UpStairs Lounge fire remembered 40 years later: 32 died in deadliest attack on LGBT people

“See You at the UpStairs Lounge” by Skylar Fein

The deadliest attack on LGBT people in U.S. history is being remembered in powerful new ways today on its anniversary, including two new films. An arson fire killed 32 people at the UpStairs Lounge, a gay bar in New Orleans, 42 years ago today on June 24, 1973.

For a new version of this article, click this link to Qspirit.net:
UpStairs Lounge fire: 32 killed in deadly attack on LGBTQ people


“Upstairs Inferno,” directed by Robert Camina and narrated by Christopher Rice, premieres tonight in New Orleans, where “Tracking Fire” is currently filming on location with director Sheri Wright. “Upstairs Inferno” brings humanity to the headlines by interviewing more than 20 people, including several survivors who have kept silent for decades.

Few people cared about the UpStairs Lounge fire at the time. The crime was never solved, churches refused to do funerals for the dead, and four bodies went unclaimed. Now there is a resurgence of interest in the martyrs of New Orleans.

The fire is examined in depth in the 2016 book “Stand by Me: The Forgotten History of Gay Liberation” by Harvard history professor Jim Downs. The fire is covered in the first chapter, titled “The Largest Massacre of Gay People in American History.”

Other recent works about the fire include an award-winning online exhibit at the LGBT Religious Archives Network; the 2014 book “The Up Stairs Lounge Arson: Thirty-two Dead in a New Orleans Gay Bar, June 24, 1973” by Clayton Delery-Edwards; and the musical drama “Upstairs” by Louisiana playwright Wayne Self. In 2013 the New Orleans Museum of Art acquired Louisiana artist Skylar Fein’s major installation “Remember the UpStairs Lounge.” The tragedy is also recounted in a short documentary by award-winning film maker Royd Anderson released on June 24, 2013, and in the 2011 book “Let the Faggots Burn: The UpStairs Lounge Fire” by Johnny Townsend.

For queer people, the UpStairs Lounge served as a sanctuary in every sense of the world. It was a seemingly safe place where LGBT people met behind boarded-up windows that hid them from a hostile world. Worship services were held there by the LGBT-affirming Metropolitan Community Church of New Orleans. The pastor, Rev. William R. Larson, died along with a third of congregation. Half the victims were MCC members. Those who died included people from all walks of life: preachers, hustlers, soldiers, musicians, parents, professionals and a mother with her two sons.

The horror of the fire was compounded by the homophobic reactions. Churches refused to hold funerals for the victims. Finally MCC founder Rev. Troy Perry flew to New Orleans to conduct a group memorial service. Families of four victims were apparently so ashamed of their gay relatives that they would not identify or claim their remains. The City refused to release their bodies to MCC for burial, and instead laid them to rest in a mass grave at a potter’s field.


UPSTAIRS INFERNO - Teaser Trailer [HD] from Camina Entertainment on Vimeo.

The full-length feature documentary “Upstairs Inferno” was produced and directed by Camina, whose previous film was the widely praised “Raid of the Rainbow Lounge” about a police raid at a Texas gay bar. Now he has created the most comprehensive and authoritative film on America's biggest gay mass murder. Survivors interviewed in the film include Ricky Everett and Francis Dufrene and a survivor who lost her lover Reggie Adams in the blaze.

Narrator Chrisopher Rice is an openly gay New York Times bestselling author whose hometown is New Orleans. His debut novel "A Density of Souls" got a landslide of media attention, mostly because he is the son of famed vampire author Anne Rice.

“Upstairs Inferno” will play at film festivals around the United States over the next 18 months before it becomes available on DVD. Two videos trailers for the film have been released. The first trailer provides an overview while the second trailer present additional interviews about the personal impact of the fire.


UPSTAIRS INFERNO - Trailer 2 [HD] from Camina Entertainment on Vimeo.

Meanwhile a different film crew working on “Tracking Fire” discovered vandalism on the memorial plaque while filming an interview there in May 2015. Someone through a paint bomb at the plaque, leaving it discolored even after the paint was cleaned off.

A sidewalk memorial plaque outside the UpStairs Lounge building in New Orleans was dedicated in 2003 and vandalized in 2015 (photo courtesy of "Tracking Fire")

“Tracking Fire” is just about to wrap filming and a video trailer is posted. “My focus is to tell the story of what happened, honor the victims, including the mother who died with her two sons, the survivors, their friends and family. It is also my intention to present a way for healing to replace the pain of tragedy and to offer a healthy resolution for personal and social conflict,” the film’s website explains.

Announcing the full-length trailer for Tracking Fire, a documentary which chronicles an unsolved case of arson that claimed 32 lives - one of the worst tragedies in LGBT history in America.
Posted by Tracking Fire on Monday, March 24, 2014

LGBT Religious Archives created an online exhibit about the UpStairs Lounge Fire with more than 120 artifacts that weave together stories about the fire and its aftermath, early gay activism, and the beginnings of Metropolitan Community Church in New Orleans. Original artifacts include newspaper and journal articles, photographs, correspondence, government reports and recordings from the time. The exhibit went online in September 2013 and received the 2014 Allan Bérubé Prize for “outstanding work in public or community-based LGBT and/or queer history.”

The crime received little attention from police, elected officials and news media.  The only national TV news coverage at the time was these video clips from CBS and NBC:



Louisiana playwright and composer Wayne Self spent five years weaving together the stories of the UpStairs Lounge fire victims and survivors. The result was the dramatic musical "Upstairs," which has been performed in various cities in Louisiana, New York and California after opening in New Orleans and Los Angeles in June 2013. He says his work takes the form “of tribute, of memorial, even of hagiography.”

The musical "Upstairs" brings back to life people such as MCC assistant pastor George “Mitch” Mitchell, who managed to escape the fire, but ran back into the burning building to save his boyfriend, Louis Broussard. Both men died in the fire. Their bodies were found clinging to one another in the ashes. In the musical, Mitchell sings a song called “I’ll Always Return”:

…Modern age,
Life to wage.
To get ahead, must turn the page.
I can't promise I'll never leave,
But I'll always,
I'll always return….

“I’ll Always Return” is one of five songs from the musical that are available online as workshop selection at http://upstairsmusical.bandcamp.com/.

Self raised funds so that Mitchell’s son and the son’s wife and could travel from Alabama to attend the play. Many victims of the UpStairs Lounge fire were survived by children who are still alive today.

The musical also explores the unsettled and unsettling question of who set the fire. Rodger Dale Nunez, a hustler and UpStairs Lounge customer, was arrested for the crime, but escaped and was never sentenced. He was thrown out of the UpStairs Lounge shortly before the fire for starting a fight with a fellow hustler. He committed suicide a year later. Self says that other theories arose to blame the KKK and the police, but he implicates Nunez -- with room for doubt -- in the musical.

A gay man may have lit the fire, but the real culprit is still society’s homophobia that set the fuse inside him. Hatred for LGBT people was also responsible for the high death toll in another way. The fire was especially deadly because the windows were covered with iron bars and boards so nobody could see who was inside. But they also prevented many people from getting outside in an emergency.

The UpStairs Lounge is recreated with haunting detail in Skylar Fein’s 90-piece art installation. He builds an environment with artifacts, photos, video, and a reproduction of the bar’s swinging-door entrance, evoking memories of how the place looked before and after the fire. “Remember the UpStairs Lounge” debuted in New Orleans in 2008 and was shown in New York in 2010. In January 2013 the New Orleans Museum of Art announced that it had acquired the installation. Fein donated it to the museum, saying that he did not want to dismantle the work or profit from its sale. He discusses the fire and shows objects from his installation in this video.

The victims of the UpStairs Lounge fire are part of LGBT history now, along with the queer martyrs who were burned at the stake for sodomy in medieval times. Their history is told in my previous post Ash Wednesday: Queer martyrs rise from the ashes.

The UpStairs Lounge fire gives new meaning to the Upper Room where Jesus and his disciples shared a Last Supper. It was also the place where they hid after his crucifixion, but the locked doors did not prevent the risen Christ from joining them and empowering them with the Holy Spirit.

The shared journey of LGBT people includes much loss -- from hate crimes, suicide, AIDS, and government persecution. But the LGBT community has also found ways to keep going. Reginald, one of the survivors of the UpStairs Lounge fire, expresses this strength in the song "Carry On" from the "Upstairs" musical:

I can speak.
I can teach.
I can give of the compassion I've received.
I can build.
I can sing!
I can honor all the loves,
That have passed away from me,
By sharing all the good that they have ever shown to me.
I can live my life.
I can carry on.
Carry on.
Carry on!

New Orleans film maker Royd Anderson's “The UpStairs Lounge Fire” documentary lasts 27 minutes (longer than the fire itself) and includes interviews with an eyewitness, a son who lost his father, a rookie firefighter called to the scene, author Johnny Townsend, and artist Skylar Fein, whose art exhibit about the tragedy gained national prominence. Here is a video trailer for the documentary.



The value of remembering the UpStairs Lounge fire was summed up by Lynn Jordan in the LGBT Religious Archives online exhibit that he co-curated. Jordan, founding member of MCC San Francisco, visited New Orleans shortly before and after the fire. In his introduction to the UpStairs exhibit, he explains:

“I left New Orleans with the promise to each of the 32 who would become immortal, that I would remember their sacrifice and carry them with me in all that would unfold in my life. The research and documentation that is an integral part of this Upstairs exhibit is “my” living into completion the promise to these “32 martyrs of the flames” that they “would not” be forgotten.

For those who would say that this event was so yesterday, i.e., we have achieved so many advances in our civil rights and in our acceptance for this to happen again, I would remind them that hate and intolerance are not constrained to finding shelter in any one moment, any one location in our “queer” history. To focus only on how far our LGBTQI communities may have progressed in 40 years; to fail to remember the sacrifice of all the lives lost or shattered in this journey; to lapse into complacency about our personal security: places us at risk of reviving the tragedy of our past in the present.”

___
Related links:

UpStairs Lounge online exhibit (LGBT Religious Archives)

The Horror Upstairs (Time.com - June 21, 2013)

UpStairs Lounge arson attack (Wikipedia)

The Tragedy of the UpStairs Lounge (Jimani.com - website of the bar now at the same location)

32 Died, and I Wrote a Musical About It: Why I Did It and Would Do It Again by Wayne Self (HuffingtonPost)

NOMA acquires evocative major artwork by Skylar Fein: 'Remember the Upstairs Lounge' (nola.com)

‘Upstairs Inferno’ Recounts The Gay Mass Murder You Didn’t Know About (2015 interview with Robert Camina)

____
This post is part of the GLBT Saints series by Kittredge Cherry at the Jesus in Love Blog. Saints, martyrs, mystics, prophets, witnesses, heroes, holy people, humanitarians, deities and religious figures of special interest to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) and queer people and our allies are covered on appropriate dates throughout the year.

Copyright © Kittredge Cherry. All rights reserved.
http://www.jesusinlove.blogspot.com/
Jesus in Love Blog on LGBT spirituality and the arts

The Seminarian: Gay theology student looks for love in new DVD

“The Seminarian,” a drama about a closeted gay seminarian’s search for love, was released on DVD this week.

Ryan, the title character, is completing a thesis on “The Divine Gift of Love” at an evangelical seminary while struggling in a relationship with a man who won’t commit. Questions of love, loneliness, faith and suffering are illuminated by Ryan’s interactions with his distant gay lover, two gay classmates, and the devout mother who doesn’t know about his sexual orientation.

Surprisingly, these evangelical seminarians apparently feel no conflict over being gay and Christian. The Bible passages used to condemn homosexuality are barely even mentioned. They don’t worry much about whether to stay in the closet either. Coming out issues do arise, but in true 21st-century style, these young gays show no paranoia about hiding their sexual orientation, even in a hostile seminary setting. They’re not even worried about using their degrees to get a job after graduation. Ryan focuses on a more universal question: How can love be a gift from God when it causes so much suffering?

This is a sweet, slow-paced film with no gratuitous sex. It would probably qualify for an R rating based on brief male frontal nudity and some low-key sex scenes. The film grows out of first-hand experiences at a conservative seminary. Writer-director Joshua Lim recently attended Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, California, where the movie was shot. Lim was born in Malaysia and raised in Singapore.

Viewers with seminary degrees will get a kick out of the film’s valiant efforts to show the drama within such intellectual labors as library research and writing a master’s thesis in theology. Many may find understated inspiration here.
___
Related link:
Trailer for The Seminarian

Conservatives protest “Most Fabulous Story Ever Told” for lesbian Virgin Mary

Ad for “The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told” from Queen City Theatre Company

Conservative Christian protestors couldn’t stop a North Carolina production of “The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told,” a gleefully queer play based on the Bible. Despite protest letters and prayer vigils, the comedy is running through Feb. 18 in Charlotte, NC.

(Update: Another controversy arose in April 2017 when a Out Front Theatre Company in Atlanta prepared to stage the play.)

“The implication that the Blessed Virgin Mary is a lesbian is gravely offensive to Catholics and to all Christians,” bishop Peter J. Jugis wrote in a Jan. 31 letter asking the Blumenthal Performing Arts Center to cancel the show. Jugis heads Charlotte’s Roman Catholic diocese.

As a lesbian Christian, I must disagree with the bishop. The play uses witty LGBT-oriented humor to express love and the explore human connection to God. I find it appropriate and even inspiring for a play to suggest that the Virgin Mary was a lesbian.

A long-running off-Broadway hit, “The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told” was written by Paul Rudnick in 1998. It puts a flamboyantly gay twist on the creation story with two same-sex couples: Adam and Steve -- and Jane and Mabel! They share adventures together through the centuries, including a hilarious time on Noah’s Ark and slavery in Egypt under an effeminate Pharaoh who won’t let them go because of his crush on Moses.

The second act finds the foursome in contemporary New York City on Christmas Eve at a party thrown by Adam and Steve as Jane and Mabel wait for their child to be born. When Mabel gives birth, it echoes Mary’s virgin birth, leading to the accusations of blasphemy.

Rudnick is a gay Jewish American writer whose other credits include Jeffrey and Addams Family Values.

About 100 Charlotte Catholics held a peaceful protest in front of the theater on opening night (Feb. 2). The protest is covered in the news video below. Conservatives plan to continue “Holy Hour of Reparation” prayer vigils in homes and chapels during every performance.

Queen City Theatre Company, producer of the play, defended it in a statement quoted in news reports. They say it will “celebrate love, faith, belief, God, and the right to question why we exist and why are on this earth. This production will not be stopped out of fear or pressure.”

Thank you, Queen City Theatre Company! You are making God more accessible to LGBT people of faith and our allies. The protests only prove how important it is to present this vision of the story that is indeed the most fabulous every told.
___

Related links:

Play Featuring Gay Versions Of Bible Stories Causes Outrage: An Atlanta theater defended its staging of “The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told” (Huffington Post, April 18, 2017)

Catholics protest 'blasphemous' play (Charlotte Observer)

Book: “The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told” by Paul Rudnick

Lesbian couple portrays Madonna (art by Elisabeth Ohlson Wallin)

Lesbian Madonna, lover and son affirm Christmas (art by Becki Jayne Harrelson)

Copyright © Kittredge Cherry. All rights reserved.
Qspirit.net presents the Jesus in Love Blog on LGBTQ spirituality.

Our Lady and Queer Saints art attacked as blasphemy (art by Alma Lopez)

Nursing Madonna honors body, spirit and women

Nursing Madonna: Our Lady of Travels to Life with Reality

Photo by Trudie Barreras

An unusual nursing Madonna statue emphasizes the body-to-body connection between Mary and the baby Jesus.

The nursing Madonna figurine illustrates the flight into Egypt that is remembered this time of year. According to the gospel of Matthew, the Holy Family traveled from Bethlehem to Egypt after an angel warned them that King Herod would try to kill the infant Jesus.

It’s important to honor the breastfeeding Madonna because Christianity has often denied women’s experiences and the human body itself. We return to wholeness and balance by valuing the natural act of nursing as holy and good.

Some people were shocked by the bare breasts of the Madonna when Atlanta writer Trudie Barreras put the statue in a meditation chapel at her church. The pastor regretfully asked her to take it home. For the full story about the statue, see our previous post “Nursing Madonna shocks and inspires.”

In her monologue “Miriam’s Journey,” Barreras does a wonderful job of describing the physical sensations and spiritual musings of Mary as she nursed on donkey back. Here is an excerpt:

We soon became aware
Our little Yeshua needed safety greater than was offered
By our small-town obscurity.

So my brave Joseph took us forth on a retracing of the journey
Followed by our ancestor Joseph as he was led in slavery to Egypt.

That was when reality came crashing in!
I’d thought the way was hard
When first we went to Bethlehem!
Yet now I held the babe within my arms
For every dusty, weary, jolting league.
Mile after mile, day after day,
Nothing to be seen but rocks and thorn-trees
And endless burning desert sands.
The patient donkey plodded on
While Joseph walked the path ahead,
Probing crevices for serpents, scanning horizons for raiders.

I was afraid, yet somehow I saw with doubled vision
As I gazed into that infant face,
For God was here, and we had Abba’s promise
That if we did our part, and followed faithfully,
And did not turn aside from this hard path,
The angels would be there to guide us.
And oh, the blessing of those warm lips upon my breast,
Drawing nourishment and love from my deepest being!
I knew then what I have clung to ever since –
Somehow that vast Omniscient Spirit of the Cosmos,
All Powerful, Eternal, All Supreme,
Has chosen us, weak mortals that we are
To bear Love’s fragile gifts to one another!
We matter! What a miracle, we matter!
What an awesome challenge,
Knowing that if we don’t bear our burdens in obedience
Incredible blessings for humanity are lost.
It was these thoughts that kept me going
Long after weary arms would have let go!

At last that first hard journey ended, but of course
Really our pilgrimage had just begun.

For another excerpt from “Miriam’s Journey,” see our previous post “Eros & Christ: Mary’s Ecstasy in Drama.”

___
Related link:
Our Lady of Milk: 20 Images of Mother Mary Nursing (St. Peter’s List)

Nursing Madonna honors body, spirit and women

Nursing Madonna: Our Lady of Travels to Life with Reality

Photo by Trudie Barreras

An unusual nursing Madonna statue emphasizes the body-to-body connection between Mary and the baby Jesus.

Some people were shocked by the bare breasts of the Madonna when Atlanta writer Trudie Barreras put the statue in a meditation chapel at her church. The pastor regretfully asked her to take it home. For the full story about the statue, see our previous post “Nursing Madonna shocks and inspires.”

It’s important to honor the breastfeeding Madonna because Christianity has often denied women’s experiences and the human body itself. We return to wholeness and balance by valuing the natural act of nursing as holy and good.

The nursing Madonna figurine illustrates the flight into Egypt. According to the gospel of Matthew, the Holy Family traveled from Bethlehem to Egypt after an angel warned them that King Herod would try to kill the infant Jesus.

In her monologue “Miriam’s Journey,” Barreras does a wonderful job of describing the physical sensations and spiritual musings of Mary as she nursed on donkey back. Here is an excerpt:

We soon became aware
Our little Yeshua needed safety greater than was offered
By our small-town obscurity.

So my brave Joseph took us forth on a retracing of the journey
Followed by our ancestor Joseph as he was led in slavery to Egypt.

That was when reality came crashing in!
I’d thought the way was hard
When first we went to Bethlehem!
Yet now I held the babe within my arms
For every dusty, weary, jolting league.
Mile after mile, day after day,
Nothing to be seen but rocks and thorn-trees
And endless burning desert sands.
The patient donkey plodded on
While Joseph walked the path ahead,
Probing crevices for serpents, scanning horizons for raiders.

I was afraid, yet somehow I saw with doubled vision
As I gazed into that infant face,
For God was here, and we had Abba’s promise
That if we did our part, and followed faithfully,
And did not turn aside from this hard path,
The angels would be there to guide us.
And oh, the blessing of those warm lips upon my breast,
Drawing nourishment and love from my deepest being!
I knew then what I have clung to ever since –
Somehow that vast Omniscient Spirit of the Cosmos,
All Powerful, Eternal, All Supreme,
Has chosen us, weak mortals that we are
To bear Love’s fragile gifts to one another!
We matter! What a miracle, we matter!
What an awesome challenge,
Knowing that if we don’t bear our burdens in obedience
Incredible blessings for humanity are lost.
It was these thoughts that kept me going
Long after weary arms would have let go!

At last that first hard journey ended, but of course
Really our pilgrimage had just begun.

For another excerpt from “Miriam’s Journey,” see our previous post “Eros & Christ: Mary’s Ecstasy in Drama.”

New play: Transwoman Jesus tells Christmas story

Above: “Concert of cherubs in the clouds” by Wenceslas Hollar, Wikimedia commons
Below: Poster from “Jesus, Queen of Heaven”

Jesus’ angelic birth highlights the holiness of EVERY birth in the following scene from the controversial new play “Jesus, Queen of Heaven” by Jo Clifford formerly John Clifford). This scene reminds us that angels surround us all.

As a special Christmas gift, Jo agreed to let the Jesus in Love Blog post part an excerpt from her play, which was protested by 300 Christian conservatives last month at its premiere in Scotland. They were upset because Jo presents Jesus as a transsexual woman.

However, Jo’s aim was to express love just as Jesus does in the Bible. I believe that this scene conveys the true meaning of Christmas:

Go home rejoicing.
Just as the shepherds did in the story of our birth,
Do you remember them?
The ones who were tending their flocks by night,
and the angels saying:
“Fear not. I bring you tidings of great joy.
You shall find the babe lying in a manger.”
And that was you. And you. And you.
And me too. All of us. In our swaddling clothes.
Dear little things that we were.
And still are.
And don’t tell me
There were no shepherds. Or that there were no
flocks.
Because they all went years ago when they built
the city by-pass.
Or that it wasn’t a manger. But a plastic box in a
run-down maternity ward. Without enough midwives.
Or there were no wise men,
Maybe just your dad, and him a bit pissed maybe,
being so nervous.
Think poetically.
Because what i tell you is true.
The whole truth and nothing but
Because, Beloved sisters and brothers and every
kind of sibling in Christ,
Because I am the truth.
And I am also the way and the life and a million
other things besides.
And the angels were there at your birth
And there was rejoicing and great gladness
And wise men did come with the most beautiful
gifts.
And the angels just so delightfully framing the
sky.
Because there are Angels. Angels everywhere.

For more info on Jo Clifford, please visit www.teatrodomundo.com. For more on the controversy, see my previous post "300 protest transsexual Jesus play."

300 protest transsexual Jesus play

Jesus is a trans woman in the poster for “Jesus, Queen of Heaven”

More than 300 conservative Christian protesters picketed a play about a transsexual Jesus recently in Glasgow, Scotland.

Waving signs and singing hymns, they blocked traffic for two hours on opening night of “Jesus, Queen of Heaven” at the Tron Theatre last week. The play was written and performed by Jo Clifford (formerly John Clifford), whose stated goal was to create greater understanding of transgendered people like herself.

The play expresses a theme of love and tolerance in keeping with Jesus’ own teachings in the Bible. The poster shows Clifford posing as Christ in a white dress with a halo and crucifixion wounds.

Promotional materials sum up the play this way: “Jesus is a transsexual woman. And it is now she walks the earth. This is a play with music that presents her sayings, her miracles, and her testimony. And she does not condemn the gays or the queers or the trans women or the trans men, and no, not the straight women nor the straight men neither. Because she is the Daughter of God, most certainly, and almost as certainly the son also. And God’s child condemns nobody. She can only love...”

In contrast, protestors condemned the play with signs saying “God: My Son is Not a Pervert” and “Jesus, King of Kings, Not Queen of Heaven.”

Clifford said in a news interview that she was deeply offended by the protestors’ misunderstanding of her play and their prejudice against transgenders.

The production is part of the publicly funded “Glasgay!” festival, Scotland’s annual celebration of GLBT culture.


I believe that it’s important to envision a transgender Jesus because Christ represents God made flesh, and we are all created in God’s image, whatever our gender identity or sexual orientation. When we can imagine God as transgender, it is easier to recognize the divinity within the transgendered people around us. The transgender Christ is especially valuable to counteract the bigots who use Christian rhetoric to justify discrimination against GLBT people.

Similar protests were sparked by “Corpus Christi,” a play by Terrence McNally about a gay Christ figure. Bomb threats almost prevented its off-Broadway opening in 1998.
____

P.S. For an excerpt from the play and great comments, see our more recent post “New play: Transwoman Jesus tells Christmas story.”

Eros & Christ: Mary’s ecstasy in drama

[Part of a series on Eros and Christ]

Mary’s ecstasy at the time of Christ’s conception is a recurring theme in the spirituality and work of Atlanta artist Trudie Barreras. Her ecstatic “Annunciation” painting was introduced in the previous post and is the logo for this series on Eros and Christ.

Long after doing the painting, Barreras was inspired to explore the theme of Mary’s ecstasy again. At a Mexican flea market in 2001, she discovered a statuette of Mary breastfeeding the baby Jesus while on donkey-back. The figurine inspired her to write a meditation titled “Miriam’s Journey.”

Designed as a first-person monologue, it runs from Mary’s betrothal as a teenager through her son’s death on the cross. “Miriam’s Journey” is written in free verse form and reads like poetry, although it is intended for production as part of a mini-play. An especially eloquent section describes how Mary felt when Jesus was conceived:

Suddenly, the light became, if possible,
Even more pure and liquid-brilliant.
It almost seemed to coalesce into a pillar of fire
Like the one that led our people out of bondage.
Somehow I found myself kneeling
And it seemed that I could see a form within the flame.

“Gabriel!” my heart acknowledged, “Messenger of God!”

Then I heard within my mind, or from outside,
I really could not say, a message clear and simple:

“Greetings, Miriam, for you are loved by Yahweh.
God needs a willing mother to bear Messiah for the world.
You are that Woman.”

My heart sang “Yes!”
Prayer hardly spoken, answered in a breath!
And yet, I knew that I must pause, and listen closely.

I heard myself responding, “How is this to be?
For though I am betrothed, I have not yet come together
With my husband.”

Even as this thought was framed, the answer echoed
Clearly in my soul: “Messiah is God’s son,
And needs no earthly father. As you accept this Gift,
God’s Spirit overshadows you!”

The next moment, it seemed,
I was completely consumed by that ecstatic light,
And yet I was not harmed!
Often before I had felt dim stirrings of the ecstasy
Of God’s Indwelling Spirit.
Now, suddenly, the Spirit was all of me,
And I was all of it!
Please forgive me if, even now, I have no words
To truly tell you how it was!

If in that single eternal moment time ceased to exist,
Immediately after, I reentered the stream of days.
And days grew into weeks, and weeks to months.
I soon discovered that my pregnancy was just like any other.

In addition to “Miriam’s Journey,” Barreras has written a variety of other dramatic monologues with Biblical figures telling their stories. Her interpretations of the Samaritan woman at the well and Peter’s mother-in-law have been produced at various church gatherings, where Barreras reports that they “have tremendous meaning for many people, both male and female.”

Like Barreras, I wanted to make a real connection with the Christian story through my writing. The result was my 2006 novel “Jesus in Love.” The first chapter includes a scene about Mary’s ecstasy. It will be posted here next week as the series on Eros and Christ continues.