Virgin a Day - #7

Our Lady of Controversy

These images continue to cause quite a ruckus when they are exhibited. You can read what the artist has to say about it here.

 This is the original piece of art that caused the uproar

in New Mexico.

This subsequent piece of art is the cover

for the artist's book entitled 

Our Lady of Controversy

Amazon has a link where you can read more detail about the book - just click on the "Look Inside" to take you there.

These images don't disturb me. What does is the incredibly hostile reaction to them and towards the artist, Alma Lopez, particularly the death threats.  

To which, I say:  

If you don't like the art, don't look at it.  

If you don't like the music, don't listen to it.

Have your opinion - you're entitled to it.

But, violence is not an option.

For me, humor and gentle reminders can change the tone of any conversation, so I'll leave this post with a few things I've pulled off my FB page:

Please visit Rebecca, who is hosting Virgin a Day for these first 12 days of December.

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One of the interesting parts of posting during Virgin a Day is the daily excerpt I take from Matthew Fox's essay on The Black Madonna.  I look at the numbered points in his essay after I write my own post and am pleasantly surprised that somehow, both are so similar to each other.  

Today is no different:

7. The Black Madonna calls us to Diversity. 

There is no imagination without diversity—imagination is about inviting disparate elements into soul and culture so that new combinations can make love together and new beings can be birthed. Because the Black Madonna is black, she addresses the fundamental phobia around race and differences of color and culture that come with race and ethnic diversity. Meister Eckhart says: “All the names we give to God come from an understanding of ourselves.” [12] To give God the name “Black Madonna” is to honor blackness and all people of color and to get over an excessive whiteness of soul and culture. It is also to honor the feminine. Divinity is diverse. Diverse in color and diverse in traditions and diverse in gender. God as Mother, not just Father. God as Birther, not just Begetter. Gender diversity is honored by the Black Madonna and so too is gender preference. The Black Madonna, the Great Mother, is not homophobic. She welcomes the diversity of sexual preferences that are also part of creation, human and more than human. (We have now counted fifty four species of birds and mammals that have significant homosexual populations. The medieval notion that homosexuality is “against nature” has been disproven: A homosexual minority is very much part of nature.)

John Boswell, in his ground-breaking scholarly work entitled Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homosexuality has demonstrated that the twelfth century, that century that birthed the great renaissance and the Black Madonna in France, rejected homophobia. For a period of 125 years—years that were the most creative years in western civilization—diversity was welcomed at all levels of society. [13] Creativity thrives on diversity.