IT WAS a good weekend to reflect on why monotheists quarrel, despite (or more likely, because of) having lots of common reference points. As so many inter-faith meetings optimistically recall, there is a huge overlap between the people, places and stories revered by Christians, Jews and Muslims. Not just Abrahim/Ibrahim, but Noah/Nuh, Moses/Moshe/Musa, and so on. But commonality doesn't always make for friendship; in fact it can give people something to argue over.
On November 21st (or on December 4th on the old calendar, used in Russia), Christians of the east remember a haunting, mysterious story set in ancient Jerusalem. It describes how Mary, who would later give birth to Jesus, spent her childhood in the holiest part of the temple, a place that would normally be entered only by adult male priests. As the prayers prescribed for the feast day make plain, the symbolic meaning is that Mary, by bearing the son of God, becomes the temple or locus of holiness herself, carrying divinity within her body: something that all believers, male and female, are ultimately called on to do, albeit not such a physical sense.
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