This blog has been through quite a few changes. About a year ago, it began as a Bible read, but I simply could not find the willingness to continue with that venture. Being quite prickly about the oft discarded female role in the story of "christian" spirituality, try as I might, I simply could not proceed with the read.
So what changed? It was finding the blog of an author who helped to re-ignite my wavering faith in the Sacred Feminine. When I found Joan Norton's Mary Magdalene Blog, I was amazed to suddenly find connection with a community, albeit small and thousands of miles away, that not only supported my desire to know the Magdalene better, but encouraged a deepening of the conviction that this woman, Magdalene, this goddess, is at the core of spirituality for me.
The Magdalene caught my attention years ago, specifically during 4th grade catechism when, being groomed for confirmation a few years in the future, we were encouraged to think about which saint we would choose as our patron. Well, any good catholic girl knows the female options are few and far between. But there was this Mary Magdalene, this sinner that we were told of who washed Jesus feet with her tears, drying them with her hair. Something about her, not so much the brief story, but HER, sent a vibration through my heart.
When I mentioned thinking about choosing Mary Magdalene as my patron saint, my teacher, a lay woman in the church, told me, "Oh, you don't want her, she was a sinner." Distinctly, I recall reminding this teacher, "But aren't we all sinners?" To which she replied, "Not that kind of sinner," and walked off.
Despite the Vatican's recant of this lie in the 1960s, this experience proved that such an erroneous belief was alive and well in Grand Mound, Iowa, 20 years later. And for better or worse, my faith in the Magdalene remained stifled for another 15 years. Sure, there was Scorsese's "The Last Temptation of Christ," but by my late high school years when it was released, I'd already given up hope that Jesus could actually have lived as a normal Jewish male. And because of all the flack the "fathers" of the Church raised, I just didn't have the energy to hope such nonsense could be possible.
But in my final year of college, taking a 'Women in Antiquity' class, my desire to know the Sacred Feminine was pricked. Suddenly I learned about pre-Bronze Age cultures that worshipped a female, life-giving Force! While I still didn't believe such heresy was possible, I couldn't quiet the stirrings in my soul that something was coming at me.
That something began emerging a decade later when a couple of my Bitches started a book club as a means of staying connected with each other after 9/11. One of the first books we read was Anita Diamant's "The Red Tent." The power of this author to weave an amazing tale of female strength and belief encouraged me to actually believe the Feminine Sacred was more than just funky goddess jewelry, crystals, and incense.
Looking back, I can clearly see how the Magdalene threw my search into overdrive. Shortly there after, the pastor at my Congregational church, Ginger Taylor, invited me to join a woman's book club. One of the first she recommended? Dan Brown's "The Da Vinci Code." Hollah!!!
It was 2004, a year after the book had been released, and suddenly the blasphemy of even hoping that Jesus had been a real guy was something no longer hopeless! It was as if the Magdalene was joyously dancing in my soul, stirring up my thoughts and pulling me to her. The very next book I read was Margaret Starbird's amazing and groundbreaking, "The Woman with the Alabaster Jar."
The rest is herstory! And while many authors including Starbird admit much of their research cannot be supported by factual evidence, one must not discount the resonance these tales strike in the depths of one's soul.
For me, so much of what I have read and continue to discover about the Magdalene is my Truth, my Gnosis. And each night, my spirit rests in knowing that both the Masculine and Feminine are divine and exalted and that those with eyes to see and ears to hear, know this too . . .
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