There's Something About Mary... > i.ucc

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By Ankh on Monday, May 12, 2008 :: 344 Views :: 11 Comments

On this special holiday for some of the most important women of the world, for some reason my thoughts went to Jesus' mother, Mary. It is certainly the case that she is not talked about much among most Protestant circles. I would in fact daresay that us Protestants got issues with Mary! At least, when we try to embrace her with all the baggage the Church has traditionally put on her.

You know...the babies leaping at the sight of each other, the virgin birth, the post-birth virginity in perpetuity, Mother Mary's ascension into heaven before her death...and on and on. Perhaps most tough to swallow is the idea (a largely Catholic one, I believe) that we must pray to her and ask for her influence in our lives in similar ways to our prayers to Christ.

Well, first let me say that I bare a lot of my various traditions' (UCC and beyond) discomfort with prayers TO Mary. For me, it's not that I want to take anything away from her undoubtedly special place in God's plan. But it seems strange at best that God would elevate two people to a like status when only one paid the ultimate price of giving his life.

That said, one need only look at the world of any mother we know to know that a lot of sacrifice follows the motherly role. Even moreso for single mothers! That's not all it seems to be about, but mothers do often place certain things and people above their own welfare. Mary sure did!

And what mother could bare to see her child suffering so hideously, as Mary did, then or now?

At the risk of sounding contradictory, I think there is nevertheless a richness we can embrace around the Holy Mother's witness in life. Giving just one example: while it feels weird to pray to Mary, I do not have a problem asking her to pray with me, us, and the rest of the saints. Mary is a saint, and perhaps a bit more, given that she agreed to let God conceive in her womb. Mary's yes is, for me, the thing that makes her holy--more than all the speculation around her purity or sex life.

But enough from me. What do you think?

Dea+

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By attyjamz @ Thursday, May 22, 2008 2:29 PM

Amazingly, the minister recently touched on the Virgin Mary in a recent sermon regarding "appearances" - as in the appearance of Jesus during the 40 days following his resurrection.

As to Mary's appearance he indicated that he believed she was "a typical teenager, not an attractive one and not a clean one, but one of those with a bare mid-riff." He later reminded us that he had a Master of Divinity - not sure if this was to bolster what he had said or excuse himself for having said it.

His words were in stark contrast to words I believe are incorporated into the catechism which asks how something clean and pure could have come from a vessel which was not clean and pure? Therefore, Mary must have been equally clean, pure and holy as Jesus and warrants our veneration.

While I won't go so far as to exhibit the Catholic enthusiasm for Mariology, I think Maria-phobia inhibits many churches and we should reclaim the heritage of the Virgin Mary.

By Ankh @ Friday, May 23, 2008 12:16 AM

Well said! And interesting bit about the pastor/preacher you're referring to. There's not much biblical basis for those sorts of assumptions about Mary. And much historical stuff about her is a matter of theory, as far as I know.

The whole pure/impure dualism in Christianity, especially around women's bodies, is also interesting. Likely an ancient male phobia and ignorance around understanding how women's bodies work biologically. But even in our day, many men get squeamish about issues around a woman's menstruation. Even though we Christians don't live by Jewish purity laws, sometimes the unspoken male discomfort of even talking about it feels like a vestige of that.

I know there have been countless works done on the images of the Feminine and how that has changed, been manipulated or flat-out silenced from the common life of Church. I don't know off the top of my head where to suggest an exploration begin! But I know, just from looking at the symbolism around the Egyptian cross, the ankh, that early Christianity had strong feminine-God sects that elevated Mary and/or transferred female deities into God and/or Mary. Traditional Egyptian mythology in particular is rife with this interchangeable sense of a Supreme Godhead being inextricably related to male gods, female gods, and humanity. They are all bound together and can potentially share the same fates of life, death or eternity. As I said in previous posts, it was Constantine that forced one symbol, the cross (without a feminine loop), to represent the new, unified Church.

What do you think?

By subear @ Monday, May 26, 2008 11:49 AM

. . . and that cross was the cross symbolizing the Roman sun god. Therefore bringing (hijacking?) Christianity into the Roman Empire. (If you can't beat 'em, infiltrate and dominate from the inside).

But we were talking about Mary (mother of Jesus) and the feminine aspect of the Godhead.

What about Mary the "consort" or spiritual partner of Jesus? She got defamed and discounted, as well.

Why has western culture tried to erase her? Either by neutering her as the perpetual "virgin," or calling her a "whore"?

And, what about the other women who were part of Jesus' group? They may have had a deeper (intuitional) understanding of the spiritual principles he was teaching. What is it about women that men are so afraid of? (their own inner femininity? or is it Oedipal fears?)

Okay, I know I'm talking about these characters on a mythical/psychological level, but that is where we must address them in our own spiritual development, here and now.

In Peace, Love and Understanding,
Susannah

By Ankh @ Tuesday, May 27, 2008 1:03 AM

Hey Susannah,

Good issues raised, and to be honest, with many of them I have absolutely no answers. When we talk about this stuff we're largely talking antiquity, which even the scholars say is a dubious art of extraction and excavation.

That said, let me give my two cents: I don't feel like the Christian cross as we normatively know it, ie, without the loop of an ankh, should be removed or torn out just because of what Constantine did. I feel the same way about theology and things like images of Jesus. The so-called Roman cross, like a white picture of Jesus, bears intense meaning for the people who conceived of them. White Jesus pictures, in particular, express specific cultures' desires to connect and relate to the God known in Jesus.

Likewise, the cross was a potent symbol of Romans and those first, ancient Christians. The problem, for me, comes in the political agenda where only one symbol was allowed to represent Christianity. To me, it is a human but knee-jerk reaction to want to scrap the cross and replace it with something else, rather than hold it relative to other Christian symbols that speak to the faithful.

On Mary Magdalene, well, it doesn't flip me out that Jesus may have had sexual relationships with someone like that Mary, but we can't prove it happened (at least, not until another Gospel pops out of the sand!). That conversation for me is therefore one of theological imagination and faith, just like the scholars digging through the Middle Eastern deserts and nations trying to discover more about our Sovereign and those early days. As a Princeton Seminary Jesus scholar remarked (paraphrasing him), "Archaeological discoveries about our faith do not destroy it, they build on it."

I will try to write about the fear factor us men sometimes carry later. That's a whole nother, long post!

By Ankh @ Tuesday, May 27, 2008 9:53 AM

Hey Susannah,

Okay, let's see. Men's fears. Well, that's another long and hard-to-answer answer, but one of my spiritual mentors reminded me recently that all human beings, regardless of their biological gender, contain both male and femaleness in them. Add to this another insight from another spiritual leader I met some time ago, a Kimmetic high priest, that part of the lifetime quest of being human is to hold a tension/balance between those gendered parts.

This same person said that, particularly for African Americans, we have thrown that out of balance especially when we "embraced" Constantine's Christianity. In this priest's conclusion, this cutting off of ourselves from our collective and divine feminine aspect is the root of much neurosis and social dysfunction. The question for us, then, is how do we reclaim that and still retain our Christian faith (if we're Christian).

With all that in mind, Susannah, I would say that men fear the feminine because we don't know or understand it apart from looking at women. There is little reference point, I think, for seeing the feminine within, if you will, to begin the process of reconciling it to the rest of our selves. I'm not sure we can get all of what it is from women either, because there may still be an aspect of male-feminine energy that is unique to how we've been created. This, and the fact that, , like all human animals, we fear what we don't understand.

I think it is a long process of embracing this, and the good news is that there are people, men included, who are taking the courage to look at this within themselves and teach others how to do so as well. I'm pretty sure God is a part of that as well, being the Ground of Being that awakens this need in people. That's probably the best we all can hope for.

Dea+

By attyjamz @ Tuesday, May 27, 2008 7:03 PM

Well, dunk me in a mickva (sp?) and ritually cleanse me of my uncleanliness. Amazingly, you can't wash away the contamination inherent in a pork roast, but though its sins be as scarlet....but, surely, its whats coming out of my mouth that makes me unclean, rather than the pork going in...

In the case of how female bodies work, I think the more one knows, the greater the hesitancy to discuss them. I would imagine the ancients noticed that new life arose in the absence of menstruation. They then concluded that the presence of menses was an indication of death? Therefore, if Christianity was re-birth, new life, etc. then it needed to be distanced away from the new life promised by various fertility cults through various carnal acts of worship with the temple prostitutes.

Of course, imagine someone who is HIV+. Suppose they are checking personal ads for potential mates and they come across an ad that says something like "clean and discreet. You be, too." The indication would be that HIV+ is unclean. For some, its a condition. For others, its a contamination.

So looking back, unlike the ancients, we know the feminine isn't a contamination, but a condition - its just the way it is. But, see how an ancient misunderstanding of the feminine gradually became tradition and ultimately, canon, which now enslaves much of Christendom. Thankfully, we can celebrate the feminine in the UCC.

By Ankh @ Tuesday, May 27, 2008 8:20 PM

Hey Attyjamz,

I think we lost each other. At least I feel lost after reading what you've said! I certainly was not intending to say anything negative about anyone being unclean.

I would also be careful about lumping "the ancients" into one category. While it is true that some, maybe even many ancient cultures feared the feminine, others did not. When I spoke, I was speaking primarily of Kimmetic (sp?), ie ancient Egyptian culture, where from what I can see there was a far more positive embrace of the feminine than I've seen elsewhere. I don't claim to speak about ancient cultures in general on this, because I know some were in fact very fearful. But it is worth noting those that were not if we in the 21st century have any interest in transforming our fears and understandings.

I'm also unsure how it's possible to have new life without blood. We've not yet mastered the science of DNA reproduction, so for now we are left with natural childbirth. I have witnessed one, when my daughter was born. There was lots of blood. In African cultures, philosophy and religion, generally, human blood does symbolize life--to the point of many rituals being transacted with some drawing of blood. My overall sense is that blood and human life and all things spiritual were intimately related in the ancient world, whether different people feared some part of it or not.

Dea+

By attyjamz @ Wednesday, May 28, 2008 2:42 PM

I'm not so sure whether its fear of the feminine or ignorance of the feminine. Regardless, the Mother of Jesus has been scrubbed clean of all her femininity whether its menstruation, carnality, an open womb - except for being an obedient handmaiden - the only feminine attribute some would approve of. In that light, Marian devotions really can be seen as a form of male dominated subjugation through worship.

I'm just making suppositions regarding how some things arose and became cultural norms. Remember, ancient peoples (should I say, 'some'?) believed that women were basically holes to be borrowed; men were the life-givers, etc. - men gave life and afterwards the women stopped bleeding until that new life was born.

From there, it isn't that far to create a religion dominated by the masculine.

By Ankh @ Wednesday, May 28, 2008 3:04 PM

It is probably both fear and ignorance, which we've both, along with others on here, pointed out.

I think the thing I am most disagreeing with and feeling a resistance to is the absolutist lumping of all ancient peoples. They didn't all see women as "holes to be borrowed." That was true for some, but not all. With this, or Marian devotion, or anything else, I think it helps to be as precise as we can be when talking about it (eg, naming specific cultural groups that you know of), so people aren't misled to develop generalizing prejudices that do more harm than good.

I think my original point in starting this thread was that it has been my experience of Mary and the Protestant Church (I've been connected to many over time) that we don't really know what to do or make of Mary, before we even get to issues of her femininity. Some of that feels like anti-Catholic sentiment, some feels like all these issues of femininity, and still some feels like just not knowing what to do with the mystery of it all.

Dea+

By subear @ Monday, June 02, 2008 2:30 PM

re: Jesus and Mary M.

note: I wrote "spiritual partners" not "sexual partners." Although, there are those who speculate about the physical nature of their relationship, the complaint I have is that her contribution to the wisdom tradition has been discounted and erased.

And even Socrates got his most wisdom teaching from his beloved woman teacher.

... but now we know what men are really afraid of. ;-) (we need some smiley faces here) LOL

In many of the ancient traditions, there was always a feminine aspect of the Godhead; (god/goddess): Both are "the One."

By subear @ Monday, June 02, 2008 2:30 PM