Salvation in a Female Form

Yesterday I had a mostly free day, so I headed to downtown DC to enjoy a few Smithsonian museums (for a more comprehensive look at the day, read this post on my creativity blog).  Even before I knew what it was, this assemblage/sculpture caught my eye:

But up close, I was even more intrigued:  statues of the Virgin Mary!  The author did plaster casts of each one and then painted them; here's a close-up:

I thought about the visions of womanhood that have captured our imagination.  So often they are the woman who did the thing that was rare in women, like Phyllis Wheatley, writing poetry when so many women did not.

We think of the Virgin Mary as being a vessel of salvation, but we have more dynamic possibilities.  Here is a quilted picture of Harriet Tubman.  Don't let the lush fabric fool you into forgetting how fearless she was.