Mother Church: The Bees' Madonna, Not Our Barbie

A brief meditation inspired by International Women’s Day Synchroblog/Synchrosermon:

Fifty years ago today,  American businesswoman Ruth Handler introduced a doll based a German doll called Bild Lilli.  Barbie, this simple blond doll, has influenced our assumptions of women's bodies, their acceptable roles in culture and a billion dollar industry.

image from fabiopoptras...

For me, Barbie is an icon of modern churchianity.  She is a synthetic creation, plastic mass produced to conjure an ideal.  Her physique suggests an unreal set of physics, with a top heavy that is un-managable and legs that can barely walk and require special shoes to care for them.  An entire industry is built on  fake activities, scenic distratctions and "friends" who spend more time wondering about intimacy than ever experiencing it.  There is an almost hermetically sealed universe around Barbie, devoid of rick or imperfections or even sensuality.

The story that Sue Monk Kidd tells in The Secret Life of Bees is set only 5 years later, but the world of Lily Owens, Rosaleen and the Boatwright sisters could not be further from the "ideal" that Barbie embodies.  This powerful story is set at the dawn of the Civil Rights era in the U.S.,  with justice and maternal love played out in a variety of contexts.  In a moving section, August Boatwright describes the Black Madonna who is so central to this moving work of fiction:

"Our Lady is not some magical being out there somewhere, like a fairy godmother. She's not the statue in the parlor. She's something inside of you. Do you understand what I'm telling you?"

"Our Lady is inside me," I repeated, not sure I did.

"You have to find a mother inside yourself. We all do. Even if we already have a mother, we still have to find this part of ourselves inside."

For centuries, Christian faith communities have referrred to themselves as Mother Church.  In legends and archetypes, the church is described as a exhausted mother shepherding all her energy to give birth, like a fierce lioness with her cubs, like a nurturing mother who loves to feed others.  Mary, the mother of Jesus, is invoked in the accounts of Jesus followers as Mother of the Church and the teacher and Queen of the Apostles.

The Benedictine monk Bede Griffiths spent a great deal of his life meditating on Black Madonna, who he described as

"the mother of the earth as well as heaven, of the body as well as the soul, the mother of the subconscious, the hidden, of all those powers that the 'masculine' mind represses; the Mother of the sacred darkness."

When a gathered communities strateches embody that beloved community that Martin Luther King spoke about, it strikes me as much more the mystical Black Madonna than the dull plastic Barbie of our age.  Far too often, we "play church" like young kids play with Barbie or G.I. Joe, pay acting things that are disconnected from the freedom & grace we are made for.  My own memories of profound church breaking out is a great deal like Sue Monk Kidd's depiction of  black women in grand hats dancing around an icon of the Black Madona, coming to touch their hands to her heart.

Monk Kidd describes the centrality of the Black Madonna as a portrayl of "a powerful symbolic essence that could take up residence inside of her and become catalytic in her transformation."  When we claim our calling as co-creators, when we embrace our flesh & blod, when God's gathered are feminine & masculine, the dance that is church can take up residence inside of us, becoming a catalyst for lives transformed.

Comments

[Liz]

a very moving post - I love the way you used so many symbols to bring us home to your main point.

[Barbie at CPB]

Barbie is a world renowned figure and a popular toy competing with Hello Kitty and Bratz. :]