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]
References:
[1] Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Untie the Strong Woman: Blessed Mother’s Immaculate Love for the Wild Soul (Boulder, CO: Sounds True, 2011), 1–3.
[2] Christena Cleveland, God Is a Black Woman (New York: HarperOne, 2022), 16–17.
Jenna Keiper, Untitled (detail), 2020, photo, New Mexico. Click here to enlarge image. God inhabits the rainbow of our being(s). We are all in God and God is represented in all of us, plant, human, animal, earth, star, light, dark.
Story from Our Community:
I saw the face of God everywhere on my return visit to my homeland, Chile, after ten years away. Any trepidation I had melted away as I soon recognized everything—sights, smells, the faces—even though I was born here more than seventy years ago. I felt embraced, cherished, connected to every encounter, and my sense of belonging deepened. I have been lost and found so many times in my life, and yet here, I feel so connected to God. This mystical land has always been my true spiritual home.
—Kathleen S.
