The Yin and Yang of Christmas

The religion I embraced in my late teens and through my twenties was patriarchal. Born of the Protestant Reformation, that religion had no room for the feminine, sacred or otherwise. Mary was cast as a godhead pretender, the goddess in disguise, an idol Roman Catholics worshiped. I didn't know many Catholics. I had no Catholic friends. Why would you be friends with someone who thought your leader "the anti-Christ"? So all male it was then. Even Jesus was cast as a "man's man."
Well, that was then and this is now, and I've been happy to be a feminist for more than a quarter century. When Jane and I revised the liturgy for our community in 2004-05 we revised it for inclusive language. "Our Father" became "Our Father-Mother." We embraced the divine feminine. G-d, as neither male not female, somehow incorporated both male and female in the divine being. Even so, I've sometimes looked with friendly jealousy on my Catholic friends (I have many now!) who openly exult in the cult of Mary, and my pagan friends (many of them too) who love the goddess. The mother figure archetype is so important to a balanced psyche.
And there's the trick—balance. Not male or female, but female and male, the yin and yang that runs through the whole of nature, the whole of life.
Says the Dao:

Know the male,
yet keep to the female ...
Know the white [yang]
yet keep to the black [yin]
(Mitchell version, 28)

This year I find joy and mystery in teenage mother Mary and baby Jesus. The yin and yang of Christmas. The mystery is not the mother alone, or the baby boy alone, but in the beautiful embrace  of mother and child.
The Dao again:

All things have their backs to the female
and stand facing the male.
When male and female combine,
all things are in harmony.
(Mitchell version, 42)

Mary and Jesus—the divine female, the divine male. The hope of the world rests in this mother and child. One of the mysteries of Christmas is that because hope rests in this mother and child, then hope rests in every mother and child. As a philosopher I have no analysis or explanation of why this might be so. I am content today to kneel with the shepherds and wonder.
Peace and goodwill to all!
+Ab. Andy