Looking to the Sky
A spiritual guide to August 6-19
A great sign appeared in heaven: a woman clothed with the sun, with the moon under her feet and a crown of twelve stars on her head.
~Revelation 12:1 NRSV; the first reading for mass during the day during the Solemnity of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary
You are Here
In the last few weeks, we’ve gotten semi-familiar with the ordinariness of Ordinary Time. But if it’s still taking some adjusting to sit in the ordinariness of life, you’re in luck—we’ll be in this season for quite some time! Until the end of November, actually. So we’ll keep working until then on getting comfy with the everyday. And that word—the everyday—reminds me of the late great Ada-Maria Isasi-Diaz’s idea of ‘lo cotidiano,’ (it means ‘the everyday’), the concept central to the Mujerista Theology movement she founded—liberation theology about and by Latin American women.1
In the midst of the everyday, we see a repeated emphasis on Mary, Mother of God. We saw glimmers of her in the last newsletter with the feast in honor of her parents Anne and Joachim. We see her this time on August 15th in a celebrated, ancient solemnity: the Assumption. We’ll see her again in the upcoming newsletter with another Marian feast. People feel all kinds of ways about Mary—some praise her virginity and womb, others rail against all forms of veneration toward her as idolatry. To me, however, she is and has always been a towering figure of empowerment, a brave and justice-minded woman who lived a life most people in her day would have considered scandalous—pregnant by very non-traditional means and mother of an enemy to the state. She models and points directly to the Word of God. We will explore these themes and more in the coming weeks.
This particular upcoming Marian feast—the Assumption—pairs well with Transfiguration Sunday in that the stories behind both days have us looking up to the sky in our mind’s eye. Coincidentally, the Perseid meteors also light up northern skies in mid-August.
A Tour of the Terrain
Sunday, August 6th commemorates the Transfiguration, the moment outlined in the Gospels of Mark, Matthew and Luke when “Jesus took with him Peter and James and his brother John and led them up a high mountain, by themselves. And he was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his clothes became dazzling white” (Matt 17:1-2 NRSV). Moses and Elijah stood in attendance as God declares “This is my Son, the Beloved; with him I am well pleased; listen to him!” (Matt 17:5). In this moment, aided by the bright light of the sky you might see at the top of a mountain, an ordinary man revealed to his friends his full and true identity. Only these three disciples would know just then—the world would not yet.
We can say a lot here about the Christological implications of the Transfiguration, and I might do so on another day, but for now, let’s stick with this: what a beautiful moment Jesus models of coming out. He’s not ready to parade down the street or proclaim anything yet, and nor does he need to. For now, he rests in the blessed intimacy of truth with his closest friends, and the heavens themselves open. There can be many concentric rings of coming out in a person’s life, each a different sacred moment, each in its own time.
Especially for queer people, coming out is a lifelong process. Jesus dispels the myth that all comings-out have to be loud or immediately public. He trusts his instincts and the Word of God in himself in discerning that this truth, this big truth about who he is, cannot yet be shared with the whole world. He lives out the fact that a person might have many comings out. They can be short or long, spoken to only oneself or only to your closest confidants, written or sung, shouted or whispered— but they should always be cherished. A coming out is a moment of sacred sharing, an intimate privilege to both give and receive, and it can light up a mountain. And it doesn’t have to be limited to gender or sexuality—anything that gets to the core of you, that you feel called to share in spite of fear, is a sacred coming out moment.
August 11th sees us into the feast of St. Clare, a follower and then friend and colleague of St. Francis, who founded a parallel order of women religious around the Franciscan ideal of voluntary poverty. People often speak of Clare as a female mirror to Francis—his follower and female protégé, a fellow Tuscan aristocrat who gave it all up for God—but in some ways, this really diminishes her story. You see, St. Clare’s quest to found an independent order of women religious spanned multiple decades and papacies and found success on August 9, 1253, just two days before she died. As far as we know, St. Clare was the first woman to author a monastic rule—an incredible feat!2
On August 15th, a Marian feast that brings work to a halt across Italy, the Assumption of Mary, will strike like a meteor. It celebrates an event in Catholic lore not put into official Church doctrine until 1950.3 It is one of my favorite examples of the peculiar and entertaining phenomenon of the Church playing catch-up with the people. In fact, since the 4th century CE, the people themselves kept the feast alive, along with its central story of Mary’s bodily and spiritual ascent into heaven and placement at Jesus’ side. Then, in 1950, Pope Pius XII folded the story of Mary’s assumption into heaven into official Church doctrine.4 I don’t much care to discuss all the finer points here, but I do love how the people ran wild with the story and kept it going, sometimes despite protests from Church officials, for over a millennium.5 Why this story? What does it mean to people?
Well, we can answer this question in all kinds of ways, but I’ll answer for now about what it means to me. I see in this moment a woman who transcends, who literally rises above the troubles of the earth to provide comfort from the other side. What a beautiful closing image for these sacred weeks—to know that when we look to the sky, we can think of the story of a brave and long-suffering woman summoned to fly.
Suggestions for Centering Practices
Catch the Perseid Meteor Showers. In keeping with the sky-struck feasts of the season, the night skies themselves invite us to look up and see the Perseids, the annual meteors that streak across the skies of the northern hemisphere in mid-August. Find a clear night on or around August 13th to catch a shooting star or two. You might even look into joining or creating a watch party with other locals. Take a minute while watching to record, by video or in a journal, glimmers of wonder and epiphany that come up for you.
Reflect and journal: what makes your life blessedly scandalous? Think of Mary’s story, how odd and ‘disorderly’ (hehe) it must have seemed once, and how sacred people find it now. How can you reframe the parts of yourself that others consider out of the norm as blessed, a calling, or evidence of your proximity to a great and sacred mystery?
Resources, Sacred and Secular, to Take You Deeper in this Season
The following resources tie loosely into the themes of these coming weeks. All have an emphasis on Mary, liberation theology, or wonder.
Books, Articles, and Poetry
En La Lucha/In the Struggle by Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz
“Hail” by Mary Szybist
Music
“Ave Maris Stella” by Trond Kverno
“Mary” by Patty Griffin
Ada María Isasi-Díaz, "Lo Cotidiano: A Key Element of Mujerista Theology," Journal of Hispanic / Latino Theology, 10:1 (Aug. 2002) 5-17.
Jean Molesky-Poz, “Clare of Assisi: May You Go Forward Securely,” Journal of World Christianity, 7:1 (2017).
Jaroslav Pelikan, Mary Through the Centuries: Her Place in the History of Culture, New Haven: Yale UP (1998), 204.
Renee Barouxis, “Origins and Practices of the Assumption of Mary,” Boston Public Library, 14 August 2019, https://www.bpl.org/blogs/post/origins-and-practices-of-the-assumption-of-mary/#:~:text=Although%20the%20holiday%20goes%20by,since%20the%20fourth%20century%20C.E.
Jonathan Sumption, The Age of Pilgrimage: The Medieval Journey to God, Mahwah: Hidden Spring (2003), 54.