The New World

Our Lady of Regula, Spain

 

As we mark the 530th anniversary of the Columbian Voyage, the world is eerily similar to the turbulent days surrounding the time of that fateful event. I sometimes wonder if at the time, everyone knew how significant and world altering such a journey would become, or they were just interested in immediate results.

It has fascinated me for awhile now, the inherent discontent humanity has with its situation and surroundings. A casual observation of the entire history of humanity is one of constant relocation. I wonder if this tendency is a subliminal nod to our spiritual nature, that we are made up of the stuff of stars, and being earthbound temporary and  uncomfortable for us. We always seem to want something else, something new, over there has more of what we need, and the people living where we want to go are this great problem we must somehow solve often to the destruction of the other.

Unfortunately, every place on earth has certain drawbacks and limits, and humans constantly try to bring the familiar to the new. This tendency is odd, since one could have the familiar where they left, but it is the tendency to move about. This was certainly done with the Spanish expansions in the 16th century. Affectionately called "The Columbian Exchange" it was the greatest and swiftest transformations of ecologies and relocations of peoples at that point in global history. It id not occur to the Spaniard that there would be food in the new world, so they brought their plants and animals with them, destroying native ecologies along the way. It was also a time of great transformation and expansion of the Christian religion. Note the word "religion" and not necessarily The Christ Impulse.

Long strangled and stifled through politics and institutions, it is a miracle that any aspect of the universal love and intimacy Christ sought to bring into human awareness through his Incarnation ever seeped through the bloodied history of Christianity. One aspect of enhancing this awareness of the original intent was and is through the Madonna, particularly the Black Madonna. 

As Europeans dominated and oppressed numerous continents with the sanction of the Caucasian church deities, the Black Madonna became an image of inclusion and divinity to those who did not resemble or understand their conquerors ways. Our Lady of Regula is one of these images. She has her origins in Africa, traveled to Spain and then the rest of the world to become one of the most beloved images of divinity in the world. Is she sanitizing oppression, softening the blows of slavery and domination? Some may think so, I however do not. 

Our Lady of Regula is reported to have thwarted all attempts to whiten her skin. Her coloring allowed the Yoruba peoples transplanted to the Caribbean through the slave trade to find solace and strength in unimaginable circumstances, not to just obey but to endure with dignity the injustice of international corporate greed.

She still inspires to this day. May she inspire us to greater cooperation and recognition of divinity in all peoples.