Magdalene and the “Sea Legs” of Spiritual Practice
How Her Steady Presence Trains Us to Stay Upright When the World Tilts
Most people remember Mary Magdalene for the Resurrection scene. Fewer remember she was also at the Cross, and fewer still that she stayed for the burial. When others fled, she didn’t. She stayed the course—not with triumph, but with a steadiness that outlasted collapse.
This is what Cynthia Bourgeault calls spiritual “sea legs.”
You don’t develop sea legs on calm water. You earn them by staying upright when the deck rolls, when the waves break, when the wind shifts—and you stay anyway. The sea doesn’t stop moving. You just stop falling.
That’s what a mature spiritual practice looks like. And that’s what Magdalene models, not just at the tomb, but at every stage of Holy Week.
The Myth of the Blissed-Out Mystic
Too many people think the goal of contemplative practice is peace. Tranquility. Equanimity.
But if your inner balance only works when conditions are perfect, it isn’t balance—it’s spiritual codependence. The real test isn’t whether you can meditate with incense and silence. It’s whether you can stay grounded when the news breaks your heart, when your plans fall apart, or when the Divine goes dark and silent and doesn’t call back.
Bourgeault is blunt about it: this path isn’t about beatific visions or feeling holy. It’s about staying on your feet when the bottom drops out. “The real testimony of a well-lived spiritual life,” she writes, “is simply the ability to adjust to new conditions in a way that doesn’t knock you off balance—or to be able to find the balance quickly when you’ve been knocked off.”
That’s what Mary Magdalene does.
Standing When Others Collapse
Most Holy Week liturgies end with death. The curtain falls. The church goes dark. Everyone goes home. But scripture doesn’t end there.
Matthew, Mark, and Luke all tell us that Magdalene didn’t go home. She stayed. She stood still and watched while Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus took Jesus’ body down and wrapped it in linen. She watched them lay him in the tomb. She kept vigil. She absorbed the loss. She didn’t flinch or flee.
She wasn’t waiting for the Resurrection. She had no idea what was coming next.
She stayed present in the face of absence.
And that, Bourgeault insists, is the posture of real contemplative depth. Not an escape into bliss, but a descent into presence.
What Sea Legs Feel Like
If you’ve ever been on a boat, you know what it’s like when the ground beneath you won’t stay put. You can’t lock your knees or fix your stance. You have to unlock everything—ankles, knees, hips—and keep your weight fluid, shifting, attuned.
This is exactly what inner practice trains you for.
When you first start meditating, everything inside you rebels. The mind won’t shut up. The body aches. You feel like you’re losing your grip. That’s not failure. That’s the sea.
The longer you sit through it, the more you discover: it doesn’t stop moving—but you stop being thrown. You gain internal ballast. You don’t have to control your circumstances to feel stable anymore.
You can be in the storm and not be the storm.
That’s sea legs. That’s Magdalene.
From Therapy to Transformation
Centering prayer and other contemplative practices were originally pitched as therapeutic: a path to calm, healing, relief from trauma. And they still are.
But over time, something else happens.
They rewire the way you perceive reality.
You stop seeing in pieces—who’s right, who’s wrong, what you like, what you dislike—and start seeing pattern. Wholeness. Interconnection. You stop reacting and start responding. You lose the addiction to certainty. And slowly, you begin to glimpse what the mystics have always claimed: that there is a still point in the chaos, a deeper order moving through even the darkest hours.
And Magdalene is there.
Not as a symbol of submission, but as a still point in a world that just crucified her beloved.
The Resurrection Starts Before the Empty Tomb
We think the Resurrection begins with the rolled-away stone. But that’s not how transformation works. The real shift happens in the stillness between. In the refusal to run. In the practice of showing up—when you don’t know what comes next.
Magdalene’s watch at the tomb isn’t just historical. It’s initiatory. She doesn’t just witness the Paschal Mystery. She passes through it.
And because she does, she becomes the first to see, the first to understand, the first to be sent. Not because she believed more. But because she stood still longer.
The Practice Is the Point
There’s no shortcut to sea legs. You sit. You wobble. You flail. You stay.
You start to recognize the impulse to flee for what it is. You stop giving your power to your preferences. You learn to say, “Welcome, irritation.” “Welcome, disorientation.” “Welcome, grief.”
And little by little, you become the kind of person who can walk into uncertain terrain and not collapse. Who can face loss and still love. Who can weep at the tomb and still stay open.
Like her.
So if you're wondering what to do when the bottom drops out—practice.
Not to fix anything. Not to get anywhere.
But to stay upright when the world tilts.
Because in the end, it’s not peace that saves us.
It’s presence.
And Magdalene shows us how to hold it steady.
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“That’s not failure. That’s the sea.” This I found so comforting. Thank you for a new way to experience….all this.
It’s not peace that saves us…it’s presence ❤️. Great words