In 1950 our Catholic Church proclaimed as dogma an Assumption of Mary into Heaven. The Jungian therapist and scholar of myth, Dr. Robert Johnson, was in Zurich in the late 1940's studying under Carl Jung. In a Search For Meaning interview with Caroline Jones, Johnson recalled that Jung was elated at the promulgation, and declared that any church capable of that pronouncement had not lost its contemporary relevance. He said that it was the most important event in the western world since the Reformation. Jung's understanding of The Assumption was that the feminine was now acknowledged as being present with the previously exclusively masculine Trinity, and that (in Jung's quaint language of numbers) our western cultural "threeness of doing" was invited to integrate with a "fourness of being". And he added that we were now ready for "Christ to come again".

The Christian Tradition's recognition of Mary's presence in Heaven is not new. During the Rome Chapter the participants visited Subiaco, and saw a very early fresco with an image of Mary in Heaven with Jesus in familial togetherness. Subsequently we saw a similar mosaic above the main altar in the spiritual home of the Sant' Egidio Community in the Basilica of Santa Maria in Trastevere. In the recently built Byzantine Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in the Catholic University in Washington the The Assumption is prominently proclaimed. Johnson remarked to Jones that the dogma is "on the books, but we haven't heard it yet"!

Our Congregation has had a long history of faithful devotion to Mary through May altars, hymns, statues and icons, Rosary, Angelus and Regina Coeli. Our current Constitutions (4, 11, 22, 29, 47) still proclaim that Mary is our patron and model of discipleship and protector. It is a matter of intrigue, then, that there is not a single reference to Mary in the Rome Chapter 's "The Heart of Being Brother". Have we "heard" what is "on the books"? I began to reflect during the Chapter that Congregationally we do seem to have entered into the experience of The Assumption, but not yet been able to put language around our experience. My questions were whether the presence of Mary as the Transcendent Feminine was evident in our Congregational life, and whether we have begun to show an integrated "fourness of being".

Early in the Chapter experience Donella Brown shared her moving and confronting personal story of marginalisation as a woman and as an aboriginal. Then on International Women's Day sprigs of Mimosa (golden wattle) were given to each of the women present, and sprigs were in turn given by the women to the men. We were then invited to share the stories of our own mothers in our reflection groups. These experiences wrenched me out of my head, where I am so accustomed to be, into my heart, into a state of deep personal feeling, into a contemplative mode. I felt profoundly in being with the Jungian anima, the feminine, and with what I have begun to recognise as the Transcendent Feminine and Mary presence. During one of our infrequent Marian outpourings I found myself singing the "Hail Queen of Heaven" with renewed feeling. Others would have to share their experience, but my observation was that what happened to me was not unique.

At the beginning of the Chapter, Sandra Schneiders opened her input with the observation that "What we do with our hearts affects the whole universe". In hindsight the statement appears to have set a course, and I believe that the Chapter community experience became one of heart and being more than head and doing. It struck me that the Leadership Team Report was reflective, receptive, and inclusive, quite feminine in its source and very much about being rather than doing. During the Chapter I felt irritating lapses, such as an unacknowledged shift in language from "listening for God" (a Marian spirituality in Luke) to "searching for God" (a once dominant, for us, head and reason theologising). But the final outcome document which told the story of the Chapter and detailed its recommendations was titled "The Heart of Being Brother" (my italics).

I believe that much of what is so wholesome in our Province and Congregational life is a fruit of our Marian devotion. We have become wonderfully blessed, and I think that we are living out of a deep if unspoken relationship with the Transcendent Feminine, the Mary Assumed into Heaven. I feel challenged to name and celebrate this renewed reality for me as Brother, this animating presence of Mary. The hymn to "sister Mother Earth" of Francis in his Canticle of the Creatures is redolent for me of an Earth Spirituality which is sourced in the Transcendent Feminine. I find the language of the traditional doxology now disappointing for its failure to express the truth of what our Church has proclaimed and what is my lived experience. I prefer the language of the recent "Glory to You source of all Being, eternal Word, and holy Spirit" with a strong personal sense of inclusiveness, even if it fails to capture Jung's "fourness". When we gather as Brothers we now frequently acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which we stand. Should we not acknowledge, too, the presence of Mary who is so richly a part of our continuing story?

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