Quiet Mary

On Sunday, the Feast of Our Lady of Guadalupe, one of my Mary-loving friends had a gathering for all of her Mary-loving friends. We ate chocolate, drank Prosecco with pomegranates dropped in (yummy, pretty and in keeping with the theme), and made Mary art. One of us (so not me) is a theologian/art teacher. Is there a better combination? Really? 

She led us through the art project and even let us all veer from it totally and do our own thing, like all good art teachers/theologians should do, if you ask me. This is a picture of what I ended up with. In Mary's hair is written the Hail Mary over and over again. We were supposed to chop up Mary's face into sections and in each section do a repeated pattern of something that represented Mary: bumblebees, roses, fleur-dis-lis, pomegranates, etc. I was all set to do that, had penciled out my sections and was ready to go to town when I stopped and announced that I didn't want to do that. Not like me at all to buck "authority."

The friend/teacher said, "You don't have to. I can imagine for you that it would be hard to hear Mary through all that noise."

Visual noise. Yes, that was it, exactly. Although I had looked at the prototype and admired it greatly, I didn't want to have it in my home, much less create it. 

Thank you, Quiet Mary. I can hear you now.