As someone who is not Christian, this Madonna, or statue of the Mother Mary, is not something that I would have ever noticed or bought for myself.
And yet, soon after my daughter made this purchase, the Madonna quickly found her way to a spot right next to my bedside because, for slightly embarrassing unforeseen and unknown reasons, I find enormous comfort in being watched over by her while I sleep.
This mysterious experience, which is actually one of many in my lifetime, makes me believe once again in what the 20th century psychiatrist Carl G. Jung called “the collective unconscious” because it feels like I am able feel into a much more expansive sense of “Mother” that opens a space inside of me that is much larger than my own personal or familial history.
A contemporary of Sigmund Freud, Carl Gustav Jung, coined the term "collective unconscious," and it referred to:
Structures of the unconscious mind which are shared among beings of the same species (Wikipedia).
In my mind, I interpret this to mean that I not only carry inside of me my own personal and familial psychological (and biological) history, but also that of all of fictional and nonfictional, historical and archetypal human species throughout the millennia.
I was thinking about this very idea, of finding comfort and solace in a collective feminine ancestry, this past Mother’s Day as I was re-reading bits of two books I haven’t looked at in some time: The Red Tent by Anita Diamant and A Woman’s Journey to God by Joan Borysenko, Ph.D., fiction and nonfiction respectively.
Though not much one for novels myself, if you’ve never read The Red Tent and you have any interest whatsoever in either religion or feminine spirituality (or both!), it definitely should be added to your list, as it voices the hypothetical untold stories of the Jewish women of the Old Testament as narrated by the protagonist Dinah, the only daughter of Jacob and Leah.
Take this elegant line from the opening prologue:
If you want to understand any woman you must first ask about her mother and then listen carefully. Stories about food show a strong connection. Wistful silences demonstrate unfinished business. The more a daughter knows about the details of her mother's life - without flinching or whining - the stronger the daughter.
Beautiful. (And true.)
And on this past Mother’s Day, as I was reflecting on and re-reading the early scenes in the book in which the main character Dinah is still a young girl, and is graciously surrounded by and intimately cared for by her mother and 3 aunties: Rachel, Zilpah, and Bilhah, I engaged my imagination to sense into Dinah’s first experiences of being mothered, which allowed me to go back into my own history of “aunties” who at various times surrounded me in a feminine loving circle as well.
In contemplating this experience, which as I stated was extremely soothing to me, I re-read Dr. Borysenko’s chapter in A Woman’s Journey to God called: “Voices of Our Ancestors: Reclaiming Women’s Religious Stories,” wherein she wrote:
Archetypal stories…are like phone lines that connect us to the living Presence of ancient beings who can help us on the spiritual journey.
I agree with this statement wholeheartedly, and I think it becomes especially significant when we as spiritual seekers may no longer have (or may have never had) actual human teachers and “aunties” to guide us through the turbulence of life’s difficulties.
In 1992, Emily Saliers referred to this very idea in a her song lyrics for “Virginia Wolf” written for her and Amy Ray to sing together in their band, the Indigo Girls:
They published your diary
And that's how I got to know you
The key to the room of your own and a mind without end
And here's a young girl
On a kind of a telephone line through time
And the voice at the other end comes like a long lost friend
So I know I'm all right
Life will come and life will go
Still I feel it's all right
Cause I just got a letter to my soul
And when my whole life is on the tip of my tongue
Empty pages for the no longer young
The apathy of time laughs in my face
You say "each life has its place
Yes! As spiritual seekers, we need these “telephone lines through time.”
Without any spoilers, I will offer Anita Diamant’s words in closing from the last page of her novel, The Red Tent, as spoken by the heroine Dinah:
If you sit on the bank of a river, you see only a small part of its surface. And yet, the water before your eyes is proof of unknowable depths…Wherever you walk, I go with you.
To me this line represents that miraculous possibility of receiving grace and wisdom from our collective feminine ancestry.
Or as Dr. Borysenko writes in the closing of her chapter “Voices of Our Ancestors: Reclaiming Women’s Religious Stories:”
When we are ready for change, stories can also pull the bushel off our Inner Light. Our intuition becomes clear and insistent. When we allow ourselves to be receptive, the voice of God and the help that is always available become potent realities.
As Dinah might say: Selah. Or, May it be so.
