I'm going to try and tell you something very personal. I know, I've already told you basically my whole life and everything about myself. This is more intimate, not in that it's more graphically detailed, as in more episodic descriptions of events past, but in that it's more ephemeral and harder to elucidate. What I'm trying to describe is what I have come to understand to be the central issue of my life.
What I have lacked, in my soul, for as long as I can remember, is the presence of the loving feminine. When I was very young, this took the form of longing for a sister, and of having dreams about having a girl friend who would be kind and affectionate to me. I don't want to go into the reasons for this; obviously it's about my mother (and later, other women in my life). Let's just acknowledge that this has always been the deepest yearning of my soul, from the time I became conscious, and leave it at that.
Much of what has occurred in my life is an expression or result of this. The profundity and power of this need has often driven me to extremities, and then it becomes one of those self-perpetuating cycles. I'm not going to over-psychologize it, though: there's also a spiritual dimension to it. Our enemy knows where we are most vulnerable.
This is a wound that's shared, in a sense, by the entirety of western culture. The feminine is half of humanity, or should be. And it's a part of every human soul: every person has both a masculine and a feminine aspect to his or her personality. I'm over-simplifying for the sake of brevity, but basically the masculine aspect of the personality is, among other things, the logical reasoning function, and the feminine is the intuitive feeling function. If you want more details about this, read some Jungian psychology. I particularly recommend this book, the central thesis of which is that, as a result of the Enlightenment and the adoption of Rationalism as the only acceptable mode of thought, the feminine, both externally and internally, has been devalued, disparaged, and dismissed, and therefore the culture and all of us who are products of it are deeply wounded and dysfunctional.
I would go further, and say that this has not only a psychological but a spiritual dimension, and a deeper root cause: the Protestant rejection and even degradation of Mary. It's not accidental that the "Enlightenment" followed chronologically the Reformation. Mary is not a goddess, and she's not part of the Trinity. But she occupies a place in the cosmos and in our consciousness without which we are incomplete and broken. That place is the sacred feminine. As God is the archetypal father, she is the archetypal mother. Without this archetype in our psyches, we become unbalanced. If only the masculine is sacred, then only the masculine is important and valuable, and femininity becomes a kind of weakness; an incompletion or a lack. Something to be avoided or overcome. This is why the early modern period was so chauvinistic, and that is why we're in the mess we're in now with feminism. But feminism addresses the problem with more of the same: its answer is that, in order to have worth and value, women need to become more masculine. They're trying to put out a fire with gasoline.
Back to me. Having been raised and educated Protestant, and very much in a way that was product of the times: rationalist, skeptical, materialist, etc., Mary never occupied a place in my mind or in my heart. I was never as malevolent and acrimonious toward her as many Protestants are, but I was dismissive and indifferent. Especially toward things like Marian apparitions and devotions. Again, this was symptomatic of a similar attitude toward femininity in general; and, unconsciously, toward my own emotional and sensitive nature.
I told you, already, that the Lord spoke to me some years back, telling me to take his mother as my mother, and that he would heal my relations with women. At the time, I didn't realize the full extent of either the problem or the solution: I was thinking mainly of externals. But now (and I'm finally getting to the point), as I'm nearing the completion of my transition to Catholicism, I am experiencing something so sacred, so profoundly intimate, so sublimely beautiful, that it is impossible for me to convey it to you. That something is the true experience of Mary's presence in my life and in my soul, and the full realization of her as my mother, who loves me. This is a powerful thing for anyone, but for a man whose entire life has been characterized by an almost total lack of true female love and intimacy, it is overwhelming and inexpressible.
I haven't seen her yet, or heard her, or smelled the roses. But I have been sensing her presence, and it's been moving touching, and healing unlike anything else I've ever experienced. I've had some very powerful times in the Lord's presence. Sometimes it's been quite emotional. But this is different. Not more powerful, or better, or anything like that; it's more that it's exactly what I need for my wounded and hurting soul. A mother's touch. THE mother's touch.
This is a new thing, and it's not complete yet. I don't know where or how far it's going to lead me, but right now I'm thinking maybe Lourdes and Medjugorje.
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