Mary is not passive (China Galland)

     Mary is not passive. The image we've been shown has truth in it, but it is a limited truth. I derived great comfort in the fact that Mary was an earthly mother, that she went through a pregnancy as a teenage mother, that she had known homelessness, that she had borne at least one child. She had witnessed that child's suffering and death, she knew the depths of a mother's sorrow. ⁠ ⁠ 

 

     But Mary's passivity may be all we've allowed ourselves to see. A woman rising up against authority, a woman strong and fearless, a ferocious woman, an independent woman, a heroic woman, a physically courageous woman - to have seen Mary this way would not have served the social order...⁠ ⁠ 

     This is a Mary we need now, a fierce Mary, a terrific Mary, a fearsome Mary, a protectress who does not allow her children to be hunted, tortured, murdered and devoured. 

--China Galland 

Image & quotation source: Margo Humphrey, Black Madonna (2013), https://periodpastor.com/2020/12/13/mary-knew-and-she-still-said-yes/