Out of negativity-exhaustion, she calls me to dance in these dark and darker days of storms, droughts, fires, Gaza, Ukraine, tariffs, hunger, homelessness, refugees, and politics. I’m talking about the Black Madonna, the essential darkness. And I’m inviting you to join in her Dance with Darkness.
An ancient archetype, five millennia ago she was known as Isis, the Egyptian goddess and mother of Horus. Today the Black Madonna is a symbol of a fecund and interconnected cosmos, the womb of a diverse Earth, and the patron saint of black and Indigenous women, victims of eco injustice, and the LGBTQ community.
To know her better, I have followed her to new places. A thousand feet above sea level, I’d exited Bogota’s magnificent Monserrate Sanctuary disappointed; I hadn’t found her. Then, I felt called to look again. Obscured behind bars in a small side chapel, her face was the bright blackness of a winter night; the holy child sat on her knee; the world rested in her hand. A copy of the original in Spain, they say, but the transforming light inherent to all darkness was real. I asked her to use me for Earth’s healing and left freed for joy.
Another time, I found her in Positano, Italy’s vertical town on the Amalfi coast where some still dance and drum in her name. Mesmerized by the seven-foot Black Madonna above the altar, I was motionless when it was announced, ‘Closing for lunch!’ Wondrously, the caretaker transfigured into a storyteller. “A pirates’ ship was engulfed in a sudden storm off our coast when they heard above the thunder a voice, ‘Posa, Posa!’ Put down, put down. The words came from the stolen Byzantine art of Our Lady in the hold. And so, terrified, the pirates obeyed and she made this place her home.” I asked her to use my voice for our Earth home in these turbulent times.
Now, I’m inviting you to join me and the Black Madonna for Earth Hour. 5:30 pm Pacific, 8:30 pm Eastern, Saturday, March 22. It began in 1970; in 2025 we will join with more than fifty million in two hundred countries and territories to turn off electricity and away from fossil fuels by embracing the possibility in the darkness when we put down the remotes, even for sixty minutes.
Our Vigil will be a global act of sacred Earth activism. In a Tenebrae ceremony, we will extinguish the porch, kitchen, hall, night and gazillion unnecessary lights that steal Earth’s sustainability; we will take back from the pirates of Modernity our power of positivity and declare the planet our home.
Photo by Carol Kilby
#climate change #climate justice #EarthHour #ecospirituality #BlackMadonna #Modernity
Comments