Friday, September 26, 2008

crystal vulva

so the new roman catholic cathedral in my city just got dedicated yesterday. no, that's not me in the red ao dai or the nun frock. during the taking of this photo and the dedication of the cathedral , i was 100 feet away walking along the lake on my way to the cathedral to bourgeois green living--Whole Foods.

i think its interesting in this era of populist evangelical born-again undo-the-constitutional-separation-between-church-and-state, that the roman catholic church chooses to name their newest Cathedral "Christ the Light" rather than the usual array of saints and the ever popular Mary of the Sacred Bleeding Heart and its various iterations. (and let's not even get into how they got the $190 million to build after it shelled out hundreds of millions to pay the victims of priest child molestation). i guess they're not immune to the X-n zeitgeist and wanted to assert their own affiliation to christianity... but then the cathedral looks like a vulva.

see, i called it years ago that the cathedral design was vulvular. i say it on a near daily basis when we pass by on the way to and from home. and here's the proof to my puddin'.

ah you say, but it looks like a fish. not just any fish but the tilapia that christ himself ate and that has become the symbol of christianity. indeed, this article about the cathedral explains the design concept thusly:
More than 1,000 sheets of glass will cloak a skeleton of Douglas fir, forming a luminous 12-story dome inspired by the fish shape known as the vesica piscis, an ancient symbol of Christianity. (LA Times 9.2.2007)

ah, i say, and there it is--a Vulva. an exalted yoni in glass & wood. and there ain't no contradiction in that. for those of you who aren't familiar with the symbology of the sacred feminine in the pre-christian mother goddess multi-millineal timespan, the diamond or marquise shape is an ancient symbol of you guessed it, the Vulva--the true origins of human Life. when christianity sought to convert the masses of goddess-lovin' pagans, it co-opted many of the holy days & symbols along the way. and in time, the symbol of the Mother Goddess' yoni became the fish symbol of Christ, and the Mother Goddess herself became Mary, mother of god.

there you have it oaklanders, a lakeside, monumental, sacred crystal vulva nestled amongst the steel & concrete phalluses of downtown commerce.

and can i tell you, that's the biggest yoni i have ever seen! true story!

p.s. while i'm on the topic of female genitalia, may i just say for those of you fond of binary analogies, the female equivalent of the penis (which is a sexual and urinary organ) is not the vagina (internal muscular canal, no urine passeth this way). that is just anatomically incomparable. but, you protest, we like to be reductive and teach our children to say "a boy has a penis and a girl has a [singular noun]". nope you are wrong. if you are speaking of external genitalia the anatomically correct term is vulva. if you are speaking to reproductive ability, that would be uterus or ovaries as the case may be.

p.p.s. and while i'm talking about catholics, (the now Monseigneur) Father Dennis is a racist! While the presiding priest at Holy Spirit, he hated the vietnamese parishoners and called me and my friend Ha "you barbarians!" when he caught us trying to sneak into the hall with the secret method passed down kid-to-kid to use the phone (no vandalism, honest).

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