A Small Zen Appreciation Of The Virgin Of Guadalupe

Our Lady
detail from the Old Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe

According to the story a Mexican indigenous peasant, Juan Diego Cuauhtlatoatzin had a series of encounters with a wondrous woman between the 9th and 12th of December, in 1531.

He reported this to the bishop Juan de Zumárraga, who was at first suspicious. Naturally enough. But eventually was convinced of the reality of the vision when the woman ordered Juan Diego to carry a poncho filled with roses to the bishop, really an archbishop. When the peasant opened the poncho it was revealed to include along with the roses, an imprint with the woman’s image.

It is the miraculous image of the Virgin of Guadalupe.

And, who am I to argue?

Well, okay, me. It is in my nature to be suspicious of supernatural claims. In fact it is my observation that the best any such claims can rise to is inconclusive. The vast, vast majority are easily debunked.

I notice its easier for older claims to move into the realm of myth, where picky annoying folk like me can’t actually examine what happens. Jesus gets off a lot easier than Mohammed who gets off way better than Joseph Smith.

The documentation for the Virgin and even the historicity of Juan Diego is scant.

And, I don’t really care. Okay, I doubt the historicity. But, that doesn’t matter. If God’s grace were to be revealed, to whom would that be? Certainly not presidents or potentates, popes or televangelists. Rather the divine would, if God really were good, come to peasants and prostitutes, to the lost and to the forgotten…

We see our lady in her various manifestations and we are gazing upon myth, upon the songs of our hearts.

And you want to know something?

Me, I love her.

She is a vital image of the mother of the universe.

In the Mahayana she is Guanyin, the mother of compassion. In the dream time she is how the mystery of the boundless opens up as intimacy and care and love.

I gaze on her face and my heart feels the call of hidden truths…