"You better believe it. Of course. Her womb, as the Tabernacle, contained the Word of God.
This would seem to make Mary herself the equivalent of a holy church, or the Ark of the Covenant, or the Shroud, etc. This appears to me to be a bit dehumanizing, since it makes her into more of a "thing" than a person we can relate to. I don't understand it."
She is compared to more than that, FK. In various services she is compared to the Holy of Holies, the golden candlesticks, incense urns; she is even called a "heifer" and a "butter mountain" in some versions of the Akathist Hymn. Speaking of which, here's a link to one form of the Akathist. Read the introduction so you can tell the difference between references to Christ and others to the Theotokos:
http://www.fatheralexander.org/booklets/english/m_akathist_e.htm
Thanks for the link. I had no problem at all with most of it. What jumped out at me was this at the end of the intro:
... Each has his own need; each his own desire or expectation, and each finds his or her own particular spiritual need satisfied and fulfilled in Our Lord and in the Mother of God. So too, each generation of Orthodox, and each particular person who has prayed the Akathist, has found in this hymn an inspired means of expressing gratitude and praise to the Mother of God for what she has accomplished for their salvation.(emphasis added)
With my background, the first section above appears to put Mary and Christ on an equal footing. In the second section, I'm not sure what the view is about what Mary actually "accomplished" for our salvation. The latter concern was bolstered by a line from Ikos 11:
"Rejoice, Thou Who blottest out the stain of sin."
I haven't jumped to any conclusions, as I remember that sometimes there is wording that would tend to lead an outsider today to the wrong idea about what is meant.
Regarding my original concern that it looked like Mary was being venerated as a "thing" rather than as a human, I did not see that in the portions I read of the hymn you showed me. Maybe part of my view was due to Kosta's statement that Mary's womb WAS a tabernacle, rather than it being LIKE a tabernacle figuratively. I have no trouble at all with the idea that Mary was a holy person, I fully agree. I just sensed a portrayal of her as being more of a holy object.
BTW, I noticed that many words in the hymn were partially underlined, and some were fully underlined. I couldn't figure out why that was.