While traveling in Brazil last month, I stumbled across this beautiful icon of a saint I had never seen before. After doing a little bit of internet digging, to my wondrous amazement, I discovered that I had met Saint Sarah (!!!) (or Sara la Kali), who is the patron saint of gypsies, travelers, and refugees. Over the years, her image has gradually been intertwined with images of the Black Madonna and the Hindu goddess, Kali, to embody ideas of the sacred feminine. When I saw her, my jaw dropped. It was like the universe was speaking directly to ME.

Here was a saint, with my name, representing all misfits everywhere who love adventures and travel (and I LOVE adventures and travel), wrapped up in images of divinity. The underdog, minority, traveling, female saint who is a symbol of refuge to the persecuted and marginalized, shining in all her glory and whispering in my ear about all of the buried, hidden, sacred things that I wasn't suppose to know about growing up. Somehow the misfits and gypsies and travelers managed to keep this image alive in a world where men dominate the celestial scene. I was in love!

I was in love because in the tradition in which I was raised, women were left out. God was referred to in only male terms, the female saints were strategically left out of the story, and women were forbidden from leading congregations. This was my story. Growing up in a super duper conservative, Christian community in the Midwestern suburbs, I was forbidden from accessing God in the ways that my male counterparts could. Despite my talents in music, I was not allowed on the stage at the youth group services without a male present to "lead me". I was told that I needed the spiritual legitimacy of a man in order to do what I loved doing the most. If I wanted to function in any leadership capacity, I needed to get married so that a man could "cover me". We talked about God as father and king, and we talked about St. Augustine and St. Francis. But we never talked God as mother, and we never talked about St. Catherine, and certainly we never talked about St. Sarah. Without knowing it at the time, I was slamming up against the stained glass ceiling, face first.

What does this do to a woman's psyche? How do we relate to God when we are forbidden from accessing God? How does a woman find solace in a tradition that strategically forgets about us? How do we remember our own divinity when there are no images, stories, or role models that connect us to that divinity? These have been some of the questions that I have sought to answer in my adulthood. These are questions that I ask with my clients and my students as we process spiritual wounding, abuse, trauma, and misogyny found in churches and organizations near and far.

In Saint Sarah, I saw an image of a marginalized, adventurer, misfit saint who survived thousands of years of patriarchy to show us the power of a woman's story. In Saint Sarah I saw all of the women I work with and love, who have traveled, struggled, fought, wrestled, and ultimately won the right to share their stories. In Saint Sarah I saw myself and my story. This one little icon, tucked away in a crumbling church in South America, gave me hope that women survive, and our stories of struggle and adventure are the evidence of the divine at work in our world.

 

 

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