The Magdalene Community at Grace Episcopal Church

Sunday, October 9, 2016, 4:00pm

Call to Silence and Opening Meditation

Opening Greeting

The Blessed One greeting them all, saying: Peace be with you – may my Peace arise and be fulfilled within you! Be vigilant, and allow no one to mislead you by saying: ”Here it is!” or “There it is!” For the child of true humanity exists within you.  Follow it!  Those who search for it will find it.

Celebrant:  Peace be with you.

All:  Acquire my peace within you.

·         A Reading from the Gospel of Mary

Mary said to them:  “I will now speak to you of that which has not been given to you to hear.  I had a vision of the Teacher, and I said to him: “Lord I see you now in this vision,” And he answered:  “You are blessed, for the sight of me does not disturb you.  There where the mind is lies the treasure.”

Then I said to him:  “Lord, when someone meets you in a Moment of vision, is it through the soul that they see, or is it through the Spirit? The Teacher answered:  “It is neither through the soul nor the spirit, but the mind between the two which sees the vision…”

Prayer – Al-‘Asma Al-Husna, “The Beautiful Names” (all together)

Holy One of One-Hundred Names,

Three of which are Compassion, Love, and Mercy,

We acknowledge our offenses against you and your creation.

In our attempts to be holy, too often we have listened to others

Instead of trusting our own God-given instincts.

We have accepted distorted images of women for so long

That we no longer recognize the godly goodness of our own voices.

We have tarnished the unique God-shaped image that you so tenderly created inside

    each one of us,

Female and male.

We confess that, at times, we have not loved you or our neighbors,

We have not loved ourselves or have we loved Creation.

We are rarely able to receive your all-encompassing love.

Instead of fanning the flames of your love in our midst,

Too often we have quenched the divine sparks.

Instead of allowing your Holy Breath to swirl around us freely, sometimes

We have tried to trap the breeze in a box to be used for our purposes.

We ask you to blow away the cobwebs of temptation and to blot out the stain of our

offenses.

We pray that your light may shine through us, and we may be all you created us to be.

We hope that we may reflect your Glorious Harmony in the world.

We ask this in your many names, O God of One Hundred Names.

Amen

A Celebration of the Divine Feminine

Celebrant:  We gather here to seek a new meaning, an ancient path and a forgotten truth.

We search for the Magdalene as we pray (the celebrant lights the candle):

(All say)

         Our Lady Magdalene, holy and complete,

         Your mysteries are many,

         Apostle of the apostles,

         Blessed among women,

         Kindle in me the spark of wisdom

         Which guides from darkness into light.

Celebrant (lifting the bowl):  we share bread from an earthen bowl – bread, the essential nourishment;

Bread and bowl, gifts from the hearth.  We share it in love:

(All say)

         Love is the key to unlock the secrets

         Of compassion, empathy and life.

         I live to transcend this mortal coil

         Through the power of perfect love.

(The celebrant offers the bowl to the person on the left, who takes a piece.  She/he then takes

The bowl and offers it to the one on her/his left.  Each holds the bowl as the next person takes a

Piece, so serving each other around the room)

Celebrant (Lifting the cup):  We share milk in a glass cup as we seek to honor the feminine within

Our souls, bodies and selves, and for our past, present and future:

(All say)

         From the past, let me learn

         For the present, let me live,

         And for the future, let me strive.

         May today be the holy benefactor of tomorrow.

(The celebrant offers the cup to the person on the left, who dips his/her bread, then takes

The cup and offers it to the next person, again serving each other around the room. All eat.  After a

Short pause, the celebrant lifts the candle)

(All say)

         For so long as the truth burns

         In my secret heart of hearts,

         May I walk the path of faithfulness

         Toward the limitless light.

   

         Peace be with you

(The celebrant blows out the candle)

Let us Pray

Our Mother who art within us,

Each breath brings us to you.

Thy wisdom come,

Thy will be done,

As we honor your presence within us.

You give us this day all that we need.

Your bounty calls us to give and receive

All that is loving and pleasurable.

You are the courage that moves us to be true to ourselves

And we act with grace and power.

We relax into your cycles of birth,

Growth, death and renewal.

Out of the womb, the darkness, the void, comes new life.

For you are the Mother of All Things.

Your body is the Sacred Earth and our bodies.

Your love nurtures us and unites us all.

Now and forever more.    Amen.

Call to Conversation

Closing Prayer

O Gentle, O Kind, O Blessed Sophia,

Thy Children on earth call to thee.

We pray thee, Beloved Mother, to cast forth

Thy net of woven starlight.

Fling it wide across the ocean of the universe

And gather us home to the realms of Light.

May we be as loving and faithful as our venerable sister, Mary Magdalene,

May she never be forgotten, and may her name be eternally blessed.  Amen

Symbols, References, and Influences:

Candle – represents us before God

Flames & smoke – carry our prayers and offerings to Heaven

Earthen bowl – Brigid, Goddess and Saint

Glass cup – glass is made in fire another association with Brigid. The cup is a symbol

  for the feminine

Bread – the essential food

Milk – life itself, the essential feminine

Passing to the left – the left side is the “feminine” side

She Who Changes, Carol Christ

The Serpent and the Goddess, Mary Condren

The Gospel of Mary of Magdala, Karen L. King.

Invoking Mary Magdalene, Siobhan Houston, “Seven Payers to Magdalene.”

Women at Worship, Marjorie Proctor-Smith & Janet Walton

The Women’s Dictionary of Symbols and Sacred Objects, Barbara Walker

The Magdalene Mystique, Betty Conrad Adam

The Book of Common Prayer, 1982, According to the use of the Episcopal Church

She Who Prays: A Woman’s Interfaith Prayer Book, Jane Richardson Jensen & Patricia

    Harris-Watkins

Carol Jung, “Archetypes,” http://www.simplepsychology.org/carl-jung.html

GRACE EPISCOPAL CHURCH

Magdalene Community

Grace Episcopal Church

Sunday, August 14, 2016

4:00p.m.

CALL TO SILENCE AND OPENING MEDITATION

Reading –

With the Beloved’s water of life, no illness remains

In the Beloved’s rose garden of union, no thorn remains.

They say there is a window from one heart to another

How can there be a window where no wall remains?

             From The Thief of Sleep,   Rumi

The Gospel of Thomas Translated by Thomas O. Lambdin

114)  Simon Peter said to him:  “Let Mary leave us, for women are not worthy of life.”  Jesus said:

“I myself shall lead her in order to make her male, so that she too may become a living spirit of resembling you males.  For every woman who will make herself male will enter the kingdom of heaven.”

Mary Magdalene Made Official

July 22, 2016 – Pope Francis raised the celebration of the memorial of St. Mary Magdalene to the dignity of a liturgical Feast, putting it on par with the celebrations of the male apostles.

Would Mary have wanted this recognition?  Perhaps not.  Did she deserve it?  Yes, a thousand times over.  Because at the end of the day the truth is simple:  without Mary Magdalene there would be no Easter.  Because of the Magdalene, we have a true story.

She was the eyewitness to it all.  Her account of what happened has stood the test of time and survived against the impossible. While all else of her has been systematically erased, clouded conflated, her account of the Easter story remains.

Magdalene as Witness to the Crucifixion

Matthew 27:55-56, Mark 15:40, Luke 23:49, John 19:25

Mary followed Jesus to the hill.  At the point where the angry crowds had fallen back and where the disciples vanished and were hiding in fear, she continued.  She and a handful of women, ever faithful, ever present, refused to leave.

As she watched Jesus lifted up on the cross, witnessed his transition, would not his words from the last super have echoed in her mind?  “This is my blood…”

Standing there at the foot of the cross, a hands length away, close enough to touch his body, close enough to smell his pain, was she not participating in the first communion?

She heard his last words, watched him take his last breath.  She watched as his arms were unlashed and his body taken down from the cross.  She saw his lifeless body.

Magdalene as Witness to the Burial of Jesus and the Empty Tomb

Matthews 27:61, Mark 15:47, Luke 23:55-56, John 20:1-5

She followed the men who carried the body to the tom.  She didn’t “hear” about him being buried.  She was there.  She watched as Joseph (of Arimathea) took the body down and wrapped it in the linen sheets he had brought.  He laid the body in the tomb that had been cut out of the rock and rolled a stone across the entrance to the Tomb.

Now Mary Magdalene and another Mary kept vigil there, seated opposite the tomb.  Matthew 27:61

She stayed throughout the night, a dangerous vigil, but as Cynthia Bourgeault* says, “Where else could she have been?”

Luke says of her and the other women.  “And returning home, they prepared perfumes and ointments”.

In two versions the other women joined her at the empty tomb.

However, in John, she arrives alone at the tomb and discovers the stone has been rolled away.  She hurries to find Peter and the other disciple. They all marvel that the stone has been rolled away.  The tomb is empty. The linens folded. After the disciples leave, she stays behind weeping.

Magdalene as the First Witness to the Resurrection

Matthew 28:1-19, Mark 16:1-11, Luke 24:1-11, John 20:6-18

It is the Magdalene who remains and searches for him.  It is Mary who first spoke to him, weeping and pleading for help, blinded by her grief.  Mary who first heard his voice and who first recognized him.

Mary Magdalene’s name was the first name spoken by him.  She responds with ‘Rabouni” and in that moment the man’s identity is made clear for all ages: Teacher!

It was the Magdalene who first reached out to him, hoping to touch him and was given the great commission to go “unto my brethren and say to them, I ascend unto my Father and your Father, and my God and your God.”

My God and your God.  The same God for all, Mary and the brethren.

And Mary obeyed.  She ran to the disciples and said: “I have seen the Lord.”

In those words she gave us the Easter story.  In those words she became the
“Apostle to the Apostles” a title first bestowed upon her by Thomas Aquinas in the 1200s.

For the woman who was unwavering in her truth, the woman who was much loved, it is more than fitting

That in this year of 2016 her day of honor is finally made official.

The Gospel of Mary Magdalene

Mary said, “I saw the Lord in a vision and I said to him, ‘Lord, I saw you today in a vision.”

He answered and said to me:  “Blessed are you, that you did not waver at the sight of me.  For where the

Mind is, there is the treasure.”

I said to him, “So now, Lord, does a person who sees a vision see it “through” the soul “or” through the spirit?”

Call to Conversation

All participate as they wish.

Closing Meditation

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing

And right doing there is a field.

I’ll meet you there.

When the soul lies down in that grass

The world is too full to talk about.

               ---   Rumi

                                          

In appreciation to Grace Episcopal Church for hosting the Magdalen Community in this sacred space.