December 22, 2014
In a thoughtful meditation on Mary, the mother of Jesus, Kendra Weddle writes:
“Mary’s song, often called Mary’s Magnificat in Luke 1, conveys the perspective underpinning Jesus’ actions in the gospels. It is a theology of reversals, where the strong are made weak, and the weak become strong, where the powerful are brought low and the hungry are filled. We can imagine Mary knew the lows all too well. She had been on the receiving end of social systems that disregarded groups of people: women, the poor, the sick, the hungry.”
See Kendra’s post, “Mary, Can You Teach Us to Be Courageous?” from Ain’t I a Woman, the blog she writes with Melanie Springer Mock. (Both Kendra and Melanie are members of EEWC-CFT.)
You might also enjoy this brief video from “Religion and Ethics Newsweekly,” providing an overview of an exhibition called, “Picturing Mary: Woman, Mother, Idea,” currently being shown at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington, DC. The exhibition shows how images of Mary in paintings and sculpture have changed over history, reflecting the cultural, political, and religious climates of various periods and gradually depicting a more human Mary and a more intimate relationship between mother and child. (I especially enjoyed the marble relief in which Mary is playfully tickling her infant son, and Baby Jesus is giggling delightedly.)
