Mary is not the Mother Of Our Tribe, our human tribe, because she is some aloof figure from an artificial piety, set apart by myth and the imagined need for ritual purity. No, she is holy because she is one of us.
She is our common mother, our everyday mother. She is a living person who has gone before us, a woman as human as you or I, who found a well of faith deeper and more life-giving than any we will ever discover on our own.
She is grace. She is mercy. She is love: a gift to us from God, a healing presence in every culture and every time, speaking all of our languages, even if that language is silence.
Seen above (and on front-page mastheads) — Top: The Annunciation by Corinne Collymore Peters; Middle: The Black Madonna by Dick Adams; Bottom: Hopi Madonna by John Giuliani.
The images above, and more, appear in the ECVA exhibition: “Mary, Mother Of Our Tribe.”
Words above: by The Rt. Rev. Steven Charleston, Choctaw
Author, Hope As Old As Fire — Read the complete Curator’s Statement for the ECVA exhibition: “Mary, Mother Of Our Tribe,” here.