Mary, the maiden who said, “Yes” is elevated to propriety and transcendence for good reason.  The Holy Spirit spoke to her as a vessel for God.  Frightened, awestruck, tingling with forbearance, Mary perceived the aura of God upon her who came to envelop the womb and bless the seed within it.

Does this make Mary divine?  Or without sin?  I think not.

The profundity of Luke’s tale resonates so well because Mary was one of us.  This roots the incarnation of Jesus in our humanity, renders him an infant son who cried real tears clinging to his mother and father in the wake of life’s cruel turns.  Jesus paid attention to the rabbis around him, and grew into knowledge and presence to become the creative Christ of our making.  While Mary took pride in her son, she could not at the same time become God alongside him.

It is my position that the supernatural persona we place upon the Virgin Mother of God robs her of personality and strength.  Instead, we are left with a polychrome icon who greets us in gentle perfection at the altar.  If we exalt this feminine model, we begin to see our women in the light of unattainable glory, placing them upon a pedestal that manifests itself in the virgin bride and the homecoming queen and the blond anchor on FoxNews and the fetching girl playmate next door.

No woman can become fully human attempting to sustain such a model.  See how far Marilyn fell on account of the demands we placed upon her.  Popes Pius IX and Leo XIII elevated nineteenth century mariology, purified from the original blemish of Adam’s sin, to the highest heights in spite of modern science suggesting, “If Mary had complete x & y chromosomes, from where did the male ones come?”  The Vatican has a way of circling the wagons when threatened with truth.

On the heels of a vivid dénoument from a yoga session last year, an epiphany struck Jane Moss — yoga as an interior sacred practice had become an essential respite from the cacophony of modern life.  That singular moment of introspection and inspiration now culminates in her new creation: the White Light Festival, three weeks of artful music dedicated to sacred programming at a most secular performance arts institution — Lincoln Center in New York City — where Ms. Moss serves as vice president of programming.

According to Jane Moss, the festival is trying to achieve “focus on personal interior spaces where all music starts.”  For a festival to be scheduled at all during the height of the fashionable fall season, much less a sacred one “devoted to spiritual expression and the illumination of our large interior universe,” is a bold and highly unusual move for Lincoln Center.  The “relentlessly imaginative” Moss has gathered an array of incredible artists — the Hilliard Ensemble, the Westminster Cathedral Choir, Meredith Monk, the Tallis Scholars, and other notables — for an ambitious program shaped by advising author & theologian (and GladdeningLight fave) Karen Armstrong.

All around us, there is spiritual hunger in evidence.  Some are drawn by artistic means to the secular corners toward the liminal divine.

(Note: source quotations from The New York Times)

www.lincolncenter.org/Press_Release/White_Light_Announce_PR_FINAL.pdf

www.new.lincolncenter.org/live/index.php/white-light-2010-conversations

Author Kathleen Norris appeared this past weekend at St. Philip’s Episcopal Cathedral in Atlanta.  Her books include The Cloister Walk, Amazing Grace, Dakota, and A Virgin of Bennington.  In my mind, Norris writes richly about the interior life in much the same way as my mentor Madeleine L’Engle, who passed away in 2007 (though perhaps not quite with Madeleine’s bold resolve).

Kathleen Norris shared a formative story from her days at Bennington when, while studying abroad in Paris, she ducked into Notre Dame fleeing a sudden rainstorm.  For Norris, these were agnostic years in college yet church still beckoned its quiet and safe sanctuary.  By chance as the weather continued outside, the cathedral organist began to rehearse anthems, at once surging through the massive cathedral pipes, the stone edifice of Notre Dame, and into the heart of Kathleen Norris.  The combination of Notre Dame’s magnificence, the heavenly acoustic splendor of the organ, and the beating of her own heart aligned.  As Norris put it in her talk, this was a mountaintop moment.  The veil of her non-belief began to lift.

I had a similar epiphany while studying in Europe.  My childhood had left me spiritually bankrupt and in existential despair.  Yet within the great churches and spaces of Italy, I began to experience firsthand the passions that once led renaissance artists to create.  My eyes were opened.  This wasn’t gilding the lily as I had been taught; here, God was at work in us and through us along the pathways of aesthetic praise.

Note: Psalm 107b, Posuit flumina, “the Lord changed deserts into pools of water.”  More on Kathleen Norris may be found at http://www.barclayagency.com/norris.html.