We saw our lovely friends for lunch today.
We ended up at the playground opposite a church i have walked by many times (Eglise De La Duarade), but never gone in. I think because it was meant to be today. With my newest friend. The blahs of yesterday gone and forgotten. The husbands getting on well. The children spinning, climbing and generally torturing each other on the playground equipment.
After our trip to Rocamadour to the "Madonna Noire" i googled black Madonnas and discovered there is one here in Toulouse. With our Polish friends we had a discussion, me telling them about my story (you can read the other post here) and they told us their story of the famous black Madonna in their church in Poland. (see here)
I told you "kindred".
We girls excused ourselves, "said we would be back in 10minutes" and went to see her. WOW !
She was beautiful.
My friend told me about the regal dress she wears and that it is changed at certain times. In the Polish church once a year.
The altar, painting and design are inherently feminine.
The pinks and blues soft and kind.
God & the angels looking over La Madonna serene.
This church is not popular. It is bit hard to find the entrance, dark inside and not lovingly restored like other churches i have been to in the last few months.
Yet i love that about it.
It must be how art restorers and archaeologist must feel when they know they have found something amazing.
One day it may become popular again and be cleaned, untarnished and mended.
Until then i will take her as she is; well worn, ageing and with a deeply lived facade.
The windows are broken and gloomy daylight the only illumination.
The stars still shine here, even in the day.
You know this tiny photo hardly does justice to the magnificence and vast grandness of this ceiling.
This looks like a carving but it is painted. Chipped and graffitied.
A painting to celebrate the arrival or "Virgin Noire".
“Every archetype has its seasons. They come and go according to the deepest, often unconscious, needs of the psyche both personal and collective. Today the Black Madonna is returning.”
Matthew Fox, Return of the Black Madonna, ©2006
I seek light. I am a "light hunter".
Light also has shadow and embracing the darkness helps.
To hold both in your hands and your heart is what makes us whole.
Amazing mural clearer in the photograph.
The blurriness in the photos is due to the poor lighting and no flash. Also an unsteady hand.
Excerpt from Sue Monk Kidd, author, "I first became aware of the Black Madonna in my late thirties through the writings of Jungian analyst, Marion Woodman. It was a revelation to me that hundreds of very old Black Madonnas exist in Europe and elsewhere, and that their darkness is a legacy of ancient black goddesses. I think of the Black Madonna as the White Madonna before the church scrubbed the really interesting stuff out of her. I began to study the Black Madonna, and to travel to her pilgrimage sites, especially in France. I discovered that many of her stories and history reveal a Mary who is openly defiant in the face of oppression. In Poland, South and Central America, and other places, she has been a symbol of revolution. I decided I would create a Black Madonna for the novel (Secret Life of Bees), who had existed during slavery in the South, and that she would be a symbol of freedom and consolation."
The truth is always the truth.
The truth of today is that we are blessed in so many ways.
The journey is challenging, tricky and sometimes unkind.
It is worthwhile when deep love is revealed and universal truths prevail.
sparkle & twirl deeply*
