I’ve never been good at sitting still. When I get my hair trimmed, my stylist has to manually tip my head multiple times. Otherwise I’d end up with an unfortunate asymmetrical style.
So on Saturday when I heard that cringe-inducing “pop” of my ankle rolling out of place, I knew what I was in for: an unwelcome time of rest and stillness.
To keep myself from getting too fidgety, I scrolled through my list of books I’d bought with the best of intentions but hadn’t managed to crack open. One caught my eye—Mary Magdalene Revealed by Meggan Watterson. Someone must have recommended it to me, though I can’t remember who. No one among my inner circle of feminist-y, spiritual-y co-conspirators had read it.
I tried to keep my expectations measured. Mary Magdalene was the subject of my last chapter in Women Rise Up, and as with all of the biblical women I write about, I feel a certain level of not exactly possessiveness over their stories, but more like protectiveness. I don’t want anyone messing with these badass women, especially Mary Magdalene because Lord knows, she has been through the ringer.
(Y’all know there is no biblical evidence that she was a prostitute, right? That this was the interpretation of a pope who couldn’t comprehend the existence of multiple influential women in Jesus’s life? Or that a woman could have shortcomings that weren’t sexual? But I digress. )
I opened up Watterson’s book and my heart immediately swelled. This book was an exploration of the Gospel of Mary, one of the many early Christian texts ordered to be destroyed in the 4th century once Christianity became the national religion of Rome. A text that some brave, sneaky scribes tucked away safely for future finding.
When the powers that be find an idea so threatening that they must destroy all evidence of it, you know it’s based in truth. A sacred truth that cannot be eradicated through the destruction of scrolls or books or even those who wrote them in the first place. It’s a truth that will continue to reveal itself over and over again throughout ages and generations.
One of my favorite lines from the Gospel of Mary Magdalene is
“Every nature, every modeled form, every creature, exists in and with each other.“
Mary 2:2
Any sense of separation or division is an illusion. Our healing begins when we start to recognize that we are one with God and with one another.
Let it be so!