rejoice, o virgin theotokos...

Today, in Western Christianity, is the Feast of the Assumption of Mary into Heaven, and in the Eastern Church, the Dormition of the Theotokos (Mother of God) is celebrated. In my tradition, the so-called realm of rational Reformed Christianity, such feasts are either ignored completely or else ridiculed as ignorant superstition. Such is the legacy of what I continue to consider to be the adolescent arrogance of the Reformation. To be sure, significant changes to the medieval church were in order, but so many spiritual babies and traditions were thrown out in the fury of dumping the bath waters of institutional change - and the whole realm of quiet contemplation, mysticism, and the practices of 3,000 years tossed into the dustbin of history - that the collective spiritual wisdom of the West was distorted for millennia in ways that still plague us today. (Icon by Gertrude Nelson)

 

Carl Jung, however, presciently recognized that the "corporeal assumption of Mary (into the heavens was) the most significant Christian religious event since the Reformation. If the Assumption means anything, he wrote, it means “the integration of the female principle into the Christian conception of the Godhead." Before the Blessed Virgin was officially recognized as a part of the Creator's commitment to sacred balance, she was honored in folk tradition for generations throughout East and West: think of Lourdes, Guadalupe, Fatima, the Black Madonnas, and even the unity of male and female celebrated by Jesus and St. Maryi Magdalene. Christine Valters Paintner goes on to note that:

For the Christian church to teach that the feminine principle as embodied by Mary was taken fully into heaven breaks open the old patriarchal structures and male-dominated systems. Mary’s Assumption not only infuses the heavenly realm with the feminine, but because she is assumed both body and soul, it also becomes a marriage between heaven and earth as in the incarnation. The physical, earthly principle is integrated into the ethereal and spiritual.

Gertrude Nelson amplifies this blessing saying: "When Gaea was honored as the primal Mother Earth goddess, the fertile fields, the grains, the fruits were gathered in her honor. We EVOLVED out of the goddess to the Mother of God (Theotokos) and the mother of us all who is, in fact, that HUMAN person, Mary!"

(Now) she is not goddess but one better: the bearer, as a human like ourselves, of our very Redeemer. Today, as the earth is bursting with flowers and produce, we might gather blooming grasses (remembering wheat?) and bring them to her image in honor of her place as the one who brings Earth to Heaven in this feast of her dormition (Eastern Church) or Assumption (Western Church.) In parts of Europe, wild herbs are gathered, brought to church for a special blessing, and brought home again to be placed in little bundles over the doorways of home, barn and shed.

What a joy, therefore, to celebrate our granddaughter Anna's 9th birthday today as we feast and sojourn in Montreal. She incarnates the blessings of the sacred feminine in countless ways. She fills my heart with joy as I see her mature. And she offers my soul a measure of hope, knowing that, God willing, she will continue to bring her unique charism to birth wherever she goes. God has blessed us with Anna.