THE MOTHER CHURCH

The Mother Church is the culmination of a lifelong study and appreciation of the feminine, the great Mystery, and the Divine.

This exhibition is set in a domestic home where you can experience a familiar space and explore familiar household objects.

When you enter, you will feel the presence of the feminine woven into ordinary aspects of daily life.

As you interact with the pieces they transform from dining tables to altars, from kitchen knives to ceremonial athames, and from ironing boards to shrines. 

With love 

Christopher 

 MY STORY

I have always believed in the power of women. There was never a doubt in my mind that they are the most dynamic gender. I watched the women in my life teaching masses of students, holding down a home, managing multiple schedules, and bearing babies. Bringing life. I lack memories of ever seeing my father, or any man, step forward and participate willingly, joyfully and selflessly in the family process. Indeed, with few exceptions, my experiences with men to successfully sustain fulfilling relationships and manage a home are insignificant.

      As a man, growing up in a stereotypical household with gender normative roles, I watched my father make a living to provide for us but never saw him pick up a dish, clean, cook, or deliver on his share of parenting. My intelligent and capable mother was assigned these home tasks while she also held a job and operated continuously as my caregiver.

      I watched her pour her heart and soul into a home that returned only crumbs of gratitude. A casual hug. At best, a lukewarm reception. Yet she persevered. She committed to the responsibilities at hand and fulfilled the roles of mother, father, and wife—even though she, too, started with poor role models. 

      Although I was young and naïve, I was aware of how energy flowed in our home. I felt the maternal source of the warmth, light, and power in our house ... I knew who decorated it, who gave the hearth its fire and who prepared humble meals for me.

        My father had few skills and was apathetic about learning. My story is not extraordinary. Sadly, it’s common. All the emotional care and invisible labor involved in parenting was unofficially delegated to the mother and, occasionally, other female relatives. When a mother cannot sustain this level of constant involvement, it falls on the children to provide the missing emotional support, which exceeds the capacity or their maturity.

       We grow and develop emotionally malnourished. We compensate by constructing alternative strategies to manage our world. We seek approval. We fall in love with the wrong partner who we affectionately rename “The Lesson." We marry them and have kids and somehow think we will be more progressive than the previous generation but then default to old patterns.

      How did this all happen?  How did the ever-powerful feminine forces become relegated to subservient roles? Women hold all the emotional power yet are still deprived of recognition. Time and time again, I witnessed women make sacrifices to hold their families together and give up their own personal dreams to invest in their blood ties. Although I admired them and observed their immense devotion and love, I also saw that their battle was a net loss. Even as a young boy, I knew that every woman was treated unfairly with higher expectations, greater responsibilities, and lesser authority.

      As a child, I escaped through reading.  I found my way to mythology books about Goddesses the world over, and I discovered that most were not like the Virgin Mary who my mother wanted me to honor and emulate.  These other goddesses embodied wrathful, crazy, sexual, and loving creative forces simultaneously. They birthed more than messiahs, but rather entire universes. These mythologies opened my eyes to realms of infinite possibilities. I started to dream of wise women who came to me and carried me onto the backs of birds into the sky. I dreamt of books full of knowledge filling library buildings that seemed the same both right-side-up and upside-down. I dreamt of snakes chasing, consuming, and speaking to me. I had precognitive dreams of events that soon happened in real life. Something had changed in me. 

    Thus began my studies. My mother noticed these new abilities and found women who could help me understand my powers. I was granted access to study underneath these teachers who took pity on me but also saw something inside of me. To this day, over 37 years later, I’m still speaking with them and still learning, practicing, and studying the ways of Nature.

Although inspiring, none of what I studied was easy. I sat in groups listening to people pour out their hearts and souls. I listened to stories of catastrophes and attended ceremonies where people transformed their pain into healing. I made ceremonial shields and tools to focus my intentions and fix my gaze on a brighter, better future. I even howled at the moon, went into sweat lodges, and sat through all-night dances where my soul transformed into a bear. Here I learned about a deep connection to the wild earth—all while barely passing my geometry class.

         My studies produced a deep love for natural ways. Nature-based philosophies reside in our collective DNA. If we go way back into anyone’s family tree, these are the practices we all shared.  I thought I was part of a movement changing the world. I believed that social roles would be reversed any day now, and that everything would change in the blink of an eye. 

     I practiced harder and also studied feminism. I helped any and all willing to challenge the constrictive status quo and step out from the normative stream. This is the backbone of my work. Far from perfect, and while still seeking, I did some exceptional work, some work that did not hold up over time, and some work that probably didn’t move the needle. I studied underneath Teachers, Grandmothers, my tough old Power Animal, and Dakinis who represented the female embodiment of liberating energy and unhindered truths. I never stopped. For the faults I had along the way, I made up for with my tenacity to evolve. 

MOTHER CHURCH is the latest phase of my evolution.