Julian of Norwich brought to consciousness that “God is good and all will be well.” Such trust is easier to understand with an image, but the usual image, God the benevolent Father,
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has lost its meaning in a world dominated by the structures of patriarchy opposed to workers' rights and to the very existence of the planet. Where do we turn?
“A great anxiety has God allowed to the sons of men until all return to the mother of the living.” Sir 40, 1
Our Lady of Guadalupe Spain was modeled on the Egyptian Goddess Isis brought to awareness in the 12th and 13th centuries of the Spanish renaissance.
The story migrated to Mexico and the Black Madonna became the Brown pregnant Madonna of the Americas.
Our Lady of Guadalupe, Mexico
Our Lady of Guadalupe immerged as a new Goddess and Creator - Mother of the Cosmic Christ – Messiah.
A feminine God was not new. The Isis story prompted other representatives of the Black Madonna in other European countries, for example Our Lady of Częstochowa in Poland.
Our Lady of Częstochowa
Such images bring up the problem of idolatry – worship of the metaphor. Our Lady of the Domes Cathedral features the golden Notre Dame de Domes which towers high next to the Papal Palace at Avignon – a center of corrupt papal imperial power.
Notre Dame-des Domes, Avignon, France
There is an obvious disconnect.
“I, the Lord, am your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt the place of slavery. You shall not have other gods besides me. You shall not carve idols for yourselves in the shape of anything in the sky above or on the earth below or in the waters beneath the earth. (First commandment – Deut. 5.)
Our Lady of Guadalupe points to Justice and Mercy but we must remember the warnings from the Bible and the writings of Maimonides, Aquinas, Luther and William James – there is an indefinable ‘more’ beyond the imagination of the beholder or artist.
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