i will check back in on this one.  i love the thread title by the way :)  where to begin?  it is definitely a topic that "get's me started" and i don't have the time for my own long windedness this morning *lol*

in the meantime you should check out some of crazyheart's past "women of bible" study threads and a thread that i started a while back about  there being any gospels written by women.

I heard an intersting talk by John Crossan some time ago in which he talked about the Pantera story.  This story was an early slander on Christianity which said that Jesus was the bastard son of Mary and a Roman soldier named Pantera, a double whammy for both Jesus and Mary.  Crossan said he rather liked the myth because it might explain why Jesus was so sympathetic to women and the marginalized. His experience as the son of woman who was pregnant out of wedlock by a Roman soldier would have been profound.

Whether the Pantera myth is truly a made-up slander or based on some fact, I like what you have to say about Mary and her relationship to Jesus' attitude toward women and gender.  As for her being left out of the Trinity, I think that the Trinity was devised to solve another problem (i.e., the relationship between God and Jesus, the idea of the Incarnation).  However, at least in the Catholic Church, Mary has only grown in importance.  I sometimes wonder about this.  Here is a church which refuses equal status to female priests yet reveres the Mother of Jesus much more than other denominations.

I also think that if one can try to forget the rules of gender in our own society just for a moment and re-read the Gospels, one would find that women play an extremely important role.  Yes, it is the men who are the disciples but look carefully at how women are key figures.  The most significant example, of course, is that it is the women who first see the Risen Christ.

I have never thought motherhood was insignificant---although I suppose during the 60's and 70's the media had us all believing that we could do it all. Bring home the bacon, mother the children and still be a temptress to our husbands at night.

Motherhood is very significant but I don't think it was her that allowed for an unfragmented view of God. I believe Jesus existed before Abraham, before Mary. If anything I'm sure he/it/she/whatever must have influenced her.

Before Jesus ever had his birth-day here on Earth, he had already known the God-Father.

Jesus was present at the Creation-time, and is often referred to in the Old Testament as the Lord-angel.

Mary was not the first person through whom Jesus encountered God. God was.

That depends on whether he was fully human or not.

Jesus was fully human and fully divine.  I thought we had decided that about ...I dunno, 1900 years ago!!!! lol

But seriously folks, that contradiction is at the heart of Christianity, in my opinion.  Jesus was the Incarnation of God, who lived among us and knew what it was to be human.  This is one of those core beliefs that makes Christianity what it is.  I find the idea of an intimate and not a distant God to be profoundly beautiful.  I am drawn to it irresistably.

Emmanuel - God with us.

Is the first 'her' the same person as the second 'her' ? 

But what about the God whom Jesus encountered through the person of Mary? 

Would Jesus have been the same person if Mary had been like Joan Crawford in the way she related to him as a baby/child/adolescent?

There is one story in Buddhism that says the Buddha was born fully enlightened out of a lotus flower (!)  That is one way of explaining how a person comes to be more godly than most of us, but it is meant to be taken literally?

It could be that a Mary initiated Jesus into the mystical path and became his spiritual mother/mentor. It could also be that his spiritual and biological mother were one and the same person. Then he would have gotten to know God and attained at-one-ment with God through her.

That God was the same God who Jesus encountered in other ways. 

There we are getting into the whole nature-nurture-question. Now me, I trust it's a balance of the two, so I would say Jesus would be a different person without the Mary-and-Joseph-influence. I'm sure God selected the Jesus-Earth-parents well. At the same time, since I believe Jesus was born without the sin-nature, I believe he would have been as sinless a person without Mary as his mother as he was with her.

Not being a Buddhist I will refrain from answering the lotus-blossom-question.

You're so easy to talk with, Arminius.  That unitive awareness can see well through the thicket.

I wonder if something along these lines is an unstated intuition in the veneration of Mary. 

Thanks for your response. I see what you mean. Maybe I'm being impertinent, but I want to know what God's parent selection criteria were. 

Okay you guys, what are you saying now, that Mary was really God?

That would be an interesting twist, wouldn't it?  God giving birth to God. But I think what Arminius was suggesting was something along the lines of "namaste" -- a kind of interaction where Mary's recognizing the divine within Jesus had a nourishing influence on his spiritual growth and vice versa.

Alright, but why this in Luke?

And it came to pass after three days, that they found him in the temple, sitting in the midst of the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions. And all who were listening to him were amazed at his understanding and his answers. And when they saw him, they were astonished. And his mother said to him, "Son, why hast thou done so to us? Behold, in sorrow thy father and I have been seeking thee."

And he said to them, "How is it that you sought me? Did you not know that I must be about my Father's business?" And they did not understand the word that he spoke to them.

It sounds like she might have been a tad unprepared.

Hi Rishi:

I grew up (as a Lutheran) in deeply Catholic rural Bavaria. As a contemptuous young man, I thought it pathetic how the local peasants worshipped Mary. But now I look at it differently.

For them, Mary represented the feminine aspects of spirituality that are sadly lacking in Protestantism. This was genuine Goddess worship! I do think it satsified their intuitive yearning for the feminine Divine.

My wife grew up Catholic, and we often sing some of the Catholic hymns in praise of Mary together:

Sea Star, I salute you,

Oh, Maria, help.

Mother of God, you sweet one,

Oh, Maria, help.

Maria help us all

In our deep despair.

Smacks of Venus worship, eh?

Grave the vision Venus sends

Of supernatural sympathy,

Universal love and hope;

While and abstract insight wakes

Among the glaciers and the rocks

The hermit's carnal ecstasy.

-W.H. Auden

Mary knew she was going to give birth to the Highest-Son. The angel Gabriel told her.

I'm sure that's true.  I wouldn't be surprised if God was surprising her in many of things this son of hers did.  But I'm more curious at the moment about how God was surprising him through her.  I also want to keep in mind, about these texts, that Luke may have been unprepared to see a woman in a different light.

"The real Mary was an unwed, pregnant teenage girl in first century Palestine. She was a woman of courage, humility, spirit, and resolve, and her response to the angel Gabriel shifted the tectonic plates of history." - Ben Witherington, Professor of New Testament, Asbury Theological Seminary (source: http://www.paracletepress.com/the-real-mary-why-evangelical-christians-can-embrace-the-mother-of-jesus.html ) 

Rishi, Is this speculation or are you basing this on something?

It's theological reasoning, based on scripture, tradition, knowledge of human development, and the experience of growing up with my mom.