|
Black Madonnas
It is so appropriate today that Black Lives Matter is a movement worldwide. It is time we deal with some realities. First, our treatment of each other, and then too many think their skin is better than someone else’s skin and this is terrible.
 I am black but beautiful. Have you heard this? These words were spoken in Song of Solomon (1:5). It refers to The Holy Mother who would carry and birth the Son of God. And it confirms what I’ve always felt was true, that Holy Mary had dark Middle Eastern skin. This comment was also a call to the daughters of Jerusalem. The woman suggests “do not gaze on me because I am dark, because the sun has gazed on me.” And there is a reference to “My beloved is to me a clutter of henna blossoms (which are dark) in the garden of En-gedi. “
When I think of a Black Madonna, I can see so clearly Aretha Franklin. She was endlessly talented, caring, and could carry the lonely, the lost, the depressed, the heart-broken to a repair that only God could do.
There is an adored Black Madonna statue in Czestochowa, Texas, and in so many many holy places across this world. In Russia, Mother Moiset Earth is fertile and black; Isis, the Egyptian goddess, is a black figure, and so is Virgin de Guadalupe in Mexico. There are books and books of research about their presence and beauty. And it is appropriate, in these days of Black Lives Matter, to consider what could be better than knowing about these images of the dark-skinned Mother of God? Woman’s darkness also suggests exotic beauty and a wildness about her, though modestly controlled. As King Solomon would have only the best, this woman’s tent (meant appearance) was more beautiful compared to others. She only knew her own mother and like Ruth, she had no male relative to protect her. No uncles or sons (at that time) nor pure-bred fathers. Only God Almighty. She didn’t want to be stared at since her brothers were totally embarrassed by her darkness and sent her to work in the vineyards. I guess that was a harsh punishment in those days.
This whole country (USA) was founded by white people who were sure they were better than the next guy, particularly if he or she had a different shade of skin. That was first how Europeans rolled over the indigenous Native American Indians who owned this land and worshiped it corner to corner for the beauty of nature and animals and a God of peace and love and singing and worshiping. A mountain stream was as precious as a man-made church; a flying eagle was by far more spirit than its copy, the airplane. Trees deep rooted in the soil of this land were not for cutting down to make monster structures, disrupting the roots of what had been here since time began, and God rolled out the first seeds of nature. Also, with the religious whites came slaves, black men and women who had been sold to merchants to sail across the seas jammed pack like sardines in a tin can or beans in a chili. The horrors of their treatment, lying on on top of the other as if they were stacked boxes, and not fed decently, one wonders how they urinated and what the people who sold them had told them their future would be. The sellers were more than not their African counterparts. Did they think there would be a freedom? Wrong.
Who could doubt that the Holy Mother Mary, the Virgin who birthed our beloved Jesus, was a young girl from a Middle Eastern family, who was not “white” but dark skinned like most who lived in Israel and Jordan and Egypt and Iraq and Iran and the desert country where palm trees and giant Cedar trees thrived back in the days of Jesus birth. Sadly, the European and American pastors have tried to make out that Mary and Jesus were snow white color, a sign for them that white was pure, and of course it had no idea at all about reality. And now it has become a nightmare as abusive and horrible as the new rise of the Klu Klux Klan and other military groups thriving in unknown woods and hills and dales, a group which attempted and still does to take over the world saying white is right and deserves everything, while anyone with any color on their skin is the enemy and not of importance.
Until recently, I was unaware of the Black Madonnas - those statues all over the world which depict the Holy Mother Mary as dark skinned, which is surely more real than modern versions that are heavy on the Caucasian look. That way would appeal to those who are on their knees praying before them for help in their distraught and sad life, some pinning notes on the real doll dresses that on which the statues are adorned. She owned the color, and it is only in the spread of Mother Mary’s blessings across the world that wherever she is prayed to, honored, trusted, worshiped, holy men and women adapted her to their likings
Often the priests in churches where Black Madonnas are adored are asked “Why is she black?” and the answer has been, from a Biblical quote, “because she is.” It has nothing to do with the wood, or the candle soot, or paint or age. Colors of early Byzantine icons, for instance were the skin tone of Palestinian Jews. Many of the early icons were attributed to the Apostle Luke, who apparently traveled with the Holy Family and depicted Holy Mary with the dark skin she wore. I am black but beautiful, she said, as if imperfect but implying God loves her just like the others, if not more.
Merovians in southern France, believed Black Madonnas represented Mary Magdalene.
During the black death of the Middle Ages, Black Madonna statues often offered as hope of salvation from that disease. (Maybe that would help with Coronavirus!!) There are over 500 black madonnas worldwide, but most were sculpted in the 12th and 13th centuries out of wood. The pose has Holy Mary seated in majesty looking straight ahead and holding the Christ child sitting on her lap, also facing straight forward, so Mary becomes the throne of Jesus. Shrines connected to the Benedictines, Cistercians, or Knights Templar were influenced by St. Bernard, who initiated the cult of Mary in the Middle Ages. And in Brazil, miracles of healing and major social changes like the end of slavery in that country have been inspired by Our Lady of Aparacida, a black madonna. Also, in Brazil Nossa Senhora Aparecida is housed a black madonna with a long history of helping the oppressed. She was found in the Paraiba River in 1717 by three fishermen who had prayed to Our Lady of Immaculate Conception. The nets were immediately filed with fish as they cleaned and cloaked the statue. The first Our Lady of Czestochowa was said to have been carved from a table built by Jesus and founded by St. Helen of the Cross who was responsible for so many of the sights where Jesus stood and preached and walked, so that we too can know Him with reality.
Black Madonnas are said to have been a magnet for the underdog, or the oppressed outcast, She helps those in exile but also stands up and says ‘My voice will be heard.’ There is an order of Black Madonnas in the United States. But wherever there is a Black Madonna, we see a Dark Mother, the shadow of self, the fertile earth, the grieving Mother, survivor, or transformation of worship of women, healing through pain, and friend of the Oppressed. We can see ourselves whatever the skin color, but with respect, especially, to those darken by the sun, that holy pilgrimage through the deserts of life.
It seems always, the Black Madonna today is a socially aware group fighting against the suffering of the oppressed people. Crystal Blanton wrote: “She is the carrier of hardship inside of a harsh world, the holder of the painful lessons, and the mother of the endangered, she is the beginning of all life, and she is the seeker of true justice, she is the caregiver for the oppressor and the trainer for the oppressed. She is mother. She is black mother."
To me, she has been God’s gift to us women who fight for respect and justice so this world, God willing, will one day be a better place where color will not make any kind of difference whatsoever because it is the heart and soul God puts in us that counts.
Amen.
~ Rev
---------------------------------
audrey@audreytaylorgonzalez.com
www.audreytaylorgonzalez.com
|
