Thank you for articulating this truth. “eros is not the enemy of holiness.” I have often imagined what Mary went through at the foot of the cross. The moment Chrisianity has so often bypassed. She could have fought, hidden, started a vengeance movement, so many things. But she stayed. She witnessed through agony, and she remains today. This can only be the energy of love. Yes, the softness we ache for.
I feel this way when I bear witness on my Facebook page about how I cry and grieve about the death of Renee Good and the way ICE horrors trample Fourth Amendment rights in Minneapolis and elsewhere. (Minneapolis is a testing ground, I think, that ICE is using to see how far they can go, and that they will continue to use again in other raids across the USA.)
I would LOVE to forward this to this cousin ( whom I've mentioned before as an example of what I refer to as " toxic Evangelicals " ) who believes in fear - based closed - minded Christianity, but at best I'd get NO REACTION, & at worst, irrational, hysterical anger that I was " attacking her faith ".
"Eros is not the enemy of holiness" but so many think that.
If God is love - I would imagine God does not reduce into only one aspect of love. Love is love and churches spend lifetimes trying to limit the types of love God inhabits.
Fortunately, they haven't succeeded. Magdelene demonstrates this perfectly. And I had not thought of the shift with her presence but that is right on.
Beauitful framing of how presence changes everything. The observation about fear-based systems cracking when confronted with unregulated love totally tracks with what I've seen in communities that try to control theology through rigid doctrinal boundries. Had a friend once say that institutions prefer mechanisms over intimacy becuase intimacy can't scale.
Oh, Virgin Monk Boy! THIS. THIS. THIS. This is what I sensed with my whole being when I first met you. You introduced me to Mary Magdalene, you affirmed she had already reached out to me with a wafer in her hand, before I had a name for her. And just now, with every word in this scroll, you have named why I responded so viscerally, so soulfully, so completely to Magdalene: she’s not new to me, I’m REMEMBERING HER! I met my Soulmate spiritually almost an exact full year before we met while inhabiting our bodies. I was in Boulder, CO, in a Women’s Jungian Dream group: I was asked to take a clump of clay, close my eyes, sculpt whatever came to me. I let my fingers move, hold, mold. When I opened my eyes it was a figure on knees bent over with forehead to ground, praying. Bill, at same time, while studying for Priesthood, was at a Jungian retreat in Foursprings, CA dancing to music in a field with his eyes closed. When the music stopped he was asked to open his eyes, go to a table to take-up a few crayons and a piece of paper, close his eyes, and make a drawing. Opening his eyes he could add a few simple marks. It was crude crayon marks of a figure on knees, head to ground, praying.
Almost exactly a year later, our eyes smiled at each other across a room full of 150 people sitting in a circle, strangers from all over the world. A 10-day “Living Now” retreat put-on by Carl Rogers institute. As the Friday night Introduction closed, I walked past Bill’s chair, he was looking up at me, smiling and said “I think we’ve already met.” I said simply, “yes.” We talked until 3am under a full moon leaning on a fountain. I remember bits and pieces of the week. One day we sat side-by-side listening to Ram Dass for a full-day. I was enchanted. At one point Bill leaned over and whispered, “that’s my theology!” Excitedly I replied, “that’s my philosophy!”
After a few months of long-distance dating, I was helping him move into a new house, recently divorced, setting up the kitchen. I opened a box, found a rolled up piece of child drawing paper and gasped! It was a drawing of my clay figure! We knew that a miracle was occurring. We made an appointment with a doctor, also a daylong presenter at the conference; he helped people heal from terminally-ill cancer. He never charged: people came to him for his learning. He had us get down on his pool deck in LaJolla, and assume the posture in our art work. Our kneeling praying postures were identical..except that our heads were turned to one side, and we were looking at one another. Paul later told us: “I’m not at all surprised this happened. What amazes me is that you each kept your art piece.” My clay was raw, never fired; Bill’s paper was worn, old, crumbly.
We walked hand-in-hand, body-in-body, spirit-in-spirit. With all due respect to Jesus and Mary Magdalene, Bill lived a life described by you in this scroll. I keep seeing Bill…at a communion service, speaking from his heart and soul in each sermon. We danced each on our own paths, our own destinies playing out. In our living rooms, at meals…and in each parish where he served. Bishops recognized him and sent him to troubled fractured church communities. Bill lived out his God-given gifts. Always present and loving unconditionally each person in his care…communities would heal, coming together again “to love and serve God.”
We had 47 years together. To this day there is one liturgical phrase I hold from deep in my Soul: “Therefore we celebrate the mystery of faith.”
Bill would say: “there’s more going on than meets the eye.” Recently I have added from John Prendergast: “I don’t know, I can’t know, I don’t need to know.” And now…
You and your scroll have given me words on paper to keep remembering, knowing, sensing Bill’s constant presence in my Earthly and Spiritual life. I learned from him Teilhard des Chardin: “we are not bodies having a spiritual experience, we are Spirits having an embodied experience.”
When I see Bill’s face he is smiling a small knowing wry grin, blue eyes twinkling and head with a soft small nod. Now I know he met Mary Magdalene a very long time ago. Jesus was “his guy.” For Bill Jesus was/is the perfect whole human, embodying the integrated, dare I say, “merged” qualities of both masculine and feminine.
Oh, Virgin Monk Boy. I have tears of recognition, of knowing, of remembering all that is holy (everything) and that I am blessed to live with, in, and around the sacred. When the student is ready, the teacher will appear. And now I see Mary Magdalene standing with me, too. I see her, and because of my earthly lived life with Bill, and now our spiritual merging, I sense the Magdalene sees me , too.
This explains everything I have wrestled with about my challenge about a closer relationship with Jesus. I know, that sounds weird as hell, as this is all about MAGDALENE but i was literally wondering this morning before reading this why I feel such a growing closer with her, the one thing I’d been missing in the traditional Lutheran church i was brought up in, & why I have talked directly to God (Spirit, Divine….) easily - and easily explained because it was God who woke me up to my alcoholism & guided me to a place where the only requirement for “salvation” (from killing yourself drinking or drugging ) was a Higher Power of your definition. I literally had Jesus crammed down my throat from birth in the very patriarchal way, that says if you don’t believe in Jesus (only way to get to God, can’t do that directly) you will literally be damned & burn in hell. And no mention or study of Magdalene, just a footnote. Nothing new, I know, but I have literally been examining why i have a hard time having intimacy with Jesus in my meditations, prayers, LIFE etc. I don’t know if that makes a damn bit of sense but it has been an issue I’ve been uncomfortable with my whole life. All I’ve ever heard is jesus is the only way, which discounts every other religion (no, I did not marry a Jew in rebellion) & itz authenticity.
Magdalene & everything I’ve learned & am still learning from you & other sources about her is life-changing & of course brings Jesus into the fold in the first time in a way I can relate with him. This tumbling of words without coffee onto the page feels like a tangled mess of a response to what you so beautifully wrote and literally answers the puzzlement I was wrestling with last nite & this morning. Thank you for giving this space for us to think & feel out loud on paper (or whatever it is) & bring truth to light & to what’s called “Christianity” so that this tangled mess of “religion” centuries old can water a seed of truth that’s been buried underground just waiting.
Replace MAGA with Magdalene & watch the world blossom into the core truth of what Jesus was teaching.
I, too, share an awakening about Jesus when I see him as Magdalene’s partner, equal. Unlike you, I was blessed to live with someone who only trusted the real Jesus, not what someone else appropriated or assumed or attributed to him. He spoke often of the Gnostic Gospels and I found a copy of Mary Magdalene’s Gospel in his library. When we met we were both already students of the concepts of “the feminine,” and “the masculine,” each having come to believe (perhaps from Carl Jung?) that for a man or a woman to become a whole person, each must study their own dominant side, as well as their less-dominant side, and seek to meaningfully incorporate both into their beings. I did this work in search of promoting a healthy, whole model of how to be a compassionate manager of people in large organizations. My earliest days’ intuitions were confirmed much later when “Emotional Intelligence” became a thing that was studied. Juxtaposed to IQ, we found it a much better predictor of compassionate, effective leadership. Bill’s interest was very personal: how could he be the person God had created him to become. Later in life I applied the idea of masterful leadership to how we work with horses as sentient beings. When we humans “saw them” as having a direct connection to the Divine we learned how to listen to them: we could ask a question and they would share their sacred wisdom. Horses speak from Heart-centered wisdom and life practice. It’s how they survive naturally in the wild. Celts used horses as oracles 7000 years ago. Some of us are catching up to the sanctity and wisdom of every living being. Listening in the Quiet silence seems to be a direct path into knowing our deepest soul’s wisdom.
I’ve missed interacting with you. This scroll has brought me back into the public arena and community. For now, for me, this venue has become a sacred space of possibilities.
Thank you for articulating this truth. “eros is not the enemy of holiness.” I have often imagined what Mary went through at the foot of the cross. The moment Chrisianity has so often bypassed. She could have fought, hidden, started a vengeance movement, so many things. But she stayed. She witnessed through agony, and she remains today. This can only be the energy of love. Yes, the softness we ache for.
I feel this way when I bear witness on my Facebook page about how I cry and grieve about the death of Renee Good and the way ICE horrors trample Fourth Amendment rights in Minneapolis and elsewhere. (Minneapolis is a testing ground, I think, that ICE is using to see how far they can go, and that they will continue to use again in other raids across the USA.)
I would LOVE to forward this to this cousin ( whom I've mentioned before as an example of what I refer to as " toxic Evangelicals " ) who believes in fear - based closed - minded Christianity, but at best I'd get NO REACTION, & at worst, irrational, hysterical anger that I was " attacking her faith ".
Very good work !
This piece quietly reminds us that when love is trusted, the whole story starts to speak in a softer, truer voice. Beautifully seen.
Wow! I find this so beautiful, clear, coherent, thought-provoking. Deep bow. Thank you.
"Eros is not the enemy of holiness" but so many think that.
If God is love - I would imagine God does not reduce into only one aspect of love. Love is love and churches spend lifetimes trying to limit the types of love God inhabits.
Fortunately, they haven't succeeded. Magdelene demonstrates this perfectly. And I had not thought of the shift with her presence but that is right on.
Beauitful framing of how presence changes everything. The observation about fear-based systems cracking when confronted with unregulated love totally tracks with what I've seen in communities that try to control theology through rigid doctrinal boundries. Had a friend once say that institutions prefer mechanisms over intimacy becuase intimacy can't scale.
Oh, Virgin Monk Boy! THIS. THIS. THIS. This is what I sensed with my whole being when I first met you. You introduced me to Mary Magdalene, you affirmed she had already reached out to me with a wafer in her hand, before I had a name for her. And just now, with every word in this scroll, you have named why I responded so viscerally, so soulfully, so completely to Magdalene: she’s not new to me, I’m REMEMBERING HER! I met my Soulmate spiritually almost an exact full year before we met while inhabiting our bodies. I was in Boulder, CO, in a Women’s Jungian Dream group: I was asked to take a clump of clay, close my eyes, sculpt whatever came to me. I let my fingers move, hold, mold. When I opened my eyes it was a figure on knees bent over with forehead to ground, praying. Bill, at same time, while studying for Priesthood, was at a Jungian retreat in Foursprings, CA dancing to music in a field with his eyes closed. When the music stopped he was asked to open his eyes, go to a table to take-up a few crayons and a piece of paper, close his eyes, and make a drawing. Opening his eyes he could add a few simple marks. It was crude crayon marks of a figure on knees, head to ground, praying.
Almost exactly a year later, our eyes smiled at each other across a room full of 150 people sitting in a circle, strangers from all over the world. A 10-day “Living Now” retreat put-on by Carl Rogers institute. As the Friday night Introduction closed, I walked past Bill’s chair, he was looking up at me, smiling and said “I think we’ve already met.” I said simply, “yes.” We talked until 3am under a full moon leaning on a fountain. I remember bits and pieces of the week. One day we sat side-by-side listening to Ram Dass for a full-day. I was enchanted. At one point Bill leaned over and whispered, “that’s my theology!” Excitedly I replied, “that’s my philosophy!”
After a few months of long-distance dating, I was helping him move into a new house, recently divorced, setting up the kitchen. I opened a box, found a rolled up piece of child drawing paper and gasped! It was a drawing of my clay figure! We knew that a miracle was occurring. We made an appointment with a doctor, also a daylong presenter at the conference; he helped people heal from terminally-ill cancer. He never charged: people came to him for his learning. He had us get down on his pool deck in LaJolla, and assume the posture in our art work. Our kneeling praying postures were identical..except that our heads were turned to one side, and we were looking at one another. Paul later told us: “I’m not at all surprised this happened. What amazes me is that you each kept your art piece.” My clay was raw, never fired; Bill’s paper was worn, old, crumbly.
We walked hand-in-hand, body-in-body, spirit-in-spirit. With all due respect to Jesus and Mary Magdalene, Bill lived a life described by you in this scroll. I keep seeing Bill…at a communion service, speaking from his heart and soul in each sermon. We danced each on our own paths, our own destinies playing out. In our living rooms, at meals…and in each parish where he served. Bishops recognized him and sent him to troubled fractured church communities. Bill lived out his God-given gifts. Always present and loving unconditionally each person in his care…communities would heal, coming together again “to love and serve God.”
We had 47 years together. To this day there is one liturgical phrase I hold from deep in my Soul: “Therefore we celebrate the mystery of faith.”
Bill would say: “there’s more going on than meets the eye.” Recently I have added from John Prendergast: “I don’t know, I can’t know, I don’t need to know.” And now…
You and your scroll have given me words on paper to keep remembering, knowing, sensing Bill’s constant presence in my Earthly and Spiritual life. I learned from him Teilhard des Chardin: “we are not bodies having a spiritual experience, we are Spirits having an embodied experience.”
When I see Bill’s face he is smiling a small knowing wry grin, blue eyes twinkling and head with a soft small nod. Now I know he met Mary Magdalene a very long time ago. Jesus was “his guy.” For Bill Jesus was/is the perfect whole human, embodying the integrated, dare I say, “merged” qualities of both masculine and feminine.
Oh, Virgin Monk Boy. I have tears of recognition, of knowing, of remembering all that is holy (everything) and that I am blessed to live with, in, and around the sacred. When the student is ready, the teacher will appear. And now I see Mary Magdalene standing with me, too. I see her, and because of my earthly lived life with Bill, and now our spiritual merging, I sense the Magdalene sees me , too.
Amen. So Be It. A’Ho. ❤️🙏❤️😎🐶
This explains everything I have wrestled with about my challenge about a closer relationship with Jesus. I know, that sounds weird as hell, as this is all about MAGDALENE but i was literally wondering this morning before reading this why I feel such a growing closer with her, the one thing I’d been missing in the traditional Lutheran church i was brought up in, & why I have talked directly to God (Spirit, Divine….) easily - and easily explained because it was God who woke me up to my alcoholism & guided me to a place where the only requirement for “salvation” (from killing yourself drinking or drugging ) was a Higher Power of your definition. I literally had Jesus crammed down my throat from birth in the very patriarchal way, that says if you don’t believe in Jesus (only way to get to God, can’t do that directly) you will literally be damned & burn in hell. And no mention or study of Magdalene, just a footnote. Nothing new, I know, but I have literally been examining why i have a hard time having intimacy with Jesus in my meditations, prayers, LIFE etc. I don’t know if that makes a damn bit of sense but it has been an issue I’ve been uncomfortable with my whole life. All I’ve ever heard is jesus is the only way, which discounts every other religion (no, I did not marry a Jew in rebellion) & itz authenticity.
Magdalene & everything I’ve learned & am still learning from you & other sources about her is life-changing & of course brings Jesus into the fold in the first time in a way I can relate with him. This tumbling of words without coffee onto the page feels like a tangled mess of a response to what you so beautifully wrote and literally answers the puzzlement I was wrestling with last nite & this morning. Thank you for giving this space for us to think & feel out loud on paper (or whatever it is) & bring truth to light & to what’s called “Christianity” so that this tangled mess of “religion” centuries old can water a seed of truth that’s been buried underground just waiting.
Replace MAGA with Magdalene & watch the world blossom into the core truth of what Jesus was teaching.
I, too, share an awakening about Jesus when I see him as Magdalene’s partner, equal. Unlike you, I was blessed to live with someone who only trusted the real Jesus, not what someone else appropriated or assumed or attributed to him. He spoke often of the Gnostic Gospels and I found a copy of Mary Magdalene’s Gospel in his library. When we met we were both already students of the concepts of “the feminine,” and “the masculine,” each having come to believe (perhaps from Carl Jung?) that for a man or a woman to become a whole person, each must study their own dominant side, as well as their less-dominant side, and seek to meaningfully incorporate both into their beings. I did this work in search of promoting a healthy, whole model of how to be a compassionate manager of people in large organizations. My earliest days’ intuitions were confirmed much later when “Emotional Intelligence” became a thing that was studied. Juxtaposed to IQ, we found it a much better predictor of compassionate, effective leadership. Bill’s interest was very personal: how could he be the person God had created him to become. Later in life I applied the idea of masterful leadership to how we work with horses as sentient beings. When we humans “saw them” as having a direct connection to the Divine we learned how to listen to them: we could ask a question and they would share their sacred wisdom. Horses speak from Heart-centered wisdom and life practice. It’s how they survive naturally in the wild. Celts used horses as oracles 7000 years ago. Some of us are catching up to the sanctity and wisdom of every living being. Listening in the Quiet silence seems to be a direct path into knowing our deepest soul’s wisdom.
I’ve missed interacting with you. This scroll has brought me back into the public arena and community. For now, for me, this venue has become a sacred space of possibilities.
Thank you VMB. Thank you Mary Magdalene. ❤️🙏❤️😎🐶
Your clear understanding of Mary Magdalene is delightful.🔥
Wonderful!