December 12

Today is the birthday, in 1923, of Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou, an Ethiopian nun and musician. I first heard about her and her music on NPR. She first recorded an album in Germany in the 1960’s, and used the funds raised from her performances to help homeless children. 

Today is the feast day of Peter the Aleut, who was born with the indigenous name Chukagnak, and martyred in 1815. He was a monk from the Russian colonies in Alaska, but was captured and killed by Spanish colonizers in California. He’s worth mentioning in our list of saints in part because it highlights the “West to East” story of United States colonization, contrasting with the “East to West” Anglocentric history that we are usually taught. He is sometimes referred to as “The Martyr of San Francisco.” 

Today is also the feast day of Our Lady of Guadalupe, a significant symbol of the synthesis of Roman Catholicism and indigenous Mexican culture. Juan Diego first reported seeing Marian visions in 1531, in which she spoke to him in Nahuatl, his native language. In the story, when she tells him to seek out her help in curing his uncle of a disease, she says, "Am I not here, I who am your mother?"  

Reflection: 

I believe stories like the one about Our Lady of Guadalupe, or Saint Brigid, in Ireland, are evidence of 1) the syncretism of Christianity and indigenous religious traditions and 2) the irresistible folk spirituality of a feminine or maternal aspect of the divine. While Christianity absorbed and then exported the patriarchal theology of Roman culture, I believe when the subversive and liberatory nature of the gospel meets native traditions of the divine feminine, they find creative expressions like these. And while I doubt their historicity, they resonate among the people and cause religious authorities to generally give up trying to stamp them out. 

I believe these irrepressible expressions of the divine feminine are the work of the Holy Spirit,

Prayer: God our Mother, thank you for never ceasing to expand how we can understand and know you. Amen.