Silent Night

Sunday, December 20, 2025, marked the Winter Solstice the longest night of the year. For others, the day was observed as Blue Christmas. Though these events are not inherently connected, Blue Christmas services are often held in December as sacred acknowledgment that the holiday season is not joyous for everyone. For many, this time of year is layered with grief, loss, rejection, illness, loneliness, and unresolved pain. Physical ache and emotional wounds do not quiet themselves simply because the calendar demands celebration.

One of the sacred texts offered in worship that night was Psalm 139, historically attributed to David. Yet the psalm did not arrive as an ancient artifact; it pulsed with life, breathing alongside the jazz lament “Dear Lord” by John Coltrane. Coltrane’s music saturated in spirit, prayer, and cosmic reverence became the right companion to this psalm of divine intimacy. You could feel the energy of the Spirit reaching toward us with healing, hope, and most importantly, re-membering.

As I read Psalm 139 aloud, it struck me with force and tenderness all at once: this psalm is an ode to the Cosmic Mother the Divine Black Feminine whose womb holds not only humanity but the cosmos itself. She is the Mother whose creation is ever-in-motion, ever-becoming, ever BElongING. My Christian formation never named her this way, and likely never will. The closest the Christian imagination dares to go is the Black Madonna, reverenced in cathedrals across Europe—in France, Poland, Italy, and beyond. And even those icons only begin to gesture toward the depth of this sacred feminine presence.

Across global indigenous spiritualities, the Divine Mother is known by many names. Patriarchal traditions often attempted to silence or subsume her, yet she persists in maternal wisdom: Kali in East India; Osun, Yemanja, Iyami, and Mami Wata in West Africa; and countless others who carry divine feminine authority and cosmic care.

This Divine Mother, as the psalmist reminds us, knows our thoughts before we form them, understands our movements before we act, and holds our fears before we ever confess them. She meets us in our long, dark nights not to erase the darkness but to dwell within it with us. She is the womb that births light. She is the keeper of winter’s stillness, the bearer of Advent’s hope, the One in whom stars gather and shimmer before being released into the heavens. To her, darkness is not threat or absence; it is creative sanctuary.

The Blue Christmas gathering did not simply stir memories of seasons past it invited me into deeper awareness of the sacred presence who accompanies us through sorrow and into healing. As we prepare to welcome Emmanuel, “God with us,” may we continue to seek, to listen, and to trust the Divine Black Feminine who searches us through and through, holds us tenderly, and continually births us into new becoming.

Amen. Ase Ameen

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#divine black feminine

#blue christmas

#motherist

#womanist

#cosmic womb