Our Lady of Guadalupe Feast Day, 2024, Part II

We are continuing to meditate with Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes on the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe which is December 12.  We are considering the meaning of the colors in her very familiar icon.

Her red gown signifies “the Immaculate heart coursing with life.”  The gown includes living roses outlined in gold.  Roses “lift the human spirit” to ideals of “Love and Love and more Love,” Clarissa tells us.  The dark belt around her waist “is the color of black fertile earth.” 

And of course soil is the victim today of humanity’s rapaciousness and global warming–just two nights ago in my Shift class* with cosmologist Brian Swimme, he told us that we have lost 40% of the world’s arable land in the past 40 years!  This even as our human population continues to multiply.  

A crescent moon represents the beginning of a new cycle of Light to the world and the flowers the Lady stands in depict a “spiritual light that is said by the mystics to emanate from the wounds we endure—lighting a new pathway.”

The fire that surrounds her body is the fire of the Holy Spirit, who inspires souls.  In the Aztec/Nahua times, one who flames and inspires was called “Firemaker.”  It also represents a fireside or hearth that warms the soul and body and brings hope under duress.

Clarissa shares what she calls “the most beautiful words” attributed to Our Lady of Guadalupe:

          Have you forgotten?
         I am your mother.
          You are not alone.
You are under my protection.
          Anything you need,
                   ask me.
Do not worry about anything.
                   Am I not here—
          I who am your mother?
          Have you forgotten?
          I love you, and
you are under my protection. 

This Lady first appeared to a “frightened little Aztec Indian on the Hill of Tepyac in Mexico in 1531.”  The “dark-skinned, brown-eyed, shiny black-haired Indian is now called ‘Saint Juan Deigo’” (canonized recently about 500 years after the visitations to him.  Juan Diego’s original name is Cuauhtlatoatzin, which can be translated as “one who sees and speaks like the eagle.”

The Lady is a symbol of resistance and healing and renewal of love among devastated peoples. Clarissa comments on how Dr. Elaine Pagels, in her book Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas, details “one of the many ancient appellations of Creator as Mother” and how a movement of consciousness occurs from one of “a slave relationship” to the Creator based on fear, “to understanding one’s soul and life as a cherished one, one held with the tenderness of a Mother who is far more than mundane.”

Clarissa also invokes the teaching of Father Gustavo Gutierrez, known as the father of liberation theology, praising him for not “romanticizing the poor.”  He says, “poverty is not a condition, but an injustice.”  She praises him for holding up the Holy Mother who models the reaction most warranted for growth: trust in the sacred…not the paltry-sweet, but the fiercely intelligent, wholly miraculous reality.  And for insisting that we can walk “in the ancient practice amongst old believers ‘as a contemplative in action.’”**

In Clarissa’s judgment,

Holy Mother is Compassion personified.
        She is joy-centric and sorrow-mending…
    She appears to all.  All.  Like the sun shines on all…..
She is the fierce Revolutionary who carries infinitely tender love.
          Thereby, she is ours, and we are hers.

*Registration is still open HERE for Matthew’s class with Brian Swimme on the Shift Network: “The 4 Paths of Creation Spirituality: Embracing Awe, Chaos, Creativity and Transformation With the Universe as Your Guide.”

**Clarissa Pinkola Estes, PhD, Untie the Strong Woman, pp. 296-299, 315, 305.

See Matthew Fox, “The Feminine Face of Divinity” and “Wisdom: Another Feminine Face of the Divine,” in Fox, One River, Many Wells: Wisdom Springing from Global Faiths, pp. 117-156.

And Fox, “Sacred Marriages of Masculine and Feminine,” in Fox, The Hidden Spirituality of Men: Ten Metaphors to Awaken the Sacred Masculine, pp. 221-248.

And Fox, Christian Mystics: 365 Readings and Meditations

And Fox, Naming the Unnameable: 89 Wonderful and Useful Names for God…Including the Unnameable God, pp. 59-70.

Banner Image: “Ex-Voto” Inscription beneath the drawing reads: “With a serious disease affecting animals all around, I asked the Holy Virgin of Guadalupe to take good care of my animals, and I wholeheartedly entrusted my little goats, pigs and chickens to her, and our crops so we wouldn’t lose them. And since not a single one of my animals died, I gratefully present her with this retable. ~~ Mrs. Cipriana Garcia, El Progreso, San Luis Potosi. November, 1954.” Photo by Angélica Portales on Flickr.

Queries for Contemplation

How do you relate to Our Lady of Guadalupe after interacting with the teachings of Clarissa Pinkola Estes?  Does she speak to you apropos of the spiritual demands of our time in this advent season?

Recommended Reading

One River, Many Wells: Wisdom Springing from Global Faiths

Matthew Fox calls on all the world traditions for their wisdom and their inspiration in a work that is far more than a list of theological position papers but a new way to pray—to meditate in a global spiritual context on the wisdom all our traditions share. Fox chooses 18 themes that are foundational to any spirituality and demonstrates how all the world spiritual traditions offer wisdom about each.“Reading One River, Many Wells is like entering the rich silence of a masterfully directed retreat. As you read this text, you reflect, you pray, you embrace Divinity. Truly no words can fully express my respect and awe for this magnificent contribution to contemporary spirituality.” –Caroline Myss, author of Anatomy of the Spirit

The Hidden Spirituality of Men: Ten Metaphors to Awaken the Sacred Masculine

To awaken what Fox calls “the sacred masculine,” he unearths ten metaphors, or archetypes, ranging from the Green Man, an ancient pagan symbol of our fundamental relationship with nature,  to the Spiritual Warrior….These timeless archetypes can inspire men to pursue their higher calling to connect to their deepest selves and to reinvent the world.
“Every man on this planet should read this book — not to mention every woman who wants to understand the struggles, often unconscious, that shape the men they know.” — Rabbi Michael Lerner, author of The Left Hand of God

Christian Mystics: 365 Readings & Meditations

As Matthew Fox notes, when an aging Albert Einstein was asked if he had any regrets, he replied, “I wish I had read more of the mystics earlier in my life.” The 365 writings in Christian Mystics represent a wide-ranging sampling of these readings for modern-day seekers of all faiths — or no faith. The visionaries quoted range from Julian of Norwich to Martin Luther King, Jr., from Thomas Merton to Dorothee Soelle and Thomas Berry.
“Our world is in crisis, and we need road maps that can ground us in wisdom, inspire us to action, and help us gather our talents in service of compassion and justice. This revolutionary book does just that. Matthew Fox takes some of the most profound spiritual teachings of the West and translates them into practical daily mediations. Study and practice these teachings. Take what’s in this book and teach it to the youth because the new generation cannot afford to suffer the spirit and ethical illiteracy of the past.” — Adam Bucko, spiritual activist and co-founder of the Reciprocity Foundation for Homeless Youth.

Naming the Unnameable: 89 Wonderful and Useful Names for God …Including the Unnameable God

Too often, notions of God have been used as a means to control and to promote a narrow worldview. In Naming the Unnameable, renowned theologian and author Matthew Fox ignites our imaginations by offering a colorful range of Divine Names gathered from scientists and poets and mystics past and present, inviting us to always begin where true spirituality begins: from experience.
“This book is timely, important and admirably brief; it is also open ended—there are always more names to come, and none can exhaust God’s nature.” -Rupert Sheldrake, PhD, author of Science Set Free and The Presence of the Past