Fire Woman Rising
Celebrating Mary Magdalene
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The material I post comes from my journey, not only in the chapters of Grace Beyond Telling which will appear week by week, but also my occasional extra post which will usually come out of material I am reflecting on at the time.
This post is one of those extra ones. Today, 22nd July, is the feast of Mary Magdalen. She is my favourite saint and has been preoccupying much of my thinking and reading over the past three months, since Stancea Vichie mss gave me an icon of Mary Magdalene she had painted. As you can see from the image, she is holding the jar of the precious ointment with which she anointed Jesus shortly before his crucifixion. For me, that ointment symbolises her total giving of herself in love to her beloved Master.
Mary Magdalen gets only a few mentions in the Gospels. But when we read the non-canonical Gospels (those early writings which were not included in the collection we know as the Bible), we see why. In the culture of that time, women were regarded as not capable or worthy of roles among the early community of disciples. Yet Mary Magdalene was present at all the significant stages of Jesus’ public life and mission. She understood Jesus in a way that the male disciples did not. She, together with some other women disciples were there at the foot of the cross, and went to Jesus’ grave to perform the rituals women performed when preparing a body for burial. She was the first person to whom Jesus appeared on Resurrection day. He sent her to tell the apostles and other disciples that she had seen the Lord, that he was alive as he had promised. But they didn’t believe her.
What we know from the non-canonical Gospels, also called the gnostic Gospels, is that Mary Magdalene was Jesus’ Beloved Companion. He loved her more than the other disciples, we’re told. She actively shared his mission during his public life, and was a leader, a wisdom woman, and so much more in the early Christian community.
It seems to me that Mary Magdalen is a saint for our times. Our world is fractured and fractious because it is dominated by a toxic form of masculinity that is all about power, wealth, control and domination. It is not that the masculine in itself is bad. It has given us the world as we know it – the world of rapid travel and transport, of machines able to do much of the heavy lifting and drudgery of work, of air-conditioned homes and instant communication, of modern medicine, education and so much more. Yet when we value only the capacities of the masculine and co-opt them for personal, corporate or national gain, we end up with the state of our world today.
What is missing from that world are the gifts of the feminine: intuition, receptivity, emotional connection, nurturing. The feminine is about depth, creativity, being earthed in reality of everyday experience. It is about celebration, ritual, dance, stories – all necessary for our sense of identity and belonging to community and to the larger world.
Of course, feminine energy can also become toxic when directed to serve the self. Our world today needs a healthy feminine energy to call forth a healthy masculine energy, whose giftedness serves with qualities of justice, truth, strength, protectiveness and ecological healing. When the masculine and feminine work together in a wholesome way, a new spirit can flourish in our world.
Men and women have been gifted with both masculine and feminine energies and we need to nurture them both. Women usually embody the feminine more strongly and men the masculine. But not always, as we see in people whose sexual identity is not the same as their gender. Each of us needs to embody the masculine and feminine as expressions of our unique selves.
Today I share a reflection on Mary Magdalene in which I see her as the feminine embodiment of Christ. I wrote it for the Contemplative Evolution Network (CEN) for the month of July. I hope it inspires you as it inspires me. Click on the link to open it.
PS. Members of the Contemplative Evolution Network (CEN) commit to setting aside the hour between 4.00 and 5.00 pm daily to meditate/contemplate for the healing of the world. The love and compassion with which we hold our world is like Mary Magdalene’s precious ointment which we pour on its wounds.
Once a month, we publish a reflection on our website, written by one of our members. All are welcome to become part of this network. If you can’t meditate at that time, you can offer that hour for the intention of CEN, or you can meditate at a time that suits you. You don’t need to sign up, though if you do, you will receive an email when the next month’s reflection is published. This is our website: www.contemplativeevolutionnetwork.com