I was in a contemplative prayer part of the retreat last weekend. I don’t quite get it. I feel like it is Old-Age meditation, rather than New Age. There isn’t a structure. I got a little distracted.

I started looking around. We were in a tiny chapel. There’s this nice sculpture of Mary to the left of the altar.

I studied it for a while. Then I looked down. Why is there a snake hanging out under Mary’s feet? Why are her feet bare?

This hardly seems fair. Are we harking back to Eve here? How long are women going to have to pay for that mistake? See my “Eve Was Framed” post for further musings on that.

Perhaps it is like the Hindu sculptures of Shiva. Sometimes he is depicted with a dwarf under his feet. It represents ignorance. By standing on it, he is supposed to be showing that he has defeated it.

Perhaps they are saying symbolically that Mary has cancelled out the error of Eve. She didn’t go against God, she submitted fully to God’s will. She didn’t say No to God. She said Yes.

There’s a problem with this imagery though. If you stand on something unstable, you yourself will become unstable. Standing on ignorance is to make your base ignorance itself. Plus, to refer to ignorance or sin, even in the negative, is still to give it energy.