The Divine Feminine and St. Brigid

I am writing this DM on the Feast Day of St. Brigid of the Celts so you will receive it a day after. 

It was fitting in yesterday’s DM that we focused on Meister Eckhart’s teaching that we are all “mothers of God” and that we birth the Christ when we birth good work that brings compassion, peace and justice into history.

Brigid is a symbol and reminder of our being birthers of the Christ and Meister Eckhart was, like Hildegard and Aquinas and Francis before him, deeply steeped in Celtic awareness.  All the Rhineland mystics were. 

Some stories about her propose that she was the midwife at the birth of Christ in Bethlehem (Celtic peoples are committed to honoring the world of imagination after all.) 

In his excellent book on Celtic spirituality, Sacred Earth Sacred Soul: Celtic Wisdom for Reawakening to What Our Souls Know And Healing the World, John Philip Newell devotes a wonderful chapter to St. Brigid of Kildare.

He says, “Celtic wisdom remembers the sacredness of the feminine” and it is to the healthy dance of masculine and feminine energy that “the stories and legends of Brigid invite us to awaken.”

Called “the most beloved of Celtic saints,” Brigid lived c. 451-523.  

She loves the earth…models female leadership, inspires poets and musicians, midwifes at new beginnings, and extravagantly embodies compassion and boundless generosity toward the poor and those who seek refuge. 

There is a strength about her that very much mirrors the Mary of the Magnificat poem that we discussed in a recent DM.  She is prophetic and intervenes on behalf of greater justice.  

Since her first biography was written 100 years after her death, her life is “shrouded in myth and legend” and the Celts take that ignorance as an invitation to let imagination expand.

Newell names four “thresholds or liminalities” that Brigid addresses: the portal between the pre-Christian and the Christian; that between the divine and the human; that between humanity and the earth; and the “liminal space between the womb of the universe and what is trying to come into being.”  

To be continued.

See Matthew Fox, “God as Mother, God as Child: Ourselves as Mother of God and Birthers of God’s Son,” in Fox, Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality, pp. 220-228. 

And Fox, “We are Children of God and Mothers of God,” in Fox, Passion For Creation: The Earth-Honoring Spirituality of Meister Eckhart, pp. 336, 330, 325-337.

And Fox, Meditations with Meister Eckhart, pp. 76-84.

Banner Image: “Blessings of St. Brigid.” A 16th-century fresco by Lorenzo Lotto in the Suardi Chapel showing Brigid turning water into beer (left) and healing a blind man (right). Wikimedia Commons

Queries for Contemplation

In what ways are you a “Mother of God”?

On Being “Mothers of God” – a Teaching by Neil Douglas-Klotz

Recommended Reading

Original Blessing: A Primer in Creation Spirituality

Matthew Fox lays out a whole new direction for Christianity—a direction that is in fact very ancient and very grounded in Jewish thinking (the fact that Jesus was a Jew is often neglected by Christian theology): the Four Paths of Creation Spirituality, the Vias Positiva, Negativa, Creativa and Transformativa in an extended and deeply developed way.
“Original Blessing makes available to the Christian world and to the human community a radical cure for all dark and derogatory views of the natural world wherever these may have originated.” –Thomas Berry, author, The Dream of the Earth; The Great Work; co-author, The Universe Story

Passion for Creation: The Earth-Honoring Spirituality of Meister Eckhart

Matthew Fox’s comprehensive translation of Meister Eckhart’s sermons is a meeting of true prophets across centuries, resulting in a spirituality for the new millennium. The holiness of creation, the divine life in each person and the divine power of our creativity, our call to do justice and practice compassion–these are among Eckhart’s themes, brilliantly interpreted and explained for today’s reader.
“The most important book on mysticism in 500 years.”  — Madonna Kolbenschlag, author of Kissing Sleeping Beauty Goodbye.  

Meditations with Meister Eckhart: A Centering Book

A centering book by Matthew Fox. This book of simple but rich meditations exemplifies the deep yet playful creation-centered spirituality of Meister Eckhart, Meister Eckhart was a 13th-century Dominican preacher who was a mystic, prophet, feminist, activist, defender of the poor, and advocate of creation-centered spirituality, who was condemned shortly after he died.
“These quiet presentations of spirituality are remarkable for their immediacy and clarity.” –Publishers Weekly.