divinity of mary?

el virgen, mary, has always been a slightly odd part of Catholic teaching to me. as a child, i remember, vividly & repeatedly, being told that no matter what protestants say, we do not worship mary. we respect her role as a mediator between god and humans. but she is ever-human. first among humans, maybe. but still human. i mean, that is kind of funny in light of the fact that we have a fully developed (complete with centuries of fighting) doctrine of mary without original sin. why does that not make her some sort of super-human?

am i trying to posit a deified mary into catholicism? well, no. not really. i just wonder if hints of it are not all ready there, but we are so afraid to have (a) female images of god or (b) anything to destabalize the blessed trinity. or maybe i am just reading the tradition wrong, which, though very possible, disappointing in light of the aforementioned paper.

i started this class with a difficult time wrapping my brain around the idea of bodily gods and goddesses which hinduism is far more embracing of that roman catholicism is. i worked rather fervently in early years in college to rid my mind of the default male god enthroned in robes and goldenness. having done so, i find myself hesitent to employ any bodily images of gods or goddesses and feel much more comfortable with nature metaphors.

what, then, to make of mary and these beautiful hindu goddesses? what do they mean for each other? in some ways, i want the hindu goddesses to push mary to claim her divineness. but more broadly, i want them to help each human recognize the spark of divinity (watch out! my gnostic, deemed heretical by the vatican, tendencies arise here!) in each of us, in ways that encourage us to be better at being human.

i watched this documentary today called "faith & doubt at ground zero" (worth the see--its at pbs.org, frontline did it) wherein this woman, a holocaust survivor, said, "all i have seen of humanity is evil. what am i supposed to think about humans after all of this?" i want to give her a way to see more than that, to seek that spark of divinity. and if the goddesses and mary can help me do that, i am willing to take them into how i think about the world. if not, i am, frankly, less interested.

i am, as often i am, reminded of rene mcgraw's probing question during our "philosophies of violence & nonviolence" class that kept me going amid the war that sprang from 9/11: "how, then, ought we to live?" is it really possible that my entire educational experience (and, arguably, life) be framed around this question? i'd like that.

peaceout. kate