Revising Ikons

Gari Melchers (1860-1932) who painted this “Mother and Child” did not indicate that it was THE Mother and Child, but during a seminar Thursday on the meaning of THAT Mary, I assumed with astonishment and relief that this representation revised the blue and pink, roses and halo of “Virgin Mary, Meek and Mild”. That image has been a problem for many women and probably some men during the 100 years when this became her most common representation. Even for the many non-believers who come across her here in wayside shrines there may be a shiver of recognition: doesn’t she still show us what women are supposed to be?

Meek and mild…

And so I was surprised and then relieved to see the serious modern face of this Mother, holding up a very recognizable, ordinary baby who was certainly keeping her up at night.

This pertains to the question our leader, one of the two Episcopalian ordained ministers I’ve had the good fortune to meet, raised: if according to scripture, Mary’s baby was divine and human, born of a mother who was divine and human, what conclusion should we draw about our own humanity?

That we, too, are divine—and capable of producing something divine, either from our wombs or in an abstract form?

That was a startling thought to yesterday’s audience of middle-aged white women, raised at a time when to hold onto any form of self-belief put us in conflict with a culture that saw all women as partaking of the evil of Eve: seductresses, disrupters of the peace, unworthy of remaining in the Garden. Would poor Adam have been able to stay if she had not been with him?

Now as we move into a contentious election where the odds for women are higher than they have been in fifty years—and the odds for peace—our confidence as women voters is crucial. Are we strong enough in ourselves to elect strong women? There are many of them running for office in all the states. Or will our old propensity for self-betrayal lead us to betray other women?

Women who lead are never meek and mild.

Here in New Mexico where we are led by an extraordinary Democratic governor, Michelle Luhan—the election so important nationally that both the Vice-President and the President are visiting—we women are faced most urgently with this question. All kinds of scandalous accusations, some laid to rest four years ago but dug up now by a desperate Republican challenger whose only credential is a pretty face seen by many on television when he recites the weather report, we must remember when we vote that too often in this country, any man running for office is preferred to any woman. And by many women voters. We’ve seen the disastrous results again and again, both regionally and nationally.

Our basic right to bodily autonomy is at stake. I also feel there’s a chance that the stampede toward war with Russia might be slowed at least slightly if we have a preponderance of women in positions of power.

We tend to know the cost of war.

At this same seminar, we were given the verses of an Appalachian song I heard Joan Baez sing in 1961, the Kentucky version she probably learned from Jean Ritchie. The song is ancient, based on the fifth-century Gospel of Pseudo-Matthew (so called)I and was sung in the N-Town Plays in the fifteen century. It tells the story of how Mary asked Joseph to pick some cherries “for I am with child.”

“Then Joseph flew in anger, in anger flew he,
Let the father of the baby gather cherries for thee…
“Then up spoke baby Jesus from in Mary’s womb,
Bow down, thou tallest cherry, that my mother may have some…”

And the cherry tree bows until it touches Mary’s hand. This may be the only time the Holy Spirit was asked to take responsibility for what he/she/it had co-created. A lesson for today.

In Women, Religion Virgin Mary