It so occurs that this previous Sunday, I had the privilege of attending a wealthy seminar on the Black Madonna taught by Christena Cleveland, PhD, creator of God Is a Black Lady. And on Monday evening, Alessandra Belloni and I performed a workshop on the Black Madonna as properly.
Alessandra is the creator of the highly effective and sensible e book, Therapeutic Journeys with the Black Madonna: Chants, Music, and Sacred Practices of the Nice Goddess. I used to be honored to write down a Foreword to that e book when it got here out just a few years in the past.
Throughout her presentation, Alessandra casually remarked that the Woman of Guadalupe is the Black Madonna. Our presentation occurred on December 8, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception within the Roman Catholic Liturgical 12 months, usually thought of a particular Feast Day of the Black Madonna as properly. Particular person Feast Days additionally exist for particular person Black Madonna traditions, such because the Feast of Our Woman of Montserrat (April 27), Our Woman of Einsiedeln (July 21) or Our Woman of Czestochowa (August 22).
At present, December 12, is the Feast Day of Our Woman of Guadalupe, so beloved by many from Latin America specifically, since she appeared there to a younger indigenous teenager, ten years after the Spanish conquered his space and spoke to him in his native tongue.
All these Feast Days of the Black Madonna and Our Woman of Guadalupe are celebrations of the Divine Female, the Nice Mom, the Mom of Africa, who’s the Mom of us all, and Mary as a sensible Mom in that lineage. All bear in mind the female in various varieties, cultures, ethnicities, and manifestations.
Such a wanted Reminder at the moment in historical past, when authoritarianism and domination are exhibiting their ugly heads as soon as once more: There’s one other method to see the world than power-over. That’s the manner of “God-with-us” as an alternative of “God-over-us.” Fascism is all about God and God wanna-be’s exerting energy over us. “God-with-us” is the very which means of Emmanuel so true to the season of Christmas and Introduction.
Introduction, a preparation for a Nice Coming that’s not nearly Jesus’ birthday however in regards to the many birthdays that the Christ undergoes in all of us. I name this the “second-coming”—the start of God in all of us—how all of us give start to the Christ, the Buddha, the Picture of God. Meister Eckhart celebrates this birthing of the Christ that we result in in all our selections, together with, after all, the choices we make to withstand the allurements of patriarchal power-over in its many manifestations.
The values of the Nice Mom embrace caring for the least and most susceptible amongst us. This contrasts with the cruelty of ICE occurring in so many cities and cities in America right this moment, and with the vile rhetoric coming from excessive locations placing down folks and entire international locations (reminiscent of Somalia) which have gifted America with refugees to our shores. It contrasts with the vile put-down of the trans group as properly.
Julian of Norwich underscored how compassion is the mark of motherhood, and God and of Christ are each to be understood as moms, for the mom’s love “is surest, readiest and nearest.”
Clarissa Pinkola Estes, in her e book Untie the Robust Lady, talks movingly and all the way down to earth in regards to the Woman of Guadalupe. She observes that many conceive of contemplation as meditation in a far-away place of nice silence and sweetness, however not so Our Woman of Guadalupe.
She is known for bearing roses and grows her strongest roses within the earthly floor the place she is most wanted—amongst horns honking, ambulances careening, youngsters crying out alternatively in pleasure and in ache, all of the folks groaning and dancing and making love, the whole trochimochi, each which manner, of humanity whose singing, sounds, works, and actions are a part of the precise foundation for the harmonious cacophony
—the music of the cosmos.
She believes she seems “in occasions that aren’t calm, and in clouds of mud that aren’t notably picturesque.” She stands among the many damaged glass on the sidewalk, strolling each road, hanging out at road corners the place “possibly even God Herself ought be cautious.”*
The message is similar: Freedom, Liberation, and Equality.
*Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Untie the Robust Lady, p. 270.
Banner Picture: “Lavanderia Cultural Murals, Pilsen, Chicago.” Photograph by Richie Diesterheft on Flickr.
Queries for Contemplation
What does a Return of the Divine Female imply to you? And to our tradition and species as you see it in our occasions? How do the individuals and archetypes of the Black Madonna and Our Woman of Guadalupe converse to that return and remembrance?
Associated Readings by Matthew Fox
Julian of Norwich: Knowledge in a Time of Pandemic—And Past
Creation Spirituality: Liberating Presents for the Peoples of the Earth
“Appendix: MAGA’s Precarious Manhood vs. Genuine Masculinity” in Trump & the MAGA Motion as Anti-Christ, pp. 99-104.
A Spirituality Named Compassion: Uniting Mystical Consciousness with Social Justice
Meditations with Meister Eckhart: A Centering E-book
