Allie Papke-Larson: A reflection on a drawing by Sister Grace Remington
I don’t love social media. I haven’t experienced much good from it overall, I use it to communicate with close friends that live across the country, and (mostly) to scroll through pictures of old high school friends, giving an illusion of connection.
However, once in a blue moon, as I am scrolling through other people’s vacation photos and pictures of their fancy dinners, I come across a gem that makes me feel justified in being on social media. The other week was such a moment as this.
The spiritual director and artist, Scott Ericskon, posted a print on Instagram he covered based on a drawing done by Sister Grace Remington, entitled Mary and Eve. The drawing is of the pregnant Madonna, reaching out to Eve; one hand on her cheek the other holding Eve’s hand to her big belly. Eve grasps a bitten apple to her chest, looking at her hand placed on Mary’s stomach, and a serpent is wrapped around her ankle. The head of the serpent is powerfully trampled by the foot of Mary. They appear to be in the Garden of Eden.
When I first saw this image I felt a wave of release of personal judgement and connection to these two women, a wave full of humanness and grace.
It felt like the meeting of the selves, for me, almost in the way Martin Luther speaks about each person being concurrently Sinner and Saint: the Saint Mary meeting the Sinner Eve, offering love and grace through connection and strength. Mary places Eve’s hand on her belly, helping her touch the present reality of salvation; salvation no longer being a promise because of the child Mary carries within her. Over our lives we learn to hold our own sinful selves as an untouchable part of us, perhaps we can feel it defines us and makes us deserving of judgment or the harshness of law. We can see ourselves and our sins as something separate from what makes us whole and holy. This image merges the two selves; Mary and Eve stand together, escaping the confines of our current human understandings of time. They are reaching out to each other, closing the gap between sinner and saint through reaching out towards the holy child Mary carries, through their desire to reach out, draw in, and share what is divine.
Mary offers unity of the self to Eve and to us with a simple touch of her hand. Our sin has been remade in this image and in this season; remade into that which connects and draws us towards the divine, we are being pulled towards Mary and her Child and invited into wholeness and holiness.
Allie Papke-Larson is Program Coordinator for Lutheran Campus Ministries/Canterbury Episcopal Campus Ministries at Northern Arizona University and Youth Director at Shepherd of the Hills Lutheran Church in Flagstaff.
