Nossa Senhora Aparecida

A couple of fine friends of mine in Brazil are about to make a pilgrimage to the shrine of Our Lady of Aparecida, in Portuguese Nossa Senhora Aparecida or Nossa Senhora da Conceição Aparecida. Here she is!

She is the patron saint of Brazil.

As you can see, she is a Black figure of Mary. She appeared to three fishermen, Domingos Garcia, Filipe Pedroso, and João Alves, in 1717.

Words of theological wisdom from Ivone Gebara

From the Brazilian ecofeminist Catholic theologian Ivone Gebara:

I find myself in the grip of a strange feeling that will probably shock my readers. I should like to "rest" the earth I live on and the earth I am so that other things can be born. We live at a time when our life patterns, our paradigms, our theologies, and our spiritualities are tired. We are asking too much of our creativity in trying to deconstruct, re-create, redeem, and insert other traditions into ours. Would a time of pause not be an advantage, a time of personal and perhaps even collective silence? Would it not be a good idea to "rest" so that new ideas that could guide our steps, the fresh shoots that will feed our hopes, might in fact emerge? We live in a whirlwind of ideas, of difficult situations, of tribulations and violence of all sorts. It seems that no one is being understood in this vast Babel! It seems as though we are in a collective war, trying to survive at all costs by eliminating others.

This situation makes me think of the biblical story of the Flood. The raging waters have swallowed everything, but in the midst of them floats an "ark" preserving all different species of life. There had to be hope, perhaps hope over a long time, before the dove could fly out from the ark and return with a fresh branch, a green shoot, the sign that new things were happening. I take this myth in the form of a parable not in order to insist on the destructive nature of our actions in the century just ended, but to say that perhaps we have to keep quieter, perhaps we have to look for fewer "spiritualities," so that values that are truly vital can emerge in our lives. I fear that our anxiety to appropriate a feminist spirituality may be vitiated by so many events that destroy us physically and our cultures that we shall not be capable of actually touching the human roots that sustain our existence. Without realizing it, we are beginning to seek to appropriate in a feminist form the elements that mattered most in the masculine spiritual tradition: witness, martyrdom, holiness, imitation. All these still come very mixed in with the masculine models of a patriarchal Christianity of domination and conquest which, although it has helped thousands of people, has also been an instrument of oppression and destruction of as many others. I believe life is inviting us, for a time, to a certain "suspension" of new spiritualities, to a patient wait for what will come, to a voluntary silence or greater care with our words and our theories. We should not be in a hurry, or we shall find ourselves simply using the same discourse "feminized."

In this sort of "retreat" from theological babble, we should be preparing ourselves, I believe, for a strategy of accepting the newness that is being begotten in the depths of the earth, in the depths of ourselves, a newness full of surprises and still imperceptible to our reason. It is a sort of collective begetting, a hazardous pregnancy with no definite birth date. We are in a time of waiting, experiencing anxiety and even dread at what might arrive, intervening with care just so that life may be respected. All we can do is to protest, through organizations and outside them, at the massive destructiveness that continues to threaten our hopes of life. All we can do is be grateful for the chance to caress our daughters, sons and grandchildren, hoping that our longing for love and solidarity can be the food they receive from us today. But we still cannot even stammer the name of the new forms of hope waiting. There are just the things that sustain the humanity in us: friendship, affections, solidarity among all, waiting for the new day that will come.

I believe that this is the only possible way forward in a situation of flood and darkness. People need to feel in the first place that there are hands guiding ours, that there are hearts beating with ours and moving beyond the old divisions. We need to know that there are others dreaming with us of a better world. History has shown that this time of waiting in solidarity has in fact existed before and is still in existence. In the near future it will be capable of proclaiming that some fragile "green shoots" can now be glimpsed. And life, all forms of life, will be able to flourish in the farthest corners of the earth.

Ivone Gebara, "Feminist Spirituality: Risk and Resistance," trans. Paul Burns, in María Pilar Aquino and Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza, In the Power of Wisdom (London: SCM Press / Concilium, 2000), 41-42.

Photo: Atlantic forest landscape at the REGUA Reserve, Brazil. Click to enlarge.

Good Friday: the life and death of Sister Dorothy Stang

Yesterday evening I began my Good Friday reading, Martyr of the Amazon: The Life of Sister Dorothy Stang, by Roseanne Murphy.

Somehow I didn't want to read about Jesus. I wanted to read about someone who was living Jesus.

Dorothy Stang, a Sister of Notre Dame de Namur, lived and worked with Brazilian peasants in the landless people's movement in the Amazon. She was killed there in 2005.

Apparently there is a new documentary on her. There was a segment about it recently on PBS's "Now" program. Even the New York Post has written about it.

Website for the documentary, "They Killed Sister Dorothy," is here, with beautiful images and music and a trailer and all kinds of information. Narration by (yes!) Martin Sheen.

Stang was from Ohio and the Dayton Daily News wrote a three-part series on her after her death.

* * * * *
In related news, the Episcopal Café has a series of Stations of the Cross up. The one from Central America (El Salvador) is haunting. (Do not look at it if you are a trauma survivor; it is made up of drawings of tortured men and women. It resides at La UCA - the Jesuit-run University of Central America.) Another one is for children. Yet another is a series from Kenya. (I'd posted an image from that one two years ago here.)

Last year I posted the Arcatao Stations of the Cross from El Salvador. (That's a different series from the one mentioned above.)

And the year before, more Latin American Stations --images by Nobel Peace laureate Adolfo Pérez Esquivel with words from Argentina-- and some Stations by a Tanzanian artist with words by a womanist theologian from the U.S. (The latter, in a book called Where You There? is a favorite of mine.)

Mary Hunt on the recent Brazilian abuse/ pregnancy/abortion/excommunication case

My friend and colleague Mary E. Hunt has an essay at ReligionDispatches.org again. This time it's about the recent and tragic case in Brazil. The mother of a nine year old girl who was pregnant with twins (a pregnancy which would have killed her) was excommunicated for helping her have an abortion. The doctors were excommunicated too. The girl's stepfather has admitted to sexually abusing her.

Dr. Hunt, a Roman Catholic feminist theologian, writes:

........ My sadness in this case comes not only from what has been done in the name of God to people who are living a nightmare, but from what might have been done to help. Sexual abuse, especially incest, is hard to stop. But once perpetrated it need not be made worse by ecclesial sanction.

A proper pastoral response would include: support for the pregnant child as she lives through an abortion; care for the mother who is responsible for the child and the rest of the family; protection for the family from the stepfather whose arrest may trigger backlash behavior; sensitive work with the other daughter who has also been sexually abused; HIV and venereal disease testing for the girls and the mother; economic support for the family; counseling for the family, the community, even the neighbors and parishioners who have been affected by this trauma; prayer and pastoral attention, including reception of the sacraments according to the family’s wishes. They need a spiritual community more than ever. Instead they got excommunication. “Is there anyone among you, who if your child asks for bread, will give a stone?” (Matthew 7:9). Apparently there are several in Rome and Brazil.

..... They claim to know the law of God. But here’s the rub: even if they do, an overwhelming number of Catholics and others of goodwill do not care. We do not believe in the cruel, vindictive, callous God they cite. Many believers put our faith in a loving, merciful divinity whose response to human tragedy is to weep not condemn, to embrace not exile. That is a Catholic view, well-supported by scripture and life experience. The bishops are welcome to their views, but beware of people who think they know more about God’s will and God’s law than the rest of us. They are selling a product we are not buying.

.............Let this case signal the end of any credible claim to authority such bishops might make, and the beginning of a new era when local communities determine their own members.

Read the full text of Mary Hunt's commentary here.

The essay is titled "Excommunicating the Victims."

More on inclusive language and public prayer

Re: the post below and its many comments (read it and them first), it turns out I had posted a little piece of the Jaci Maraschin essay a little over a year ago.

You can read that post here.

For another Brazilian perspective, from Silvia Regina de Lima Silva, posted around the same time, see here. (Tracie, this may speak to you, though Silvia doesn't use "Goddess." But she is a radical woman after your own heart, and full of passion and fire.) It is important to listen to this voice from a Black woman of the Southern Hemisphere.

For the struggle to come to words we barely know are within us, especially if we are women, see here. (Nelle Morton's classic essay on "Hearing to Speech.")

One among many examples of the beautiful Anglican, inclusive prayers by Janet Morley of England.

I've got a chapter on language in When in Doubt, Sing: Prayer in Daily Life, as I mentioned in the Comments section of the post below. Thought I had posted part of it once to this blog, but perhaps not. It's not showing up in two searches I just did in the archives. I'll look again later. Some of you have the book, anyway. (The rest of you should buy it ;-) - just sayin'. And thank you.)

Lots more on language, prayer, and gender in the church in the archives of Acts of Hope.

For instance, Julian of Norwich (14th century) on the Trinity. Today some of us would find the language less than satisfying but in the context of the 14th century, it's marvelous. So, as many pointed out when our Presiding Bishop began to use mothering language for Jesus and some got their knickers in a knot about it, this is not exactly a newfangled idea. Even earlier in Christian history, there were maternal images for Godde. There are also such images in the Hebrew Bible, though the patriarchal images dominate.

I thank you all for your courtesy and honesty in this conversation. Let it continue, and do share resources with us.

Xico on the World Social Forum

The ever thoughtful Francisco Silva, a.k.a. Francisco de Assis da Silva, a.k.a. Xico, at Kantinho do Rev (in Brazilian-accented English) has a post on the World Social Forum and why Anglicans should be there.

For those who don't know what the World Social Forum is, here is a website. (Not a sexy one, but an informative one.)

The Episcopal Anglican Church of Brazil is at the World Social Forum. The rest of the Anglican Communion is not.

I hear from one of my students (from three years ago) who was there last time that many Forum participants tend not to have a positive view of religious organizations. Not surprising, but I'm curious to learn more. I do know religious activists who have attended and been involved, and the World Council of Churches is present.

And right before the World Social Forum, there was a World Forum on Theology and Liberation. Theme: water / earth / theology / for another possible world. The World Social Forum's motto is "Another world is possible."


Indigenous people at a march on the first day of the 2009 World Social Forum in Belem, Brazil. Photo by Reuters.

Bonus: swingin' Brazilian duck

Where else but Brazil could you get two grown men singing about a duck sounding and looking so sexy? This is an old song (compared to some of you youngsters, anyway). The performers are João Gilberto and Caetano Veloso.