Day Nine of Art Novena to Our Lady of Lourdes

Photograph taken by myself during procession at Lourdes

Visionary or apparitional culture is no static force, a cultural 'given' that people can join as members.
It is dynamic, responding to contemporary political, social and religious realities
and shaping those realities, and is also shaped
by the individuals who identify themselves as Marian devotees
and visionaries.
Visionary culture is a confluence of Catholic devotions, symbols,
and traditions of innovative responses to modern
contexts of negotiations among social, religious and interpersonal
forces of the interactions of apparitions believers
and apparition doubters and of the loving
and guiding influence of Our Lady, who for believers is imminently present.
Visionary culture is a worldview, a palette of practices, an understanding
of the cosmos, a palette on which individuals paint
the stories of their lives.
              Extract from Out Lady of Emmitsburg by Jill Krebs

Photographs taken by myself during procession at Lourdes

'I realized that all the powers of the Mothers, of Tara, Durga, Kali are in Mary.

She has Tara's sublime tenderness;

Durga's inaccessible silent calm force;

the grandeur and terribilta of Kali.

But Mary is also a woman,

a poor woman

and a human mother.

In her the full path of the sacred feminine is lived.

In her we have a complete image of the Divine Mother,

an image at once transcendent and immanent,

other-worldly and this-wordly,

at once mystical and political and practical.

In Mary the Divine Mother comes to earth and lives on earth

and lives, the passionate, strong, serious,

simple and transforming life that shows us all how to live.

 Mary is the bridge between heaven and earth,

between the human and the divine worlds,

between human and divine justice."

Andrew Harvey in The Return of the Mother

Mary statue in my garden in Durbanville South Africa

A blessed feast day of Our Lady of Lourdes to you