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| Mary on the Mountain? |
It has taken some time to write this. It was
coincidence or serendipity that the topic of seeing Jesus or Elvis on a piece
of toast kind of thing came up recently for me.
I can remember meditating on my lunch hour,
sitting on a low wall behind Wal-Mart in some little shade on the recreational walkway, bike, park
trail along the Rillito (little river) River in Tucson about fifteen years ago.
I was meditating trying to relieve middle age and
work stress. I opened my eyes and then I
focused on a distant peak, part of the Santa Catalina mountain range. I was looking specifically at the large
smudge like area on Big Horn Mountain.
In the noon day sun, a summer Arizona sun I
should add, I saw what appeared to be the Christian Icon of Mary on the side of
the mountain. As I wrote previously, only a Christian is likely to see Christian
iconography and iconic images in the abstract darks and grays of a mountain
side. That and only mad men in the noon day desert sun are crazy enough to see God and or start
world religions sometimes.
With some additional lunch time meditation
sessions, I began to make out more of the total image surrounding the Mary
iconic image that I imagined that I saw connecting the dots on a mountain side.
It was then that the words of Revelation 12 seem
to take shape before my eyes:
Revelation 12 - A great sign appeared
in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet
and a crown of twelve stars on her head. 2 She was pregnant and cried out in pain as she
was about to give birth. 5 She gave birth to a son, a male child, who “will rule all the
nations with an iron scepter.” And her child was snatched up to God
and to his throne. 6 The woman fled into the wilderness to a place prepared for
her by God, where she might be taken care of…
13 When the dragon saw
that he had been hurled to the earth, he pursued the woman who had given birth
to the male child. 14 The woman was given the two wings as of a great eagle (angel), so that
she might fly to the place prepared for her in the wilderness, where she would
be taken care of for a time…
Along with the opening words of Psalm 121:
I lift up my eyes to the mountains—
where does my help come from?
My help comes from the Lord,
the Maker of heaven and
earth.
Of course all this was against a backdrop of
being in bible study with my local pastor.
And seeing Mary, which was more so a Catholic Icon than a Protestant
Icon, and as then being Protestant, I discounted the Mary image seen and kept
it to myself. No point in running around sounding like a lunatic and saying there
was a giant image of Mary on some mountainside in Tucson.
Though I must recall and admit that my local
pastor at the time on our group study of Luke sparked a certain chemistry and
or electricity within the group that I file mentally under the category of Holy Spirit (whenever two or more are gathered in my name...).
Fast forward, we move back east for some years and I
keep the image, the Jesus, Elvis image on toast, Mary on a mountain thing in
the back of my mind.
Some years later I go visit my son in college at
Tucson and again am seeing Christian Iconography on a mountain. From the second floor balcony of his dorm
apartment I show him the outline of the smudge on the mountain and tell him
what I think I see. He does not see the
image of a woman and child. He says he sees what looks like five fingers on a
hand. Shadows can be so tricky. I look again and yes I guess you might also see a
hand.
And of course since I am so steeped in esoterics
and religious lore, I see both images, of Mary and also of the hand. I see what I choose to see. What I have in confidence and or in faith am willing to see.
And of course looking, connecting the dots on the
image of a hand, I am reminded of the Hand of Mohammed, whose original
handprint is said to be imprinted on a charter of protection to the ancient St.
Catherine’s monastery in the Sinai Desert.
What is in a name? Or an image? The global
reality of the present global culture is to try and see with all the eyes of all
cultures and see what best results in image or form evolve out of all those local cultural
and religious contexts of the planet.
So it goes.
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