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<\/a>I\u2019ve been drawn into Zen Buddhist<\/a> reflections on (mostly) Christian holy days over the past few years.<\/p>\n One such day is the Assumption of Mary. It\u2019s is a Christian festival universally celebrated in the liturgical churches. It\u2019s marked in the Eastern Christian churches on the 15th of August as the Dormition of the Theotokos<\/a>. And in the Roman calendar for the same day it\u2019s called the feast of the Assumption of Mary<\/a>. In the Anglican calendar the day is traditionally marked as the \u201cfalling asleep of the blessed virgin Mary.\u201d Although it should be noted there are more than a few Anglicans who hold to some view of physical assumption for our lady.<\/p>\n For me something important is that there are stories within the great religions that are worthwhile well beyond their natural boundaries. Stories that need not be taken literally to find how we\u2019re invited to take them seriously.<\/p>\n This is one such. I wrote about it last year. I\u2019m revisiting again here, with some expanded thoughts.<\/p>\n I like to think of it as the festival of the assumptions of Mary.\u00a0 Assumptions. Plural. We have so many assumptions about her, after all.<\/p>\n I\u2019m a person of the Zen way. But I admit I\u2019m Christian adjacent. I\u2019m genuinely grateful for the mystical impulses of the Christian way. And Mary. Well.\u00a0She is one of the few biblical characters who by tradition, does not die. She\u2019s also collapsed in many imaginations with other divine female figures<\/a>. There are other layers to her, as well. A very complicated lady, she.<\/p>\n So, what\u2019s not to be excited about? I reflect on her every few years in this blog. Each time, I notice, I\u2019m drawn more deeply into the many nuances. I find it an amazing invitation.<\/p>\n My reflections about her are always refracted through the lens of someone at the margins of the Christian tradition (my confession is to have a physiology of faith, with a Buddhist brain, a Christian heart and a humanist stomach: all resolved rather messily for me as an ordained minister within the Unitarian Universalist Association as well as a Zen teacher in lineage). With all that I have many and thoroughly mixed feelings about Mary.<\/p>\n On the one hand I have difficulties with separating her from the commonality of our humanity. It is such an important point. What little we know as \u201cfactual,\u201d is heart wrenchingly human. Her child becomes a disciple of a prophet and after his teacher\u2019s death he becomes a prophet. A man calling out the rich and the powerful, offering succor to the poor, and calling everyone to a mysterious kingdom that is in part here, and in part somewhere else. And she witnesses is brutal execution in the wake of a year of his preaching. That woman, the mother of that man.<\/p>\n And then whispers, faint, unprovable, of a rising from the dead.\u00a0 And from there, stories. A small collection of a man\u2019s sayings. Another small collection of miracles. Another layer of who both he and she might be.<\/p>\n And then a weaving and a reweaving and a weaving again of those stories, each enriched. Refractions of refractions.<\/p>\n And she, Mary is swept into this. She carries all these layers of story, some powerful archetypes. Images. This layered Mary touches my life, and many lives.<\/p>\n She becomes the mother. Perhaps best written The Mother. Something rich. A person we can call on. Our mother.<\/p>\n I\u2019m absolutely taken with the fact that some iconic images of her appear indistinguishable from icons of Quanyin, who occupies some cross over places in Buddhist and East Asian hearts.<\/p>\n Mary! Guanyin! Hear our prayer\u2026<\/p>\n