Stronger Than You

Merry Christmas :)

Merry Christmas :)

I mean the whole damn point of the Nativity story is that the supposed son of God (interpret Jesus how you fucking want, of course) was born to a couple of poor, exhausted peasants in the stable for the inn, and his first bed was a feeding trough for animals. That would nowadays be like a poor couple where the mother gives birth in a parking garage behind the motel because they couldn’t find a better place and nobody else would take them in. It’s a pretty gritty setting, and the idea is that God was reborn in some of the rock-bottom lowest circumstances. The only thing majestic was all the angels and shit, and of course motherly love

I get that a lot of the art portraying Madonna and Child as fabulously wealthy europeans in splendid robes and golden light was meant to glorify God + whichever nobility was sponsoring the artist, and while of course it’s genuinely beautiful art, it just always struck me as horribly missing the point, which is that the supposed son of God started in incredibly humble circumstances, among the kind of people that everyone else looks down on

‘Massacre des Innocents’ by Leon Cogniét, 1824. Although the Feast of the Holy Innocents is in a couple of days time, this painting is still really relevant in that it portrays Mary as how She really was: a scared refugee mum, so fearful that Her son was going to be one of the Innocents killed by King Herod.

My new favorite mordern interpretation is this work, José y Maria by Everett Patterson (http://www.everettpatterson.com)

there really is just Something about those quiet lonwly shrines to Mary people erect on trees in in deep forests and vast pastures. Can't describe the emotion and I left the Catholic Church years ago but they're places of power in a way no grand cathedral has ever been or ever will be

It's definitely got something to do with regarding nature as a temple

Do you have any pictures of these shrines?

YEAH for my own keepsakes, but I won’t post any. Some shrines are more simply kept, with only a statue of Mary under a little shelter, but the shrines I know of and visit are the statue of Mary in her little shadow-box house, and then sort of a sprawl of people’s “offerings.” There are photos, and money, and painted stones, and letters in envelopes to loved ones in little plastic baggies to keep them safe.

It’s not just a spot of worship for Catholics. It’s become a spot of memory and grief and love for anyone who knows where it is. I know a lot of people of different faiths or no faiths who visit it, and as beautiful as it is, it’s never felt right to expose it as a curiosity online, if that makes sense.