A couple of years ago, my essay “Madonnas” was published by The Manifest-Station. You can read it at http://themanifeststation.net/2015/01/06/madonnas/ Some of the words here come from that essay.
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I’m mindful of Mary today, the Jewish madonna, because January 6 is the celebration of Epiphany that commemorates when Mary welcomed the three wisdom teachers of the East. Because of their gifts for baby Jesus, she began to understand the nature of her future grief.
I’m also thinking of the unheralded compassion of mothers and grandmothers throughout the centuries who have taken on suffering in order to help the abused, the hungry, the poor, the disenfranchised, the widowed and the lonely. They brought healing to people from the body of the earth, and brought the spirituality and wisdom of the body and the heart into their communities of faith.
