Hindu Goddesses and the Virgin Mary

Yup. That's the name of the book: "Divine Mother, Blessed Mother: Hindu Goddesses and the Virgin Mary" written by a Jesuit priest. Written from a feminist and post modern lens. Very interesting stuff. A quote: "Goddesses do not fit in easily with the established theological categories of the Western traditions. Jews, Christians, and Muslims have for the most part portrayed God as male and as not-female, even when at times going on to assert that God is in truth beyond gender, particularly beyond gender as constituted by physical characteristics. We cannot help but notice that it is a Father who is beyond gender, not a Mother; it is a Father, beyond gender, who sends His Son, and not His daughter, into the world; that Son in turn takes birth as a human male and not a human female. The God who is beyond gender is still called "God" and not "Goddess". - Francis X. Clooney, SJ, Divine Mother, Blessed Mother: Hindu Goddesses and the Virgin Mary, Oxford University Press, 2005.

So here's another spin in our spider web of imagining different ways we could tell the story/make it our story. Mary bargains with God - "Okay. I'll do it. But I want a girl."