On International Women’s Day

Today we lift up women around the world.  Women who know joy, women who know suffering.  Women who lead, and women who remain oppressed.  We rise for a moment together, up out of the ashes of oppression, war, violence, grief, loneliness, exhaustion; we defy the abuse, the microaggressions, the double standards, the fact that we are so often passed over, dismissed, discarded, unappreciated, unheard, untrusted.  Inequity, social conditioning, and existing laws everywhere tell the world our bodies are not our own, our choices are not our own, our minds are not our own; and our dreams, if we have them, are usually centered around somebody else.  In too many countries we are faceless victims, without even a hope of battling the patriarchies put in place to keep us down because our power is so feared.  All over the world, women are controlled, sold, and trolled.

In 2017 just after my husband announced he didn’t want to be married anymore, I made a trek to St. John the Divine’s in New York City, one of the world’s largest cathedrals, still unfinished today though construction began in 1892.  As an artist I appreciate that one purpose of art is to rouse the imagination and offer a new lens through which truth can be revealed; at its best, I believe, art can be an extension of the creative force of the Divine.  I had often wanted to visit St. John’s knowing they embrace all art forms as integral to spiritual life, to worship, and to stirring the aliveness of believers and seekers both.  I had visited once before for their magnificent Blessing of the Animals festival, but had always wanted to attend a concert, art exhibit, performance, poetry reading—any one of the myriad expressions of Divine love that I believed would set my soul on fire.  But in my pain on this particular day, I had another mission.  I was on the road to meet Christa.

Christa is a 250-pound bronze sculpture, 4×5 feet in size, mounted on a Lucite cross.  She’s pictured here in this blog post.  If you missed it above, look closely below. 

Christa was created by internationally acclaimed British artist and sculptor Edwina Sandys (granddaughter of Winston Churchill) and first exhibited in London for the United Nations International Decade for Women in 1975.  Christa was (and remains) a provocative and controversial work.  She was first installed at St. John’s during Holy Week in 1984, and was met with cries of “scandalous”, “blasphemous”, “indefensible”, “shocking”, and at the very least, “inappropriate”.  Time Magazine called her “vexing” and The New York Times’ reaction was “apoplectic”.  The hate mail piled up.  She was removed from that space and remained homeless when no space would welcome her.   She was even warehoused in the artist’s loft for a time.  But in 2016 (the very year my husband left), she came back to St. John’s and is now a permanent installation there.  I believe the mission of Christa is not to replace Jesus, but to reveal him. 

Looking up at her on that painful day, I too was shocked.  Shocked for a moment out of my intense personal suffering and suddenly, for the very first time, I felt profoundly known and understood by this God of ours.  And I knew then and there I would not be walking my road alone.  God has not forgotten women.  No woman is invisible to God.

Let us celebrate women and the feminine spirit in everyone.  No matter their circumstance, women all over the world hold the world’s hope, beauty, strength, intuition, intellect, and deep wisdom; they possess the power of creation and of connection.  Let us work for women everywhere—that they be valued, seen, respected, and above all, loved.  My prayer on this International Women’s Day is that women everywhere can lift their hearts as one, from the ashes in all corners of the globe, with courage and with hope. 

Thank you, Christa, for helping me recognize how intimately known and deeply loved I am.  You are a powerful international symbol of female suffering, but also of Divine’s deep understanding of, compassion for, and profound connection with women; a symbol of women’s power to overcome.  Christa gave me courage to walk my road a little further.  I hope she inspires you too. 

Shared by Karla Hendrik