Falling in love is the training ground. Mary Magdalene shows how desire, lived and not hoarded, ripens into a love that widens, heals, and carries resurrection.
This writing is messing with me. As an eldest daughter of broken parents, I learned deeds were reward, and I over-gave. I rescued family members, loved them fiercely while they took their last breaths. I wrung neglected children from their parents and fought for custody and won. I rescued so many dogs, a few cats, and a bird, holding the space gently as they all passed before my eyes. now a crone in my 60s, I'm so tired. I know my aging mother will soon need care, a relationship where I have often been the adult as she worked through the trauma of the unspeakable pain of her childhood, but I need a little time before that happens. I know that may sound selfish, but this writing asks for truth. Perhaps I'm misinterpreting the message, but the eldest daughters of broken homes will likely feel a similar sense of confusion. I need loved deeply and noticed. and if I can't have that, then just give me pause before the next round of loving fiercely arrives. do not mistake my processing this differently than others as my disappoingment in it. I'm grateful for these words
I hear the ache in what you wrote, and I can see how my piece might have landed like another commandment on an already overburdened heart. That wasn’t my intent. The Magdalene text isn’t telling you to wring yourself dry or keep giving until the marrow is gone. It’s pointing to the opposite: love that has let go of transaction, love that doesn’t demand constant rescue.
Eldest daughters of broken homes were often forced into agape long before eros had a chance to breathe. You carried dying pets, broken kin, even your own mother’s wounds. That’s sacred labor, but it’s also theft—life stole your pause.
If anything in what I wrote pressed on that wound, let me say this clearly: Magdalene’s witness also includes you stepping back, catching your breath, demanding to be noticed. She doesn’t erase your need. She blesses it.
I am the only daughter and completely understand your feelings. Do not be ashamed of needing rest, it is not selfish.
A caregiving heart can sometimes feel overwhelmed and underapreciated. Normal emotions to have. I too feel in need of a rest bit at times caring for my brother while ill myself.
Those days, I pause and honor my truth. Strength comes in loving, and that strength is being able to make time for yourself to rest.
I have always had a fear of falling. As a kid, I had repeated dreams/nightmares of falling out of the sky without knowing how I got into the sky in the first place. As an adult, I had repeated dreams/nightmares of falling into a hole in the ground. And sometimes I did fall and there was no bottom. I screamed for a long while until I realized there was no point in it, and then I surrendered. I learned that falling is a lot like flying, only easier. -Peace, Dwight Lee Wolter.
The more I read, the more parts I wanted to highlight and respond to. Bring on the mess! Here's a piece--particular friendships were warned against back in my convent days. Try that effectively with a group of women who are wired for friendship since toddler years. It didn't work. Turns out particular friendship was unexplained code for lesbian relationships. Those happened too. A lot. Keep women corralled and sexuality will still find its way out. Love and sexuality. Messy and mighty. And spirituality was flourishing all the while--in it and all around it.
Sometimes I think you must be clairvoyant. I’ve had a struggle with feeling like I need to guard love because once I loved so much that it caused so much pain that I needed to guard my heart. And, as you allude, shutting down love diminishes the ability to love deeply. My thinking is now that guarding is totally selfish, even if you fear pain. If someone is the object of your affection, then even putting limits for self protection is limiting your ability to love. Do I have that right?
Thanks for clarifying that. This is something I’ll be working on in the future. I realize that it won’t be easy, but when is something worthwhile doing is guaranteed to be easily done! Thank you again!
I’ve been wondering when you would “hit me” again…and I am laughing with joy and gratitude and excitement and unabashed love with open arms and a mischievous twinkle in my eye…my mother was always a flirt…I didn’t really “get it” until my Dad had passed and at age 80 she moved cross country to live nearby my husband and me. She would have remarried some elderly gentleman she’d met in our parish, if cancer had’t interrupted her earthly life. My husband who had me from “hello,” across a room of 150 strangers from all over the world…his eyes twinkling and connecting in an instant of connection…his first words…”I think we’ve already met.” And we had…across the room during the opening session … and later while we were dating and falling in love we discovered our spirits had met a year earlier…me in a womens Jungian dream workshop, and he in a Foursprings spiritual retreat studying the Gospels with four elderly Jungian analysts. With eyes closed, he north of San Francisco dancing in a field with classical music playing, me in Boulder. I was given a lump of clay with eyes closed, and asked to create something, open my eyes, add a few contours to what I saw had emerged…I had created a figure kneeling, head on the ground, face turned to one side. He, given crayons and drawings paper, when the music stopped, with eyes closed, invited to draw on the paper, open his eyes, could add a few lines to clarify what he saw…and, yes, it was a figure kneeling, head on the ground, face turned to one side. We discovered how our artistic creations matched…made an appointment with a physician in La Jolla who’s gift was facilitating healing terminally-ill cancer patients…no charge, of course: they had come to him for his own learning. He looked at our creations and asked us each to get into the positions of our crude figures…when we did we learned our faces were each turned toward the other…the healer’s comments: he wasn’t impressed nor surprised that this event had occurred. What impressed him was that we had each kept these artifacts, and had been hauling them around while we each had moved to new domiciles. A few years later, Tracy Byrd’s (country singer) hit song “Keeper of the Stars,” played on the car radio…it became “our song” throughout our whole married life. When it would come up randomly in the years prior to Bill’s passing, we would stop, embrace and slow dance in the living room. I still do and he wraps his arms around me from the Other Side. The story continues. But for now, there’s a bigger point I want to make, emboldened by your recitation this morning. All about love.
While exploring the meaning of life throughout my 20’s (late 60’s, and 70’s) I attended a long list of weekend retreats, led by my then-mentors, all themselves products of the human potential movements. Each event…some intensives with 12, some same agendas with 300, all strangers on Friday evening…all of us loving and in love with one another by Sunday closing sessions. Masterfully encouraged to drop facades and embrace our authentic selves I learned experientially that world peace is possible…all we each have to do is choose love. Jack Gibb, Will Schutz, Carl Rogers, called me to a 40 year career of taking the skills I’d learned into large organizations doing “team-building” at every level. When Bill and I met that first night in LaJolla with 150 people from all over the world (same agenda, “Living Now,”) while spending a day with Ram Dass, Bill, already an engineer at IBM, and an ordained Episcopal Priest, leaned over and said “that’s my theology!” I responded with “that’s my philosophy!” Later as I grew with Bill I learned the symbolism of the the Christian cross: I had grown up learning about love in community, the horizontal crosspiece; while Bill had learned about love through his relationship with God, the vertical crosspiece. I learned both a vertical relationship with the Spiritual world, combined with the horizontal love in earthly community, is where our mutual ecstasy lived. With Bill, I have always known perfect love…earthly and spiritual at once.
My daily life, since Bill’s passing a year ago, and meeting up with you and Mary Magdalene, and the community who participates with you, consists of a deep pause filled only with quiet, listening to my inner Self whispering insights as to possible next steps, each revealing more pieces of the mystery of who I am becoming…the Soul you say I am carving one chip at a time…and to hear you say Mary Magdalene is all about love…love is the key…our heart knows…messages being reinforced by David Whyte and Caroline Myss and St. Teresa of Avila as I explore her inner castle rooms…so, I can say, with deep humility, I think I am right where I am supposed to be. WOW. WOW. WOW. Please keep scrolling, Virginia Monk Boy. You keep my heart light and filled with joy. Not easy to do given all the darkness and dare I say evil, that is trying to impinge on the sacred. You help me stay grounded in the sacred…thank you.❤️🙏❤️😎🐶
Starting my day with my whole being crying with a messy trailer of the love in my life flowing across more than my eyes, but thru my whole being. It was a necessary read before my day starts with “reality”& doctor’s appts. It was medicine. You have written many cut to the bone heartbreaking heartfelt things but the tender strength of this - i felt it before i even started reading it & i am not one to feel intuitive with magic sight. This was like a gentle magnet that pulled stronger & stronger & I’m so glad i read it still inbed drinking coffee so i could absorb it without distraction & just get messier & messier reading it. You know that moment when you feel something was an answer to a prayer you didn’t know you’d prayed?
I hope you do.
Itz an affirmation. An invitation. A confirmation. An initiation. All mixed up messy together,
Spiritual breakfast.
I’m so glad i didnt wait to read this. It wouldnt let me wait but i can be obstinate.
I hesitate - lest overkill - but it touched every cell in my body. And my soul is animating it in an unfamiliar way that feels like all the dreams i had that i never forgot nor wanted to are having a party & I’m hosting, even though i have no idea how to.
Best gift you’ve ever given & itz not even my birthday. This is a blessing & all I can do right now is try to deal with the overwhelming gratitude I’m drowning in. I know, going overboard but I always have been & now I’m sure i will stay messy in my thank yous. Your writing saves.
Beth Ann, messy is holy. Churches love polish, but God crashes in with tears and coffee stains. Gratitude flooding every cell isn’t overkill, it’s grace doing its work. Don’t tame it. Let the unanswered prayers keep answering themselves.
Love increases capacity. This is the truth. I couldn't understand this until after I had two children. When I only had my daughter, I couldn't imagine how I would be able to love another child as much as I loved her. But it happened, and one didn't take anything away from the other. It multiplied.
I have always loved the saying "want more? desire less" which has been a spiritual guide for me in many ways. And while it looks on the surface like it would lead to scarcity, it actually leads to tremendous abundance. Your words "the more you love, the more you will long to love" paralleled that same beauty for me exquisitely, moving my focus within instead of outside of myself for what I want and need. The less I desire, the more I have. The more I love the more I love. You are a healer and I thank you for the complex beauty you bring to us from Mary Magdalene and the world of the soul. <3
This writing is messing with me. As an eldest daughter of broken parents, I learned deeds were reward, and I over-gave. I rescued family members, loved them fiercely while they took their last breaths. I wrung neglected children from their parents and fought for custody and won. I rescued so many dogs, a few cats, and a bird, holding the space gently as they all passed before my eyes. now a crone in my 60s, I'm so tired. I know my aging mother will soon need care, a relationship where I have often been the adult as she worked through the trauma of the unspeakable pain of her childhood, but I need a little time before that happens. I know that may sound selfish, but this writing asks for truth. Perhaps I'm misinterpreting the message, but the eldest daughters of broken homes will likely feel a similar sense of confusion. I need loved deeply and noticed. and if I can't have that, then just give me pause before the next round of loving fiercely arrives. do not mistake my processing this differently than others as my disappoingment in it. I'm grateful for these words
I hear the ache in what you wrote, and I can see how my piece might have landed like another commandment on an already overburdened heart. That wasn’t my intent. The Magdalene text isn’t telling you to wring yourself dry or keep giving until the marrow is gone. It’s pointing to the opposite: love that has let go of transaction, love that doesn’t demand constant rescue.
Eldest daughters of broken homes were often forced into agape long before eros had a chance to breathe. You carried dying pets, broken kin, even your own mother’s wounds. That’s sacred labor, but it’s also theft—life stole your pause.
If anything in what I wrote pressed on that wound, let me say this clearly: Magdalene’s witness also includes you stepping back, catching your breath, demanding to be noticed. She doesn’t erase your need. She blesses it.
Your pause is not selfish. It’s gospel.
I am the only daughter and completely understand your feelings. Do not be ashamed of needing rest, it is not selfish.
A caregiving heart can sometimes feel overwhelmed and underapreciated. Normal emotions to have. I too feel in need of a rest bit at times caring for my brother while ill myself.
Those days, I pause and honor my truth. Strength comes in loving, and that strength is being able to make time for yourself to rest.
May you be blessed in ❤️ 💫
I have always had a fear of falling. As a kid, I had repeated dreams/nightmares of falling out of the sky without knowing how I got into the sky in the first place. As an adult, I had repeated dreams/nightmares of falling into a hole in the ground. And sometimes I did fall and there was no bottom. I screamed for a long while until I realized there was no point in it, and then I surrendered. I learned that falling is a lot like flying, only easier. -Peace, Dwight Lee Wolter.
Having never really loved, I am still trying to learn to live.
“Love is a field that grows when you water it”.
Thank you for the word picture
The more I read, the more parts I wanted to highlight and respond to. Bring on the mess! Here's a piece--particular friendships were warned against back in my convent days. Try that effectively with a group of women who are wired for friendship since toddler years. It didn't work. Turns out particular friendship was unexplained code for lesbian relationships. Those happened too. A lot. Keep women corralled and sexuality will still find its way out. Love and sexuality. Messy and mighty. And spirituality was flourishing all the while--in it and all around it.
Oh my goodness 🥹💕
This made me cry… with Pure Recognition ✨⛓️💥🫂💕
So much This 💕💕💕
Sometimes I think you must be clairvoyant. I’ve had a struggle with feeling like I need to guard love because once I loved so much that it caused so much pain that I needed to guard my heart. And, as you allude, shutting down love diminishes the ability to love deeply. My thinking is now that guarding is totally selfish, even if you fear pain. If someone is the object of your affection, then even putting limits for self protection is limiting your ability to love. Do I have that right?
Teryl, you’re not selfish for guarding your heart. You were hurt, so you protected yourself. That’s normal.
The only problem is if you never let anyone in again. Then you’re not protecting anymore. You’re shutting down.
Love doesn’t require you to erase boundaries. It just asks you not to disappear behind them forever.
Thanks for clarifying that. This is something I’ll be working on in the future. I realize that it won’t be easy, but when is something worthwhile doing is guaranteed to be easily done! Thank you again!
I’ve been wondering when you would “hit me” again…and I am laughing with joy and gratitude and excitement and unabashed love with open arms and a mischievous twinkle in my eye…my mother was always a flirt…I didn’t really “get it” until my Dad had passed and at age 80 she moved cross country to live nearby my husband and me. She would have remarried some elderly gentleman she’d met in our parish, if cancer had’t interrupted her earthly life. My husband who had me from “hello,” across a room of 150 strangers from all over the world…his eyes twinkling and connecting in an instant of connection…his first words…”I think we’ve already met.” And we had…across the room during the opening session … and later while we were dating and falling in love we discovered our spirits had met a year earlier…me in a womens Jungian dream workshop, and he in a Foursprings spiritual retreat studying the Gospels with four elderly Jungian analysts. With eyes closed, he north of San Francisco dancing in a field with classical music playing, me in Boulder. I was given a lump of clay with eyes closed, and asked to create something, open my eyes, add a few contours to what I saw had emerged…I had created a figure kneeling, head on the ground, face turned to one side. He, given crayons and drawings paper, when the music stopped, with eyes closed, invited to draw on the paper, open his eyes, could add a few lines to clarify what he saw…and, yes, it was a figure kneeling, head on the ground, face turned to one side. We discovered how our artistic creations matched…made an appointment with a physician in La Jolla who’s gift was facilitating healing terminally-ill cancer patients…no charge, of course: they had come to him for his own learning. He looked at our creations and asked us each to get into the positions of our crude figures…when we did we learned our faces were each turned toward the other…the healer’s comments: he wasn’t impressed nor surprised that this event had occurred. What impressed him was that we had each kept these artifacts, and had been hauling them around while we each had moved to new domiciles. A few years later, Tracy Byrd’s (country singer) hit song “Keeper of the Stars,” played on the car radio…it became “our song” throughout our whole married life. When it would come up randomly in the years prior to Bill’s passing, we would stop, embrace and slow dance in the living room. I still do and he wraps his arms around me from the Other Side. The story continues. But for now, there’s a bigger point I want to make, emboldened by your recitation this morning. All about love.
While exploring the meaning of life throughout my 20’s (late 60’s, and 70’s) I attended a long list of weekend retreats, led by my then-mentors, all themselves products of the human potential movements. Each event…some intensives with 12, some same agendas with 300, all strangers on Friday evening…all of us loving and in love with one another by Sunday closing sessions. Masterfully encouraged to drop facades and embrace our authentic selves I learned experientially that world peace is possible…all we each have to do is choose love. Jack Gibb, Will Schutz, Carl Rogers, called me to a 40 year career of taking the skills I’d learned into large organizations doing “team-building” at every level. When Bill and I met that first night in LaJolla with 150 people from all over the world (same agenda, “Living Now,”) while spending a day with Ram Dass, Bill, already an engineer at IBM, and an ordained Episcopal Priest, leaned over and said “that’s my theology!” I responded with “that’s my philosophy!” Later as I grew with Bill I learned the symbolism of the the Christian cross: I had grown up learning about love in community, the horizontal crosspiece; while Bill had learned about love through his relationship with God, the vertical crosspiece. I learned both a vertical relationship with the Spiritual world, combined with the horizontal love in earthly community, is where our mutual ecstasy lived. With Bill, I have always known perfect love…earthly and spiritual at once.
My daily life, since Bill’s passing a year ago, and meeting up with you and Mary Magdalene, and the community who participates with you, consists of a deep pause filled only with quiet, listening to my inner Self whispering insights as to possible next steps, each revealing more pieces of the mystery of who I am becoming…the Soul you say I am carving one chip at a time…and to hear you say Mary Magdalene is all about love…love is the key…our heart knows…messages being reinforced by David Whyte and Caroline Myss and St. Teresa of Avila as I explore her inner castle rooms…so, I can say, with deep humility, I think I am right where I am supposed to be. WOW. WOW. WOW. Please keep scrolling, Virginia Monk Boy. You keep my heart light and filled with joy. Not easy to do given all the darkness and dare I say evil, that is trying to impinge on the sacred. You help me stay grounded in the sacred…thank you.❤️🙏❤️😎🐶
Starting my day with my whole being crying with a messy trailer of the love in my life flowing across more than my eyes, but thru my whole being. It was a necessary read before my day starts with “reality”& doctor’s appts. It was medicine. You have written many cut to the bone heartbreaking heartfelt things but the tender strength of this - i felt it before i even started reading it & i am not one to feel intuitive with magic sight. This was like a gentle magnet that pulled stronger & stronger & I’m so glad i read it still inbed drinking coffee so i could absorb it without distraction & just get messier & messier reading it. You know that moment when you feel something was an answer to a prayer you didn’t know you’d prayed?
I hope you do.
Itz an affirmation. An invitation. A confirmation. An initiation. All mixed up messy together,
Spiritual breakfast.
I’m so glad i didnt wait to read this. It wouldnt let me wait but i can be obstinate.
I hesitate - lest overkill - but it touched every cell in my body. And my soul is animating it in an unfamiliar way that feels like all the dreams i had that i never forgot nor wanted to are having a party & I’m hosting, even though i have no idea how to.
Best gift you’ve ever given & itz not even my birthday. This is a blessing & all I can do right now is try to deal with the overwhelming gratitude I’m drowning in. I know, going overboard but I always have been & now I’m sure i will stay messy in my thank yous. Your writing saves.
🫶
Beth Ann, messy is holy. Churches love polish, but God crashes in with tears and coffee stains. Gratitude flooding every cell isn’t overkill, it’s grace doing its work. Don’t tame it. Let the unanswered prayers keep answering themselves.
"It is calloused hands and a steadier breath."
Love can save the world 💕💫
Love increases capacity. This is the truth. I couldn't understand this until after I had two children. When I only had my daughter, I couldn't imagine how I would be able to love another child as much as I loved her. But it happened, and one didn't take anything away from the other. It multiplied.
Thank you for this wonderful reminder. Cracked me open.
Again.
Blessings on the Work.
I have always loved the saying "want more? desire less" which has been a spiritual guide for me in many ways. And while it looks on the surface like it would lead to scarcity, it actually leads to tremendous abundance. Your words "the more you love, the more you will long to love" paralleled that same beauty for me exquisitely, moving my focus within instead of outside of myself for what I want and need. The less I desire, the more I have. The more I love the more I love. You are a healer and I thank you for the complex beauty you bring to us from Mary Magdalene and the world of the soul. <3