by the Rev. Cynthia Bronson Sweigert
Click here to watch the sermon recording on YouTube.
For [Wisdom] is a breath of the power of God, and a pure emanation of the glory of the Almighty…
she is a reflection of eternal light, a spotless mirror of the working of God, and an image of God’s goodness…
In every generation she passes into holy souls and makes them friends of God and prophets. (Wisdom of Solomon)
March is Women’s History Month, which speaks of the importance of honoring women’s voices.
Today, March 8, is International Women’s Day. Rooted in 20th century labor movements, it is a celebration of women’s social, economic, cultural, and political achievements, while calling for accelerated gender equality. I also hope that some day on this list there will be a category celebrating women’s achievements in faith traditions, such as the Anglicans now having a woman as an Archbishop of Canterbury!
I grew up in Stillwater, MN, and also grew up and was nourished at Ascension parish. As my parents were raising much younger daughters, I was one of those kids that is dropped off for church. At that time, we had Morning Prayer 3 times a month; then on the fourth Sunday Holy Communion was tacked onto MP. I was a member of the junior choir with a funny little hat and robe and was also asked to teach Sunday School when I was in 6th grade. When I was about 15 and didn’t care for the youth group, I would instead go next door to the rectory and- hassled? challenged? tortured? the rector and his wife with my budding theological thoughts and poetry. I don’t think I appreciated how patient and encouraging they were with me, how accepting of who I was, of where I was in my life. During one of our discussions the rector – an Englishman who’d attended an evangelical college in England for his theological training – suddenly said in his very gruff voice, “Protestants make much too much of St. Paul and not nearly enough of the Virgin Mary!” I wasn’t sure exactly what he meant at the time, but I could tell it was big. Mr. Oriel became Father John. I think he was the first person to show me that people can change and it’s OK.
One day during high school I was in downtown Stillwater and realized a bad cold was coming on quickly. As I was very close to Ascension I walked there and opened the front doors (yes, churches were once left open), walked up the center aisle, through the choir until I reached the steps in front of the altar – and then curled up on those steps. The sunshine was pouring in through the Ascension window, and it was so peaceful. I could almost imagine that when I stood up, I would be healed. I wasn’t, but I was strengthened.
In time I came to interpret this event as meaning for me that the parish was a womb; I felt completely nourished by the church, and believed it was a safe place.
I’m not sure when I began to realize how alienating, polarizing, and even cruel the Church can be. The Church can lift up, but also tear down.
In the summer of 1974, I was on an archaeological dig in Israel. One day I received a letter from my mom (when people still wrote letters). As I opened the envelope, a newspaper clipping fell out. It was about the “irregular” ordination of the group of women who came to be known as the Philadelphia Eleven, two of whom were from Minnesota – Dr. Jeannette Piccard, and Sister Allah Bozarth. However irregular this event was to certain people, 11 women in the Episcopal Church in the U.S. were now priests. To me it was as if the earth moved under my feet.
I went to seminary in the fall of 1975, not long after that momentous event, but before the General Convention had “regularized” the ordination of women to the priesthood, At that time General Seminary had professors who were tremendously supportive of women being ordained. At least 35% of the students were in NO way supportive; this kind of hostility was something personally new to me. There were four full-time women students and several other part-time students, including Dr. Pauli Murray, lawyer, civil rights activist, scholar, and later the first African American woman to be ordained as an Episcopal priest.
In my studies I was comforted and began for the first time to really think theologically – and learn there have long been people, women and men, who have appreciated the divine feminine in many of its aspects.
Last week Marjorie taught us something about Wisdom – Chokmah in Hebrew, Sophia in Greek – in and around all things. I began to think of this divine feminine as a kind of “underground spring”, bubbling up at certain times, especially in times of awareness. I read an article once entitled “The Awesome She” and that description of the divine feminine stuck with me.
I have to throw in an outlier here, in that she’s not biblical. Her name is Lilith – no, I don’t mean Frasier’s ex-wife (although the series’ writers were clever in naming her so). Lilith was Adam’s first wife, and was created out the earth in the same way Adam was made, and not from his rib. She believed she was Adam’s equal in every way – and that was a problem so she was banished from Eden. There’s also much about her being the queen of demons, but that’s definitely another story.
We are blessed that in our patriarchal scriptures there is still evidence of people’s need of and appreciation for the divine feminine – not only in the person of Wisdom but as shown by the beautiful God as mother imagery in Hebrew Scripture as well as by the prominence of women such as Deborah, Rahab, Hannah, Esther, Ruth, Rachel, Leah, Hagar… and others.
In the New Testament Jesus uses feminine imagery when he refers to himself as a mother hen – and of course we see Mary Magdalene, Mary and Martha, Joanna, Priscilla, Thecla, the unnamed woman who asked Jesus for healing for her daughter – and when he seemed reluctant to do so she confronted him…
We hear of the Samaritan woman on this third Sunday of Lent and there is so much we could discuss about her, her importance in John and for the Church, how she has been called the first woman evangelist. For today it is appropriate that we lift up the fact she is venerated in the Eastern Orthodox and Byzantine tradition as St. Photina, “The Luminous One”, who brought light to others.
There is a long history of viewing Jesus through a feminine lens in scripture, theology, and art. Some early Christians viewed Jesus as the incarnation of Wisdom, the divine feminine, Some early Christians believed that Christ transcends a single gender; there is imaging of a feminine Christ. Crucifixion was thought of as an act of labor and childbirth when Jesus “delivers” the Church through suffering. Jesus was Nurturer with a capital N; he fed his followers his own body and blood and was compared to a nursing mother providing life-giving sustenance.
Today we are remembering Brigid of Kildare, who lived c. 451-525 CE.
While reading I became very confused. What? Who? Which Brigid am I reading about? The saint with whom we are most familiar lived in a place where people had been influenced and nourished over hundreds of years by belief in an important, powerful Goddess, also named Brigid, or alternatively, Bride, Bred, Brigon, Bergetta, Briganta…some refer to her simply as the earlier Brigid.
I believe a person should meet the Goddess first in order to understand St. Brigid.
The Goddess was the patron of poets, midwives, newborns, fugitive, blacksmiths, dairy maids, boatmen, chicken farmers, cattle, scholars, sailors, and more! She was all-purpose – and was said to be tied to ALL of life.
She was also held to be the keeper of prophecies and dreams, poetry and music, a symbol of nurture, protection, and creativity. She was associated with the festival of Imbolc on February 1 which marks the beginning of spring and the renewal of life; the Goddess represents the returning light, fertility, and the growth of new life.
One of the loveliest descriptions of her is “She who knows how to make use of the heart.” She who knows how to make use of the heart.
Some people feel that St. Brigid was not an historical figure but rather a Christianization of the Goddess Brigid. Sympathy for this point of view, I believe, is why the Vatican “de-sainted” her in the 60’s.
Certainly St. Brigid did live at a time when the religious landscape was changing. She has been called the Lady of the Threshold, that is, her life is defined by being between two worlds. Brigid has been called a bridge figure – embodying the transition from Celtic polytheism to Celtic Christianity. I prefer what Fr. Matthew Fox wrote, that St. Brigid is a symbol of continuity between one age of wisdom and the next.
Brigid’s father was a pagan chieftain of some sort, or perhaps a druid, a teacher; her mother had been enslaved and was a Christian; some say she was baptized by St. Patrick. Brigid lived between the upper class and the enslaved.
Although Brigid is definitely clothed in the image of the Goddess, there is enough historical evidence for her to be named one of the three great saints of Ireland, an honor she shared with Patrick and Columba. There is an early work – The Life of Brigid – written by a 7th century monk named Cogitosis. This book emphasizes her gift of healing, kinship with animals, her profound sense of hospitality and generosity, and for those who are oppressed. There are a number of stories about how even as a young girl Brigid would give away just about anything to a person in need.
I am most interested in her leadership founding a double monastery – not necessarily the only such place but considered to be the most famous of its kind. Characterized as a hub for the arts, including illuminated manuscripts and metal work, the monastery was renowned for its caring of the poor and sick. It housed women and men in separate adjacent communities under Brigid as the Abbess and a Bishop named Conleth, who are said to have shared responsibilities equally. The monastery came to be called the Church of the Oaks, not surprising as the Druids considered oak groves to be sacred places. Like the Goddess, St. Brigid had a sacred fire; her fire either lasted several hundred years until the Archbishop of Dublin stopped it for being too superstitious or, alternatively, when the monasteries were suppressed by Henry the Vlll. (The fire has since been restored.)
It is amazing to consider what it would have taken at that time to accomplish all that Brigid did. Although she probably would not have claimed any of these titles Brigid has been called a feminist, humanitarian, and rebel- saint. (Tara Bradley) Like the Goddess, February 1 is an important date for her: Brigid shares the date of Imbolc, the day of returning light and renewal of life; it is the date when she is honored in the church calendar. St. Brigid was also a bearer of light, a luminous one.
She, like the Goddess Brigid, was also one who knew how to make use of the heart.
St. Brigid also could turn water into…beer! The following poem – of which I’ve taken a few verses – is attributed to her:
I would like a great lake of beer for the King of Kings.
I would like to be watching heaven’s family drinking it throughout eternity.
I’d love the heavenly host to be tippling there for all eternity.
I’d make heaven a cheerful spot, because the happy heart is true.
I’d like the people of heaven to gather from all the parishes around
I’d give a special welcome to the women, the three Marys of great renown.
I’d sit with the men, the women of God, there by the lake of beer
We’d be drinking good health forever and every drop would be a prayer.
Pretty earthy! The Celts had a deep appreciation for the earth, for its creation and creatures. St. Brigid is said to have been a great herbalist, finding healing in all of Creation.
For me the foundational theological question has become “How can I live more compassionately upon the earth?” Shouldn’t life be devoted in some way to expanding circles of compassion to: those who are different from us in a myriad of ways, to the earth, to animals, to all of God’s creatures? These thoughts first crystalized for me when I began to visit
SoulSpace, a sanctuary for previously farmed animals, or those from roadside zoos. It is an amazing thing to see how the caretakers interact with these animals whom they refer to as the residents of SoulSpace. Each resident is named, and their individual identities, personalities are embraced. How different it is when we look at any of God’s creatures as someone rather than something.
I love the fact that St. Brigid is still prayed to by some as the guardian of farm animals; there are stories of how much the animals loved her. Edward Sellner, professor emeritus of theology and spirituality at St. Catherine’s in St. Paul writes that anyone who reads stories of the Celtic saints can discern not only what the saints did for animals, often protecting them from hunters, but also what the animals did for the saints; this pattern of reciprocity that transcends species-differences, so that all benefit in the circle of life, has a great deal to teach us.
I mentioned earlier that St. Brigid has been called the Lady of the Threshold. This image of threshold has also been used to represent navigating life’s transitions, birth, new careers, etc. An Episcopal priest named Robert Jennings wrote that transitions could also mean a test of character, a change of time, daily occasions when we transition from talking to listening, from being unaware to fully aware. Thresholds open us to the uncertainty of life, navigating the next steps. In one way or another we are all in transition, we are all on thresholds.
Once when I was home from seminary, visiting my family, my mom and I were in the kitchen. Suddenly she said “Oh, how I wish I’d named you Mary!” In the space of about 5 seconds, I tried to think of who I’d be if she had named me Mary – at least I knew that my very Protestant mother would not have considered naming me after Mary, mother of Jesus. My mom then explained how she wished she had named me for her paternal grandmother Mary. Mom had adored her father and I think she wished our family had more associations with him, though the presence of his mother’s name.
Remembering this encounter I began to wonder about St. Brigid’s parents, particularly her father, who is said to have intentionally named her after the earlier Brigid. I wondered: was it because of his love for the Goddess and the influence she had had in the land? He no doubt believed in her as a reality, an Awesome She, and not as an archetype, the way many people would think of her. In the time of transition in which he lived, could he have wondered: by naming his daughter Brigid, who might she be/become? Could he help to keep the Divine Feminine alive even in “glimpses and shewings” as Dame Julian would later write?
A contemporary author has the Goddess say “And I have been a breath in your heart. And the day has its feet to it that will see me coming into the hearts of men and women like a flame upon dry grass, like a flame of wind in a great wood…” (Fiona McCloud)
In every generation, she passes into holy souls…
Think of the Brigid to whom you feel closest.
As we consider how we may each learn more about how to make use of our hearts for the world…
May the power of Brigid inspire you,
The grace of Brigid attend you,
The flame of Brigid enliven you,
The story of Brigid engage you,
May the God who provides her all these gifts
Provide them also to us,
That we may go into the world
With her lavish generosity
And her creative fire. (Jan Richardson)
Amen.
