Mists of Avalon

 

Reading a favorite book of a friend or family member is a great way to feel close to them. That is why it was my instinct to download a copy of The Mists of Avalon by Marion Zimmer Bradley when I heard the news of my Aunt Cindy’s death this week.  The Mists of Avalon is a feminist take on Arthurian legend. Avalon is a magical place run by women who are living out the mysteries of the Great Goddess and are struggling with the role that Christianity is playing in eliminating their ways.  This is a very magical novel that is easy to get lost in but the commentary on the negative implications of colonialism and patriarchal ways of thinking that Christianity brought is very strong.

It makes sense that my feisty aunt would have loved this book. She had a PhD in theology and served as an ordained minister in the ELCA until she was eliminated from the clergy roster for being openly homosexual.  She remained not only committed to her wonderful wife Kay, but also to the fight for equality. A few generations too early to enjoy the benefits of the marriage amendment and the ELCA to allow LGBT people to serve as ministers, but she still was committed to this fight. Cindy remained a deeply spiritual person but was not afraid to challenge what she understood Christianity was teaching her.

When I had a hungry theological mind, she was responsible for putting Why Christianity Must Change or Die in one of my hands and Starhawk’s Spiral Dance in another hand. These types of books would become essential for my own sense of spirituality as I would embrace a passion for progressive Christianity and an interest in witchcraft.  As I reread this book, I found myself captivated by Avalon—realizing that this was a world that would be safe for people who felt marginalized by Christianity but who still craved something spiritual in their life to retreat to. This made me realize why this book was important to her and why she reread it many times.

And I stood reminded that when I first read this book when I was a teenager that it really shaped the way that I would come to view the world. I had never read anything that acknowledged that people who did not embrace a Judeo-Christian mindset could still be deeply spiritual or that had such strong adult females as lead characters before. I used to reread this book on my own on a regular basis but had not touched the book since before I had become a candidate for ordained ministry in the ELCA myself.  And as I started picking myself up after that journey did not work out for me either, Cindy would be a very important part of my life—helping me pay seminary loans and officiating at my wedding.

As I reread Mists of Avalon years of education did not ruin the magic of this book for me---I felt like it dipped into many different things that I had read over the years.  Reflecting over all of my church history courses it reminded me of the perspective that I was often feeling was neglected. My passion for supernatural horror encouraged me to take a class on writing witchcraft, which would make me fascinated by the practices and portrayals of witches again….and Marion Zimmer Bradley’s work goes very deep into the goddess worshipping that people who identify spiritually as witches embrace.  The Mists of Avalon touched into the dynamics of all of the way these ideologies interface with distinctive, vibrant characters.

Only this time there was another kind of magic that I was dipping into—the magic of a book that was deeply important to both my aunt and to a younger version of myself. It felt like as I lost myself in this book (its very long, but very difficult to put down) that I was also immersing myself into an important connection that I had with my dear aunt---a book that was transformative for both of us.  As I started to feel exhausted from my grief, I was still honoring her memory by being comforted by reading a book that still binds us together.