The Message of Hope... In the Beginning (Christmas Eve 9 pm service), 2017

We don’t live in the best of all possible worlds. The television flares with images of despicable political louts. We cannot look away from the pictures of enraged nature, hurricanes, and fires, from the footage of the too-familiar mass murders committed by gunmen burning with rage. We are made more anxious by flickering threats of nuclear war. We mourn for the violation of the ancestral land of the First Nations people. We pray for peace as we see the protests of the Palestinians and others who fight for the dignity of their lives and the right to live on their land. Countless people migrate between continents seeking refuge, fleeing from wars and violence. So many children in the world grow up only knowing hunger and violence due to living within the confinement of walls and wires in their lives, or on the dangerous roads. We pray with all who struggle toward peace for all. 

When I asked some people at Immanuel what Christmas message they wish to hear most, they responded unanimously: the message of hope. Since then, I wanted to share a message about the hope we find in the middle of the light and the dark. In the in-between spaces of possibility and impossibility. Then I wondered, what do we really mean when we say, “We pray that the Christ is born anew in our hearts.” Here, we ponder hope as something we dream, aspire to, or yearn to be kindled in us, as it is reflected and depicted in the most popular image of Mary’s pregnancy in the nativity story. (Christ being born in us.) We don’t really celebrate the part of the labour - Mary's painful yet necessary time of “giving birth”. I wondered, what if hoping is not just remaining in the state of pregnancy but giving birth, the active process of labour, in other words, taking on the struggle of activism. We are not just pregnant with hope; we give birth to hope. Holy labour is something we can celebrate and contemplate. It really is a sacred time. It is not the quiet, silent part of the night of Christmas Eve, but the loud part of the night, with sweat, and crying out, and needing every bit of your strength. Birthing is hard, yet we can only meet the incomparable, exceeding joy and the mystery of Incarnation after the hard, messy “birthing” of hope. In our activism may God’s dream become alive as we pass on the light and candle of hope. 

Hoping is not just the longing for a happy ending, but making this story be the one with the happy ending. We take the journey of incarnational struggling in activism, in prayer and in faith. 

The novelist E. Annie Proulx says, “Yet somehow the old discredited values and longings persist. We still have tender feelings for such outmoded notions as truth, respect for others, personal honour, justice, equitable sharing. We keep on trying because there’s nothing else to do. The happy ending still beckons, and it is in hope of grasping it that we go on.” 

The values and hopes Proulx describes are what we call “faith.” And for us, the ground for such faith and hope is God’s promise in Genesis and in the Gospel that the seed of hope is permanent, firmly established already in the beginning of time, and therefore to the end. 

If we dream the happy ending of things, God promises that the seed of hope is not just temporary, tethered to only the here and now. It is firmly established already in the ‘beginning’ of all things from the beginning of time. What Christmas tells us is that the seed of hope is permanent in the promise of the Word made flesh. Let us ponder this mystery with the Choir’s voices in singing, Who is This Tiny Child?  

Advent Message: Mary in the World (3) - Latin America (Luke 1:26-35)

Advent Message: Mary in the World (3)

In today’s Gospel story, Mary is perplexed by the greetings of the angel and the announcement of her pregnancy. She asks, “How can this be, since I am a virgin?” 

Through the Advent, we have been exploring all the worlds within our own world to meet Mary in our own terms, at the margins and in the everyday lives of people. We met Mary in the struggles of Asian women who create their own definition of their authentic self and liberation, finding power within themselves. We also found Mary in the Two-Spirit Metis woman who passed tobacco to elder after elder until she found the untold teachings from the knowledge holders who had retained the memory of the creation story in which Two-Spirt people featured and existed. Then, the Christian indigenous people’s journey of creative and decolonizing synthesis of their traditional ways and Christian spirituality. Today, I invite you to hold my hand and take an imaginary flight with me to meet Mary on the hill of Tepeyec, Mexico, and in the streets of run-down neighbourhoods of Buenos Aires, Argentina. In order to do this, we must begin our story with The Virgin of Guadalupe. 

According to my friend Phil Little, there is no other religious symbol more powerful in Latin America than Guadalupe (for example, not all Mexicans are Christian but all are Guadalupanos.) but, like many religious symbols, it can be contradictory. 

The story begins with the time before the Spanish conquest (Conquista). The feminine goddess named Tonantzin was the earth and fertility goddess known as “Our Lady Mother.” Her sacred site was the hill of Tepeyec, on which a temple had been built. When the Spanish conquistador Cortes approached the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan (now Mexico City), the emperor Moctezuma II met the Spaniards at the temple of Tonantzin. The story goes that the invaders were most ungracious towards the Aztec welcoming committee; they knocked over the statue of the goddess and replaced her with a Madonna statue from Europe. This was a harbinger of worse things to come. 

 An Aztec convert who took the name Juan Diego was walking by the hill of Tepeyec one day in 1531. As Juan Diego walked by Tepeyec, a young brown-skinned woman who called herself “Coatlaxopeuh”, called out to him. Coa means snake; “xopeuh” meaning to crush serpents; (Gen 3:15) a close pronunciation of this name would be “quatlasupe”, which was similar in sound to Guadalupe. The conquered “indios” saw something incredible, empowering: She is brown and mestizo - the first Mexican. Guadalupe reminded them of the goddess Tonantzin who was so powerful that she stood blocking the rays of the sun, with her feet resting on the moon. So powerful is Guadalupe, yet she is still so gentle that her feet are cushioned by an angel holding a pillow on which she stands. She wears a dress adorned with native flowers of the region and she is wearing a waist sash indicating that she is pregnant. The “indios" identified with her, looking upon her as one of them. She is what Mexico will become - a blend of two cultures and two races, a new humanity. Guadalupe Tonantzin is the earth goddess, universal mother, speaking in the dialect of the poor, a pregnant young woman, about to give birth to a new reality, full of pregnant hope, not on the side of official history, but on the underside of history - with the poor, the oppressed, the subjugated. She’s Indigenous Mary, “Virgin Morena” (brown virgin), not a European queen.

Next, we fly to Buenos Aires. My elder, Marcella Althaus-Reid, whom I only met through her book (she died in 2009), invites us to her country. “Allow me to start by considering you as a prospective tourist to Buenos Aires. Allow me to advise you on that, as the Porteña that I am (a woman from the port of Buenos Aires). If you visit my city, Buenos Aires, please try to go and see the women lemon vendors who sit in the streets of some neighbourhoods. Go, for instance, to the old marketplace of Constitutión, where my mother used to buy a chicken still warm, with its feathers, and apples which had not yet lost the dust of the Patagonian trees. Please go for a walk around the sunny streets of my barrio, San Telmo, where stray dogs sleep in the doors of abandoned buildings, and prostitutes buy their newspapers at siesta time under the intense heat of summer. There is usually a sweet smell, that mixture of street garbage at the junctions of the Avenue Nueve de Julio, which mixes with the smells of flowers and baskets of lemons, onions and fresh herbs sold by the women who sit on the pavement. In summer they sweeten the air with parsley and lemons, but can you smell the odours of their sex? Perhaps they do not have underwear while they sit there with lemons and children, and give you change while wrapping parsley.”  

Althaus-Reid tells us, these women, the lemon vendors, are “The survivors of the destruction of the indigenous narratives of Latin America”; they continue an indigenous tradition of not using underwear, defying the male gaze — the fragmented remnant of culture left after the destruction of the indigenous tradition of Latin America.

My elder, Althaus-Reid, challenges the decency system of church and theology, feminism and liberationists. Are we including the everyday lives of the people whose sexuality is indecent and who are poor in our stories? Who is Mary for the gender outlaws and the queer, the Virgin Mother, the Virgin of Guadalupe? What is theology to these women who sell lemons without any undergarments? Where and how do they belong in the traditional (European) nativity story? For example, the image of the Virgin of Guadalupe is the peasant young woman, but decent. Even for the liberationists, the image of a peasant Mary is still one of a clean-faced, smiling child-mother. Althaus-Reid remembers the young poor women from the villas miserias (slums) going around with dirty faces, short, ill-fitting dresses and vulnerable little plastic sandals, while their bodies start to tell stories of sexual abuse and harassment. The truth behind the cleaned-up, presentable Guadalupe: Poor women in Buenos Aires are seldom virgins. Women get pregnant before they know what their own sexuality is, before they can discover the divinity of love in their lives. 

Yesterday I watched the Ted Talks by Christian Rodriguez. For the last five years, he was committed to the lives of the teenage mothers in Latin America. He started with the series of the photographs of the mother in birth, in his country, Uruguay. He is the son of the teenage mother. His sister became the teenage mother when she was sixteen. In the Philippine countries, 7.3 million girls under the age of 18 give birth each year. The teen pregnancy rate of Latin America will be the highest in the world for the next 80 years. In Mexico, almost one in two sexually active adolescents get pregnant in the ages between twelve and nineteen years old. Teenage pregnancy is not just about young pregnancies. It is about gender violence - physical, symbolic, psychological and economic violence - and is heightened due to poverty, limited education and limited locations of health care. 

Families send boys to school, not girls. The child becomes life pressure for these mothers who often become a single mother. The heightened gender inequality gap continues the existence of the traditional roles. Educating girls is the key to break the cycles of teen pregnancies. Pregnancy among the girls younger than 15 has become a trend, not only in Latin America but in many parts in the developing world. Listening to Rodriguez, I asked, "What should we think about before praising and celebrating the nativity story which can be far from joy when it is the reality afflicted on many young poor and marginalized women in the world whose pregnancy was caused by gender-based violence and deep gender inequality?”

With this research of Mary in Latin America, (it’s only just a glimpse, it’s a huge world to study and explore…) what I wished to share with you as our Advent message is that Advent (which means “waiting”) must be waiting for the good news: The good news of the birth of Jesus who loved the prostitutes and the tax collectors. If we translate the old story to a new one of our time and place, the good news would be the birth of the Christ who is the divine lover and friend of the prostitutes, the poor women and the teenage mothers, immigrants and refugees and all outcasts, and all those who dream of a better world where each one’s dignity and full humanity - human rights - is affirmed, celebrated and protected. 

If our waiting for the birth of Jesus is the holy journey, and his birth is the good news, the Angel’s annunciation, the news of pregnancy must be the good news of hope to Mary; indeed, Mary in the world: from Guadalupe Tonantzin, Virgin Morena (brown Virgin) to the lemon vendors of Buenos Aires and the teenage mothers in Latin America — and the best of news to us, who live in this global village of the God whose liberating love changes our stories forever.

Hymn: She Walked in the Summer (VU 12)

Advent Message: Passing Tobacco, Inseparable Truths (Luke 1:39-56) Dec 10, 2017

Advent Message: Passing Tobacco, Inseparable Truths

     Luke 1: 39-56

Last October, I attended a Red Rising Magazine event at the Winnipeg Art Gallery, featuring the theme of Two-Spirits. One of the speakers, Chantal Fiola, told us the story of how she started passing tobacco to seek out and find elders and traditional knowledge holders across Canada. She grew up just like many other Red River Metis people. She wasn’t raised going to Indigenous ceremonies; she was raised Catholic. She was once an active youth at her church - singing in the choir, etc. However, she began to feel something was missing and that she would need to answer the deeper yearning in herself to connect to her roots and identity. Through the journey of finding her way to the ceremony, (sharing circles, smudging, women’s drumming circle, full moon ceremony, a Two-Spirit sweat in downtown Toronto) she learned that being female, Two-Spirit, and Michif (Metis) are gifts from the Creator. When Fiola chose Indigenous Studies for her doctoral degree and met Midewiwim elders who brought her to the ceremony, she knew that she had finally found a home with her people. Eventually, the Midewiwim elders told her, “It’s time for you to go home and make these relationships where you come from.”

As soon as Fiola moved back to Winnipeg, she began to seek out spiritual teachers and build relationships, passing tobacco, with trust that some elders and traditional knowledge holders have retained knowledge about Two-Spirit people. This information is not easy to find, given the degree to which colonization and homophobia have affected her communities. She passed tobacco to more than one elder who said, “I’m sorry. I don’t have the teachings you’re looking for. But don’t give up - the knowledge you seek is out there.” She offered tobacco to sacred fires and asked the Spirit to help her find Two-Spirit teachers. Her tobacco was answered and she began meeting Two-Spirit people. To make her amazing journey short, she said recently she passed tobacco to the Chief of a Midewiwin lodge in Shoal Lake, ON, himself a Two-Spirit person. After a pipe ceremony and traditional feast, and with the help of a Grandmother Water Drum, the Chief generously shared with her the Midewiwin Anishinaabe Creation Story featuring Two-Spirit people…The affirmation, “We’re in the Creation Story.” became the reason why Fiola continued passing tobacco to seek untold teachings since then.

Romi, 2017

Fiola’s story of passing tobacco to find elders, teaching, wisdom and solidarity broadened my understanding of Mary’s journey in today’s Gospel reading. A betrothed, pregnant thirteen-year-old Mary travels ‘with haste’ to seek out another woman, a cousin, Elizabeth. In contrast to the traditional gloss of Mary wanting to share her joy, the Greek idiom “with haste” connotes alarm, flight and anxiety. She is alone, shamed and frightened, seeking understanding and comfort from her cousin. Mary is a young pregnant woman, living in occupied territory and struggling against victimization and for survival and dignity (Elisabeth Schussler Fiorenza). Mary finds safety in sharing her pregnancy with a pregnant Elizabeth; her cousin reminds her of Gabriel’s earlier message that “God is with you”, and Mary sings a song of liberation for the marginalized and the oppressed who have been forced to experience shame. Elizabeth is, for Mary, her elder who tells her the new creation story in which she and Elizabeth exist: “God is with you, our Emmanuel God.”  Don’t be afraid.

The relevancy and parallel between these two stories is so apparent; the story of Chantal Fiola and the story of Mary and Elizabeth: these women pass tobacco to find their own kin and the reasons for rising again, to be steady with themselves, who they are, claiming their courage. These stories are the stories of self-acceptance, coming out in a collective journey toward solidarity, safety, love and justice. Here, spirituality for the oppressed charts the path of survival with dignity because they have the audacity to dream. In this way, along with Mary, we also come out into our creativity to the good news of the birth of Christ: “God is with us”, our Emmanuel God. Do not fear.

We are the main characters in our own journey, recollecting those times when we needed and searched out people who could be our elders and spiritual mentors; to find the truth and make essential breakthroughs in our lives. Maybe you have also been the one who was sought out by others who needed your support and teaching. Passing tobacco and accepting it is a powerful image of solidarity. 

For me, preparing the Advent messages went just like that: symbolically, passing tobacco to search wisdom, knowledge and teachings. I soon learned that in regards to the understanding of Mary in Indigenous community, no research has ever been done. So I began passing tobacco (only symbolically.) I called and sent text messages to my colleagues and friends and considered them as my elders. No one was ready to answer my question: “Who is Mary in Indigenous Christian communities in Canada?,” until I met Nicanor Sarmiento, who originally came from Peru, himself an Indigenous person, and a graduate of the prestigious Graduate Theological Union (GTU) in Berkeley, California. My friend, Carman Landsdowne, a strong Indigenous scholar/pastor, connected us. Sarmiento currently serves as a pastor at St. Kateri Ketakwita Aboriginal Catholic Parish, in downtown Winnipeg. When I asked my question, “Who is Mary for Indigenous Christians?”, sitting with him in his office, he smiled. He answered that the Indigenous understanding of Mary is “almost zero,” even to Catholic Christians. 

Then he asked me, “Can you see why?” 

Shyly, I said, “No clue.” 

He said, “Because Indigenous communities value grandmother, Kookum.”  In fact, grandmother’s roles may be greater than that of mothers. 

Aaron Paquette
https://aaronpaquette.deviantart.com/art/Sainte-Anne-80512896

That insight touched me deeply. As I grew up, I didn’t develop strong, deep relationships with my own grandmothers; their participation in my life did not run very deep. I couldn’t wait to call Janet Ross (one of my elders.) She said, as one who had experience of teaching in a historically black college, “No surprise, when we think of African American focus on Jesus’ grandmother rather than on Mary. In African America, because of the slavery culture, raised by grandmothers…. not only the biological grandmothers, but the grandmothers in the community.”  

Nicanor explained, “We don’t have the story of St Anne and Joachim, Jesus’ maternal grandmother and grandfather in the Bible, but people passed it on by tradition - Jesus’ maternal grandmother and grandfather. St. Anne is Mary’s mother. That’s why we see the biggest devotion in terms of women given to St. Anne. There are two big sacred pilgrimage places devoted to St. Anne in Canada and they attract thousands and thousands of Indigenous people. What do grandmothers do? Nurturing faith, nurturing culture. They are the knowledge holders and carry the cultural expressions, language, ritual, ceremony, passing on education generation to generation.” 

Throughout history, Indigenous Christians have developed a creative synthesis of cultures and religions and their traditional ways of life; this is true to most Indigenous Christian communities around the world. The root and faith are inseparable truths. As you see in this picture, St. Anne lovingly embraces her child, Mary, on her lap. The mother of Mary teaches Mary how to read, molding how she understands, reflects on and appreciates the mystery of life. Language takes such an essential role in people’s growth and cultural continuity. The mother of Mary teaches her how to reflect on what life reveals. In this picture, Mary holds the book. The words written in the open pages of the book mean, in Cree, the Word. Jesus, the son to whom Mary gives life. We see the incredibly powerful, strong maternal bond of Saint Anne to her own girl-child. The mother and daughter relationship has the power to overcome a patriarchal colonization which has disrupted the traditional ways, the Circles and medicine of Indigenous communities. Traditionally, women created space and protection for all people, including the Two-Spirit members, to have mino-bimaadiziwin (a good, healthy, balanced life). so that we will not forget the instructions the Creator gave to all people.  

Next Sunday, we will search for Mary in Latin America, among the poor and among those for whom race, ethnic heritage, indigeneity, gender, sexuality and spirituality are not and cannot be separable. We will find the Mary who have to find themselves in the spiritual borderlands, in the inseparable truths. Travelling together on our journey, we continue to pass tobacco to extraordinary and ordinary people around us, who can be our elders and teachers. Together we search history and memory, traditional and true, new and untold creation stories for our collective future- making. In these stories, we meet Mary and Elizabeth, Kookum and the child Christ, The Great Manitou / our Emmanuel God, sung to our own stories of hope. 

Advent One: Mary in the World (1) "Struggle to be the Sun Again", Dec 3, 2017

Advent Message (1) 

Struggle to be the Sun Again

Matthew 1:18-25 

When I was in grade two or three, (I don’t remember exactly when) my parents decided to become Roman Catholics, and I was baptized with my brother. My aunt became my godmother, and she picked Maria Angela (Mary Angel) for my Christian name from a book she liked. Since then, Mary’s statues or sacred paintings were everywhere in my family home - in the living room, in the dining room, in my parent’s room. Mary wore a white garment, her feet gently stepping on red and pink roses, the same colour as her apple cheeks and thin pink lips. She had a high nose, eyes downcast in meditation in her beautiful, European face. I was taught to revere her even though she was in the form of a plastic statue; an image, not a real person. I gave my respect, with fear and awe - wondering and worrying, what if a miracle happens right now just because I was looking at her. This is my background, one that has made me really yearn for a way to search Mary, find Mary, to really see Mary. Let’s think about it: If we hear the nativity story every year, and if the narrative always repeats the same few options/views about Mary - Mary, the pregnant virgin, Mary the humble maid, Mary, the blessed one, Mary whose sexuality is automatically assumed to be heterosexual just because… Just because we let the story be told, the same way, every time. Why don’t we try to discover Mary in our own terms, from the voices from the margins, from the Third World, from women themselves?   

This book, Struggle to be the Sun Again, was written by Chung, Hyun Kyung, in 1990. It was published about two years after I was baptized. She wrote it as her doctoral dissertation under the supervision of Dr. James Cone, one of the most highly influential black liberation theologians at Union Theological Seminary, New York. He wrote “The Cross and the Lynching Tree”. Dr. Cone encouraged her to write about, “something which hurts you the most.” and to describe it simply and plainly. I find that Chung, Hyun Kyung speaks slowly and warmly, but when she makes creative rituals they are intense, strikingly beautiful, deep with meaning. One ritual she presented to the World Council of Churches immediately evoked sensation and controversy and even fear (among Korean church authorities and theologians). For this ritual, she was threatened and eventually ostracized by Korean churches and chose to leave Korea. Chung herself became a tenured professor at the same seminary as Dr. Cone. Chung wrote her book to empower her liberation process as well as that of her community - searching and finding a home in the Asian women’s struggle for “full womanhood/liberated humanity.” In her book Struggle to be the Sun Again, what was impressive to me was that she opened up about her own journey of finding her birth mother. When she met her, and she looked at her, she met God. Her sobbing mother looked like an icon of God through which she could clearly see what God was telling her about her mission. She wanted to practice theology in solidarity with and in love for her mother so as to resurrect crucified persons like her, by giving voice to their hurts and pains; for those who are silenced and whom the silence never protects. I’ve personally never met Hyun Kyung, but I adopted her theological methodology who said, in the interview she took when she was a theological student, 

“I realized one day my image of God is now like a middle aged Korean woman looking like my mother, very warm, affirming, very available, strong and down to earth. When I pray, she came to me. That image is the image of God. It’s very liberating because when I pray to God who is white, who is old, who is a man, it was difficult for me to be connected with him.” 

When our worship elders asked what I wanted to do for the Advent services, I hesitated, because I had some fear of judgement, because I know feminism can inspire a backlash in churches, but I trusted our elders and Immanuel, and said let’s find Mary in the world. 

Creative and talented worship cluster elders of my church,
Immanuel United Church,
made "Romi" (Mary) for Advent services, 2017

Mary in Asia, Mary among us, Mary in indigenous communities in Canada and in Latin America, and also Mary among the poor women lemon vendors who sit on the pavement in the hot summer, in the streets, in the old market places, in Buenos Aires. 

I was very glad to find the chapter in Chung’s book, Who is Mary for Today’s Asian Women? when I opened this book for the first time in a very long time. Chung writes, “If Jesus, a Jewish man, became a symbol of new humanity for Asian women, transcending historical, geographical, and gender boundaries, so Mary, a Jewish woman, also became another symbol of new humanity for Asian women through her words and deeds. Jesus and Mary, therefore, are two models of the fully liberated human being from whom Asian Christian women find their source of empowerment and inspiration. Yet many Asian women feel closer to Mary as a model for full humanity than to Jesus for the obvious reason that Mary is a woman. In most Asian churches where the maleness of Jesus has been used against women in order to legitimize the sexist ideology of women’s inferiority, women have found comfort and self-worth through the presence of Mary, an invaluable woman for human salvation.” 

Marianne Katoppo
from the bibliography of the chapter,
 "Who is Mary for Today's Asian Women?"
I shared her image to show the congregation
 the face of Mary.

“Asian women think that the Protestant tradition’s repudiation of Mariology and its imposition of an all-male theology shows the church’s avoidance of responsibility to address women’s place in realistic terms. Under this attitude of the church Asian women have been forced to be altered to Jesus through male eyes as the sole model for full humanity.”

Astrid Lobo

“If the Protestant church has succeeded in oppressing women by eliminating Mary, the Catholic church has exercised control over women by domesticating Mary.” 

Mary is tamed as a passive, obedient, yes-woman or humble maid who does everything men want. She is “sugar-sweet, fragile, with eyes either modestly downcast or upturned to heaven - not quite here and now.”

When I first read these descriptions, I was blown away, because they really speak truth to my experience. 

By the time I was married to my husband, who was just ordained in the Korean Presbyterian church as the young assistant pastor, and lived with him at church, (It’s my answer to James Cone’s question: “Write about something which hurts you most”) I had internalized all the cultural and church patriarchal expectations about what the ideal woman should be. I was ready to cast myself into becoming the perfect combination of Mary and Angel (Yes Mary and Smiling Angel). Then, during the two years living on top of a church, (literally on top – our home was a small apartment on the church roof) my husband became a ‘prince’, and with the honorary title and role - of Samonim, meaning the honourable wife of the ordained husband) inside the marble and stone of Mary Angel - Maria Angela - myself, I became the shadow of the patriarchy. I changed into a depressed, dependant, silenced and sad shadow of my former self. The breakthrough was made when I discovered Chung, Hyun Kyung’s book accidentally on someone’s shelf, and decided to read it, overcoming the suspicions about feminism I had at that time. Then I found the poem, written by a Japanese woman poet, Hiratsuka Raicho, in 1900's, The Hidden Sun, which changed my life course ultimately, enabling me to restore my faith and passion about my life, to redirect it to follow the hidden Sun within me. 

“Originally, woman was the Sun.

She was an authentic person.

But now woman is the moon.

She lives by depending on another

and she shines by reflecting another’s light.

Her face has a sickly pallor.    

We must now regain our hidden sun. 

“Reveal our hidden sun!

Rediscover our natural gifts!”

This is the ceaseless cry

which forces itself into our hearts;

it is our irrepressible

and unquenchable desire.

It is our final,

complete,

and only instinct

through which

our various

separate instincts

are united.”

Reading this poem, I immediately identified myself with this poet, who claims that “Originally, woman was the Sun. She was an authentic person. But now woman is the moon.” Only then I realized that I had become the moon. Then it became clear to me that God has shown a liberating love for me; I owe it to God to reach out to those who have become the shadow and the moon to shine their original worth and brilliant light. 

Our lights need to be united!

Romi, 2017

Asian women claim that they have right and responsibility to rediscover the Mary who is liberated and liberator. 

I see Mary - in the story of our Bible today. Mary not in marble or stone, not in the statues or images, but the real Mary who you and I really can connect to and whose liberation is bound to ours. Is her liberation dependent on Joseph’s help? Partly and it’s important. Joseph helped make her world safer in an ultimately difficult time. However, the only power that brings her liberation comes from, and ultimately is, within her: her original Sun-ness, the Emmanuel power within her, free from the restrictive norms and rules, free in order to serve God. Mary dreams a better world. She sings, a new heaven and earth is possible. Real, living woman Mary reclaims, Reveal! Rediscover! Rejoice!