Mary Magdalene course Week 1

Online class: Mary Magdalene: Apostle for our Times

I'm taking this class with contemplative author Cynthia Bourgeault about her book, "The Meaning of Mary Magdalene". The class is eight weeks long.  Cynthia is a  scholar in mystical contemplative tradition.  The class includes audio recordings by Cynthia, and also some questions for personal reflection for the students.  I share my reflections on the questions here in my blog.

This week's Personal Reflection Questions:

Question 1
What were your existing assumptions about who Mary Magdalene(MM) was? How have those assumptions impacted you? Can you identify the source(s) of those assumptions? 

All of my existing assumptions about women in Christianity comes from my conservative Mormon upbringing.  MM was one of the prostitutes.  Reflecting now, the church reinforced the patriarchal male doctrine that completely excludes women from leadership roles. I think the impact to me is that the assumptions about women and men's roles are unconsciously biased toward very toxic patriarchy.  The source of the assumptions were Sunday School, weekly pulpit messages, and formal church doctrine and liturgy.

Question 2.

Cynthia talks about the conflation of “sinfulness” with “lust/sensuality” in Gregory the Great’s sermon. In your experience, how has that common association been true in the Christian tradition? Take a moment to reflect on how that might have impacted you.

The conflation of sin with lust permeates the cultural landscape within Christianity.  Sin is a word with so much baggage and judgment. I personally prefer a definition of sin that has  nothing to do with judgment and punishment.  New Age author Eckhart Tolle gives me a better way for me think about sin.  Sin is simply a state of consciousness that is not present in this moment, but involves perception trapped in small ego-dominated scripts of repressed past pain. This is radically different from the mainline Christian teaching that God punishes us for sin; a view that I believe sets up people to be obedient, judgmental, and seek a path for perfection that ultimately fails get out of ego-driven traps.  The impact to me in my childhood lead me to be an obedient child, driven to avoid punishment from a hierarchical, omnipotent, and controlling God. I now agree with Eckhart Tolle about sin.  The mainline teaching about sin and judgment has nothing to do with Jesus' message to love one another.  I'm happy to say that I now belong to a smaller progressive church that does not teach about going to hell, or being judged.

Question 3.
Can you see how Mary’s voice was drowned out? In what ways does culture influence which voices are prioritized and which stories are told? Which voices are given priority in our culture today? Which voices are not?

I think Cynthia Bourgeault makes a strong argument that the patriarchal church suppressed MM in order to keep women out of leadership roles.  Cynthia traces the storyline of MM as prostitute back to sermon by Pope Gregory in the seventh century.  Western Christianity taught MM was a prostitute after that, but the Eastern Orthodox Church did not adopt this teaching.  In Eastern Orthodox Church, Mary has the title of Apostle to the Apostles. The Catholic Church officially decreed this prostitute story false in 1969.  I believe that that this narrative suppressing feminine voices serves the male dominated power structure.  Marginalized groups are erased and not given a voice.  
I want to say that this dynamic of hierarchical power, in which elites control others, has driven civilization and western culture.  It marginalized women, people of color, LGBTQ, other species, and the Earth itself.  The Ecological crisis is really a symptom of "control-over" thinking which uses punishment and reward with violence for false power.  True power comes from co-creative cooperation and authentic relationship. Recovering feminine voices and archetypes is a path to restoring creativity and energy that has been lost.

Question 4.

What thoughts, feelings  or sensations arise when you consider the possibility that Mary Magdalene was one of Jesus’ closest disciples?

I feel curiously intrigued that MM can lead Christianity to new wisdom. A silenced female disciple has many secrets to reveal.  I also feel a tragedy of great loss that we don't yet know everything that MM had to teach us.  Much of the gnostic gospel of Mary Magdalene has been lost. I hope that I can overcome cultural bias to see a fuller Christianity of integrated feminine wisdom.  I am grateful that my church community at Church for our Common Home regularly honors feminine voices like Mary Magdalene in song, ritual, study, and call to ecological transformation.