great depth of activity can be happening in the spiritual realm. Martha may appear to be accomplishing a lot, and Mary may seem to be doing nothing. But Martha’s meal will be gone shortly. The flowers she cut to dress the dinner table will be wilted tomorrow. The dishes will be dirty and the guests gone. Her services will be compensated by the gratitude of her guests. But Mary will have grown to know her Lord, and that will never wilt.
In life, I am so easily overcome by a sense of not doing enough. So many things need doing that I can get a panic attack just thinking about them.
But they are all distractions. Nothing matters but your relationship with God.
RL Martin 