I was working long hours as an attorney at a law firm in the Sears Tower. Each morning I did my best to get to Starbucks around 7:15 so I could read for 10 minutes before clients and partners started calling and emailing me.

I discovered it was impossible to read The Da Vinci Code for only 10 minutes.

While I managed not to be late for anything, I read much more than I really had time for and sped through the book in a few days.

More Than A Page-Turner

My friend’s strongest reaction to the book wasn’t to its fast pace.

Rather, what she learned about the early Catholic Church fascinated her, especially how the roles of and for women had been downplayed and buried.

A devoted Catholic her whole life, she felt angry that part of the Church’s history had been hidden from her.

What Women Loved About The Da Vinci Code

I noticed that whenever I spoke to a woman about The Da Vinci Code, her eyes lit up. She always mentioned the book’s themes of divine femininity and a deeper, more significant role for women in Christianity’s early years.

It seemed to me that this spoke to the absence of leadership roles for, and divine images of, women in many major religions (particularly Judaism, Islam, and Christianity).

At the time, trying to answer my own questions about religion, I was reading a lot of books on the origins of monotheism. I also read about early goddess culture. (Many of those books are listed in the bibliography for The Awakening.)

The fascination so many women, including me, felt for a story that put femininity at the heart of the divine stayed with me.

The Seeds Of A Supernatural Thriller

A couple years later when I was ready to start a new novel, these things came together in my mind:

• the reading I’d done about the history of religion
• my love of the book Rosemary’s Baby and the movie The Terminator and
• my experience growing up in house where we talked about stories of the Virgin Mary

What if? I thought.

What if a young woman who has never had sex discovers she’s pregnant and a religious cult tells her the baby will be a messiah—until, that is, they find out the child will be a girl?

That’s how the idea for The Awakening was born.

That’s all for today.

Next Wednesday I’ll talk about questions regarding abortion that arose when I was planning and writing The Awakening Series.

The post The Da Vinci Code, The Divine Feminine, and The Awakening appeared first on Lisa Lilly.

The Catholic Church insisting Mary remained a virgin forever strikes me as having many potential ill effects for women.  For one, “virgin” is often paired with “pure,” suggesting sex is impure.  Also, Mary is held up as the ideal woman and, as Nate Spencer notes, she is both a virgin and a mother.  A nearly impossible ideal for a real human woman to achieve, even if she wanted to.  So women begin the Christian Bible by literally leading men into sin (Eve) and end with the unachievable “ideal” woman (Mary).  Not only are women bad to begin with, there is no hope of redemption.

And why should a human woman want to be both a virgin and a mother?  To venerate this version of Mary is to deny women’s sexuality, as well as to deny the deep emotional connection with another  human being that can accompany a sexual relationship.  Plus, this vision underscores that a woman’s value and purpose can be only one thing – to be a mother.  For those who either cannot or choose not to fulfill this role, there is nothing left.  And for Mary, if in fact she lived and was both virgin and mother, what was her life like?  The New Testament tells us little, other than that Joseph stood by her after an angel spoke to him.  At least one passage suggests Jesus himself regarded her role as his mother as not that important.  When a woman praises to Jesus “the womb that bore thee,” he says, “ ‘Rather, blessed are they who hear the word of God and keep it.’ ”.   Luke 11:27-28.  Only one gospel even mentions Mary being there when Jesus was crucified.  According to Catholic dogma, Mary was assumed bodily into heaven for her troubles, rather than dying, but that appears nowhere in the Bible.

And so I wonder, what might happen if a real young woman today found herself in Mary’s situation, a pregnant virgin.  Who would believe her?  How would she react, especially if no angel from on high showed up to explain it all?  And would people who were traditionally religious be more or less apt to believe her?

http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005CDXXY0

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-awakening-lisa-lilly/1104252756?ean=2940012849618

The post Mary: The Unachievable “Ideal Woman” appeared first on Lisa Lilly.