The Grotto

Last year I moved out of my brother's condo into a one-bedroom apartment in the Facer area of St.Catharines.

A generation ago, the community was once home to many new immigrant families from the Ukraine, Poland and Italy. Today, there are many bi-lingual shops, delis, businesses and banks located throughout the area serving these people. 

The move to Facer was necessary. It was inevitable -  I had to find a place of my own or suffer the tension that was evolving between my brother and I. There were several appealing apartments but the one I found in the local newspaper suited me, both for price and location (I commute outside of the city for work and being close to the QEW was perfect).

A month after settling in, restless, in need of exercise I decided to take a mid-summer walk through my new neighborhood. I remember it was a warm evening, the sun was red-orange and fading, the sidewalks, trees and front porches browned by dusk. Passing the park, I made my way down a street of red brick houses, coming across a grotto behind the Polish church on Garnet St. Throughout my thirty years of life, I had yet to encounter such a scene. The Virgin Mary serenely stood, eyes-closed, hands together in prayer within a rock frame, flowers surrounding her. The rocky grotto itself stood protected in a kind of  small amphitheater, the scene above the Virgin painted like a clear blue sky. 

I felt moved by the grotto's appearance amidst the red-brick houses. On such a night, the discovery, albeit solemn, excited me as if I had discovered a hidden, forsaken, peaceful treasure.

I approached the figure of the Virgin and crossed myself, not from any Catholic training but simply in reverence. Growing up, my family never attended a single church service. For my father, the church represented greed and bloodshed. Raised briefly in the Dutch Reformed tradition, my father's father eventually pulled away from the controlling hand of religion. My Opa had quickly tired of his country men's religion, feeling the church only wanted his money, his attendance and his freedom. My father grew up distrusting organized religion. 

As for my mother, the church didn't play a large part in her life and I don't recall any stories of her parent's taking her or rebelling. 

But approaching the grotto, I felt this need for connection. The Virgin Mary, idyllic, clothed in white, the mother of God. A beautiful emblem, an ideal made human, the sacred as flesh, bone and time.

I have always been curious about the sacred. For the Romanian professor of religion, Mircea Eliade, there is the time before time when an event occurred for which we feel nostalgic. This is the paradise we all long for, when the gods and goddesses lived. Time made sacred by the event - the beginning of the world, the mating of a god with his goddess, etc...

In the minds of many Christians, the Annunciation would be considered a sacred time. This moment  is reported in the New Testament when Gabriel brings Mary  news of her pregnancy. An overwhelming event, timeless, poignant for the participants, especially Mary in the realization that her flesh has been touched by the divine. 

Looking at the grotto, I was reminded of how the female, the matriarch had once been the true spiritual centre of all divinity. Before the rise of the Sky Gods - Marduk, Zeus, Ra, Jehovah - the gods of the earth were goddesses and given their due. Demeter (or Ceres) was the goddess of the grain. Gaia the earth. In the religions of Africa and distant Europe, men were the hunters and women the keepers of the hearth. Instead of a patriarchy, a pyramid social structure, the matriarchy was centre based, with every one playing an equal role in maintaining the community.

In the book The Chalice and the Blade, Riane Eisler, basing her research on the writings of Lithuanian-American archeologist, Marija Gimbutas, explores the world of Old Europe and the rise of the Kurgans, the mysterious invaders of the north that took over these matriarch societies, overthrowing them and subjugating their women. 

If one takes a cautious look at today's world's religions, there is a continual imbalance between the sexes. From Judaism to Islam to Christianity. And it is sad that the patriarchy not only extends within religion but also into daily life reminding me that the relationship between church and state, however superficially tenuous is disarmingly strong beneath the social fabric of our lives.

Standing in front of the grotto, I felt a sense of hope, wonder, a secret kinship with the feminine sacred. I thought of a Greek philosophy class I had taken years ago. The professor had a wondrous gift for story telling and reminisced about visiting a quiet Greek island. There, the Greek Orthodox church ruled the land but on certain nights, the women folk would go out and rebelliously light candles for Demeter, tying white ribbons to the branches of olive trees. 

In the Homeric Hymns, it is Demeter, mother of Peresephone who wanders the land in search of her daughter only to find her in Hades. There, the god of the underworld and the goddess of the grain strike up an agreement. Peresphone will live with her mother for so many  months of the year only to visit her husband in the underworld the remaining days. The days Peresephone are in Hades are the Fall and Winter months. When she returns to her mother, these are our days of Spring and Summer. These Greek women, my professor explained, though Christian in their social lives, still revered what was eternal to their land and spirit. The Church runs the land, but the Goddess gives them nourishment and warmth.

It is the same with all truths. They are coated and briefly muddied by falsehoods, ignorance and the insecurity of controlling individuals but they never disappear. They may be ignored in everyday conduct but they are still remembered. And even though the Virgin is respected and loved, she belongs to a sphere beyond the confining churches of orthodoxy. The Truth behind her, the Truth she represents, I realized is the reason why I've never been able to attend a church service or convert.

The longing for the sacred is personal and universal. Leaving the grotto, I left a physical space. I crossed myself, a gesture connected to a religious social structure but one in keeping with the circumstances. The gesture is a form of language and however we use a language shows our character and intelligence. They are as many corrupt men and women crossing themselves as there are good.

The rest of the walk was peaceful, happy. The connection to the moment bright and heartfelt.

Every time I go out for my walk, I make sure to pass the Virgin.