Thursday, December 12, 2024
Most Christians falsely assumed that God is strictly masculine even though there are numerous descriptions of a mothering, feminine God throughout the Bible. In spite of patriarchy’s attempt to marginalize women, the feminine incarnation continues to appear in innumerable ways.
—Richard Rohr, Daily Meditation, June 9, 2019
Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estés writes of enduring comfort found through images of the Divine Mother:
In a world that is often heart-stopping in horror and breath-taking in beauty … the Blessed Mother is so unspeakably gracious with brilliant inspirations…. There is such blessed reason to seek out and remain near this great teaching force known worldwide as Our Lady, La Nuestra Señora, and most especially called with loyalty and love, Our Mother, Our Holy Mother. Our very own.
She is known by many names and many images, and has appeared in different epochs of time, to people across the world, in exactly the shapes and images the soul would most readily understand her, apprehend her, be able to embrace her and be embraced by her.
She wears a thousand names, thousands of skin tones, thousands of costumes to represent her being patroness of deserts, mountains, stars, streams, and oceans. If there are more than six billion people on earth, then thereby she comes to us in literally billions of images. Yet at her center is only one great Immaculate Heart….
In Blessed Mother’s view, all are lovable; all souls are accepted, all carry a sweetness of heart, are beautiful to the eyes; worthy of consciousness, of being inspired, being helped, being comforted and protected—even if other mere humans believe foolishly or blindly to the contrary. [1]
Public theologian Christena Cleveland shares how she discovered a radically new image for God.
My whole life, I had been indoctrinated into American society’s constrictive worship of a white male God; my spiritual imagination didn’t know how to venture beyond the Protestant white male God that colonized and subdued America’s spiritual imagination….
In early 2017, I mustered all of the desperate courage I could find and took one single, trembling step away from all I had known and all I had been taught to ask…. Just beyond the Protestantism of my origins and from the mystical depths of rogue Catholicism, rose the Black Madonna, a Black female image of the divine who is often claimed by Catholicism but draws seekers of all religions and spiritualities.
Within seconds of viewing photos of Black Madonnas, my gut shifted from terror to hope…. My soul immediately recognized that these photos and drawings of ancient Black Madonnas declared a truth about my own sacredness and gave birth to a new understanding of God.
I call Her the Sacred Black Feminine. She is the God who is with and for Black women because She is a Black woman. She is the God who definitively declares that Black women—who exist below Black men and white women at the bottom of the white male God’s social pecking order—not only matter but are sacred. And, in doing so, She declares that all living beings are sacred. [2]
| Dec 12, 2024; Skye Jethani The Idol of Tradition: Consider the Turkey |
Dec 12, 2024 The Idol of Tradition: Consider the Turkey Author Nassim Taleb has written in numerous books about what psychologists call the “narrative fallacy.” It refers to the way our minds make cause-and-effect connections where none actually exist, and how we foolishly make predictions about the future based on patterns we’ve observed in the past. To illustrate the problem, Taleb uses the following story: “Consider a turkey that is fed every day. Every single feeding will firm up the bird’s belief that it is the general rule of life to be fed every day by friendly members of the human race ‘looking out for its best interests.’ On the afternoon of the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, something unexpected will happen to the turkey. It will incur a revision of belief.” Taleb’s point is important—there is no guarantee that a consistent pattern from the past will continue uninterrupted into the future. This way of thinking, however, is very common, especially among religious believers. Using Scripture or experience, we deduce how God has acted in the past and then build a theological tradition that insists he will always act in the same manner going forward. This elevation of religious tradition, like Taleb’s turkey, makes a fatal error. Rather than seeing God as a person free to act as he pleases—including unpredictably—it reduces God to a knowable formula; a kind of natural force like gravity or magnetism whose actions can be measured and predictably foreseen. You know a religious community has slipped into the idolatry of tradition when they often use absolutist language like, “God only . . .,” “God never . . .,” “God must . . .,” and “God can’t . . .” Exchanging the living God for the predictability of tradition is an error the religious leaders of ancient Israel made. Based on their examination of how God had acted in the past, they came to definitive conclusions about his nature that blinded them to his work and presence among them. They were confident the Messiah would never come from a place as backward as Galilee, and he wouldn’t associate with tax collectors and sinners. He would certainly vanquish the Roman idolaters from Judaea, and he would NEVER be humiliated by dying on a cross. Like Taleb’s turkey, the religious leaders found comfort in the certainty of their tradition, but their comfort was shattered by the unexpected actions of an uncontainable God. DAILY SCRIPTURE Mark 7:1–13 Romans 11:33–36 WEEKLY PRAYER A Gaelic prayer God guide me with your wisdom, God chastise me with your justice, God help me with your mercy, God protect me with your strength, God shield me with your shade, God fill me with your grace, For the sake of your anointed Son. Amen. |
