Mary Magdalene, Shaman

Part I: Spiritual Preparation Our essence is in the bones, shamanism tells us. But getting to the essence, to the bones, of more than seven decades of life is not easy. My natural medium is paint, not words, and so an image came—something I painted years ago that was inspired by a dream. In the dream, I am walking through a dark green forest among trees so tall I can’t see the tops. Shafts of warm, nourishing sunlight stream through the branches, making the forest seem alive with light. It feels magical, enchanted. As I stood in front of the blank canvas wondering how to begin, my art teacher advised me to paint the feeling. I began with a dark green organic shape, something like a large tropical flower, leaving the center of the shape blank. The moment I dipped the tip of my brush into the delicate pink and started to paint the center, I had an unexpected experience. I’m painting my center, I thought. This delicate pink, this emerging light, is the “me” I have hardly known and never fully loved. As soon as I had this thought, I began to use my brush with greater tenderness, as though each slow and patient stroke was creating something new. I knew how to love my parents, I knew how to love my husband, and I knew how to love my children. But I didn’t know how to love myself. The liver disease that nearly killed me at age 66 was the consequence of this toxic ignorance. The promise of the pink center is that everything is in its rightful place. I feel it when I soften and let go, viscerally aware of everything as wholeness, everything that supports me. … Here I know that love is not only the ground of our being, it is the primordial energy that resides in all of life. It is our root. It is our origin. It is our creativity. The power of love has helped me sacrifice false perceptions, beliefs, and ideas I’ve have about myself and others to get to the core of our shared humanity. When love’s beauty flows out through my heart to others, others I would not naturally embrace or agree with, it builds bridges between all things like a translucent body of light. Discovering how to feel the delicate pink center has taken me on a journey I never expected, one that awakened the sleeping sacred feminine within my consciousness. … Ultimately, I discovered among the many faces of the sacred feminine the one most important to me: Mary Magdalene, the other Mary in the gospels. I knew nothing about her except that her archetypal energy was alive in me. She, who always appears clothed in red, is the red thread running through my life. I came to know her as Magdalene the shaman, a true wounded healer. As I began remembering and reimagining my life story, I could see how she was subtly weaving the threads of her red dress throughout my experiences. Part II: The Transplant The night before my liver transplant I awakened from a brief and vivid dream: a black limousine, like a hearse, glides up to the hospital curb and parks. When I awakened, my first thought was, “Is this my liver?” I spent the next day in my hospital bed, thinking about the dream while staring out of the window onto the nearby rooftop. I’d been in the Critical Care Unit at Cedars-Sinai Hospital for days now, accustomed to the noisy helicopters landing frequently, watching the white-clothed personnel rushing ice chests bearing fresh organs for transplant into the hospital. No helicopters had arrived that morning. There was no sign of a possible donor liver. That night, the nurses brought me some cookies and milk and I drifted off to sleep. Suddenly, there was frantic activity all around as nurses entered my room, moving in a quick, practiced sequence. When my anesthesiologist arrived at the left side of my bed dressed in his green operating clothes he leaned in closely, aimed a finger to his head like a gun and flicked his thumb. “A sixteen year old boy. It won’t be long now.” Part III: Spiritual Integration Two years after the liver transplant I stood in the vestibule of Chartres Cathedral. I turned to the right and laid eyes on an enormous stone statue of Mary Magdalene and Jesus. I felt my body step back to take it all in. “My God,” I said, momentarily breathless. I never anticipated anything so dramatic. They were here, together, so imposing and strong. An earthquake seemed to shake my body. The significance of Mary Magdalene literally changed before my eyes. Standing before this overwhelming and magnificent statue, I felt my body become like a pillar of fire surrounded by swirling water. It was a familiar and uncontrollable sensation I felt throughout my body as a teenager anytime I felt the living presence of God. Along with it, gooseflesh moved up and down my body. When I tried to pray or sing with the others, I just couldn’t. My lips would quiver and tears would stream down my cheeks. Is this when you first came to me? I wondered, all those years ago when I was a mere teenager? I thought of the drawing of her I had hanging in my dining room in my early married life but it was modest and very small. Here she was huge and an equal size with Jesus. What a wonder! What a wonder! Gooseflesh crept up and down my whole body giving me the signal of spirit’s presence. Walking closer, I saw a small placard that described the scene. It was in the garden, after Jesus’ death, when Magdalene hears something in the silence. Thinking it is the gardener, she discovers it is her beloved Jesus. She reaches toward him, “Raboni! Raboni!” But he restrains her, saying, “Nolle ne tangere.” Do not cling to me. I have not yet ascended to my father. He goes on: “Tell the others. I have risen.” It is Mary Magdalene’s receptivity in this divine moment, her act of devotion to Jesus, that allows her to be an agent of annunciation, telling the world that he lives. As I felt it, Mary Magdalene is holding their love at his tomb to allow Jesus to surrender. This love is how I intimately knew the Magdalene, when I was suspended between life and death waiting for a new liver. I think the sculptor knew this, too. I could almost feel his fingers holding the chisel and hammer as he carved this blessed moment, a moment of revelation. Because death had not broken the loving union between Mary Magdalene and Jesus, she was the very first of his disciples to see him. In a way, the Magdalene helped Jesus give birth to his spiritual self. The carver’s hand revealed the profound message of Christianity: love is eternal, overcoming even death. I felt my body shudder. … Magdalene is far larger and more encompassing than any of the stories about her. Certainly, she is a biblical character, but to me—and among many other people today—she is a powerful and loving force. Each generation, including ours, has reinvented her again and again. She has been known as a heretic, a hysterical woman, a strong woman, a leader and founder of the early Christian faith, the wife of Jesus and a penitent whore. It is important to return to the stories, but it is equally important to recognize that Magdalene energy is available to anyone, no matter their religious beliefs or spiritual practice. I think of her as the model par excellence of the felt sense of the sacred feminine on all planes of human existence, the unseen luminous body that connects all of us. It means she has the capacity to channel the spirit, like a lightning rod between humanity and the divine.