A Merry Christmas - Mary Consoles Eve II

I've written about this picture before.

I thought maybe it was a common theme in the Catholic tradition. I thought, if I Googled, I would find all kinds of stained glass windows, and paintings, and sculptures. They aren't there. There's just this, and a song by Rain For Roots. Rain for Roots doesn't acknowledge this picture as an inspiration for the song, but I have my suspicions.

This picture is so powerful. Eve stands, covered by her locks of hair. Eve, who catches the blame for all sin, ever.* In this picture, she's still clutching the apple. The serpent is still wound around her leg, dragging her back into sin. Pregnant Mary stands opposite her. Mary, herself deserving of some consolation. Mary cups Eve's face in one hand, and holds Eve's hand to her belly with the other. The serpent's head is crushed under her foot. Eve's head is still bent in shame. Mary bends her head as if inviting Eve to raise her eyes.

Even Eve, the representative of all that is wrong with the world, is not beyond Christ's redemption. He was born and he died for all sin. Even that one. Even mine. Even yours.

I wanted to know more about how this picture happened. Fortunately, there's a podcast with an interview of Sister Grace Remmington by Pat Gohn. Sister Grace comes on at about 23:00. She starts talking about the picture at about 30:52.

Sister Grace says she doesn't consider herself an artist. She just doodles, usually when she's thinking. She was thinking about the difference between Mary and Eve when she doodled this. She says, "Perhaps it was the experience of living in a fallen world that made Mary realize... our need for God."

She says that Eve, still within sin's reach, unable to let go of the apple, spoke to the human condition, too, about our "inability to let go" of our sinful habits.

The sister also notes that Mary "brings the gift of Christ, the gift of mercy, the gift of compassion." Merry Christmas.

* I fervently believe that Eve does not deserve all the blame for all the sin. She had a lot of help falling from Grace, and even if she does deserve all that blame, perhaps she should also get some credit for developing humanity's free will. But that's another blog post.

A New Pantheon

I was recently at a party where I mentioned that my paper on the three Greek works from which we read selections (the Iliad, the Odyssey, and the Aeneid - I'm seeking my B.A., if you didn't know) would actually be on how the women in these stories wield power. I didn't mention how much it irked me that in these three great works, the woman's role is really minimal, and mortal women especially are mostly portrayed as powerless pawns of their hero male family members and the gods, because, well, I didn't want to be that girl
at the party.

Little did I know, the person to whom I was speaking - a friend's husband, both of whom I had admired for other reasons - happened to have gotten his degree in feminine studies. The friend told me that her husband knew all about how women wield power. He laughed and said that what his degree was really about was how to create a society in which women are truly equal.

He mentioned the American and French schools of thought on gender equality, and said that the French school of thought - which is less popular - states that so long as women are living in a value-system created by men, the society cannot truly be objective; women will never be free from sexism, even when it's women talking about women, because they have to talk about it using the male-created terms. What women really need, he said, is their own pantheon, made up of deities that reflect women's values. (And here we see why it's not very popular. How many feminists do you know who are willing to abandon their faith to create and follow their own pantheon?)

And that got me to thinking: What's the one god that women really need? If I was going to create a pantheon for women, who would be in it? What would they look like? Do we need a healer? A fertility deity? A warrior? A beauty queen? A peace-maker? A wisdom deity? Do they have to all be women?

In Samuel Butler's translation of the Aeneid (why didn't my department head choose Fitzgerald? Maybe s/he was trying to be new and different?), Cupid, the god of love, takes on a boy's appearance so that when he greets Queen Dido and she hugs him, he can poison her to become infatuated with Aeneas. Because it's prepubescent boys that inspire love and infatuation? I don't think so.

Although, I'm not sure I'd have a love deity. Love is a property that should belong to every deity. I would have a fertility deity, but I think she'd also be the anti-fertility deity. She'd be the one you prayed to when it was month 5 of "we're trying to get pregnant" and day two of, "am I late, or did I count wrong?" and day 12 of, "okay, I planted, I watered... Now what?" and whenever you think of people facing drought or famine. Maybe she'd also be the one in charge of New Ideas and Healthy Changes. She'd be the one writers and artists and inventors prayed to.

Maybe she'd look a little like this

 What deity do you think women need?

A Search For Art

A friend had posted a picture on FaceBook. It was touching, and beautiful, and it moved me almost to tears. But it was definitely religious-themed, and so I just hit the "like" button. I don't delve into faith on FaceBook.

So, I went away and did something else.

I came back to FaceBook a while later and stared at this picture some more, studying the technique, guessing at the medium, examining why this picture tugged at me, thinking about the subjects in it, and praying about it. I couldn't not share it at this point.

I wanted it more permanently than on an un-searchable, dynamic, social-media feed. I wanted it on my wall.

I searched and searched the internet and found out that the art is crayon-and-pencil. Copyrighted by Sisters of the Mississippi Abbey. The artist is Sr. Grace Remington, OCSO (I'm not even sure what all those letters mean). I couldn't find it for sale anywhere, though I did find the Abbey, which is actually Our Lady of the Mississippi Abbey.

Medium: Crayon and Pencil, By Sr. Grace Remington, OCSO.
(c) Sisters of the Mississippi 2005
Buy it at www.monasterycandy.com

I hit the "contact us" button and Sister Grace Remington herself e-mailed me back, informing me that matted prints and cards with this picture are both available at the Monastery Candy store, but if I really wanted a larger poster, she could help me out with that, though she wasn't sure how well the image would stand up to enlargement.

By the way, the sisters are apparently known for the amazing caramels and chocolates they make. They make about two tons of the stuff, annually!