(no subject)

[gospel-of-mary.insanejournal.com]

WHO: Mary Magdalene
WHEN: Last Sunday afternoon (the 16th)
WHERE: A park somewhere in Manhattan
WHAT: Picking up the old ways Also known as, Circe felt inspired to write

Mary had spoken a few times at John's church but it wasn't a place that suited her. There was too much of the Baptist there and though she had known him of old and sometimes considered them friends of a sort after arriving in America, what they saw in God were different things. Under all his modern words, a part of Mary always remembered him as he was back in Jerusalem, preaching doom and punishment and dramatic anger. That had never been her way. Mary hadn't known anything of faith before being healed by Jesus.

But after that there had been no turning back for her. Mary of Magdala had a path before her and she was unwavering in her devotion to that enigmatic man and his message.

She had somehow forgotten, wrapped up in all the mess of America, that she had truly believed that message. That her faith in Jesus (the man, the prophet, the flesh) and her faith in God (the all-encompassing, the idea, the spirit) had been steadfast.

She reread over her own gospel online and wished that she could fill in the missing gaps. Whole sections gone from it but Mary didn't know what they had been, even though she remembered - vividly - writing every single word. (And as strong as that memory was, she knew it was impossible as well. She knew that the Gospel of Mary had been written long after she was dead, yet still she remembered it. Belief was a twisting, serpentine thing that turned back on itself just to bite her.)

In her bedroom, Mary read the Bible for the first time in forty years, taking what she believed to be true to the spirit of Jesus and discarding what she didn't want. It was the way of the Christian faith and always had been - so Mary could do it to. She wrote down thoughts and ideas on the notepad by her bed, letting the idea of her own voice as vessel consume her as it once had.

Jesus had trusted in her once. He had asked her to rely his lessons to the other Apostles and make them understood. He knew that she was gifted and powerful and-

It hurt to think about him. Still it hurt. But it was a familiar old pain, a late-night companion she knew well. There was comfort in that grief. Mary didn't know what she'd do without it. The pain of loss was so much a part of her. Maudlin Magdalene. If she wasn't weeping she wouldn't have been living up to her name.

It was quiet little park that Mary chose. She couldn't use a church, couldn't put herself in that place that hated her and that she hated. No church of man would hear any message from her. She would use this, his real church, the open sky, the green grass, the breeze-touched trees. Soon it would be too cold but she could find somewhere else then. Today though it was warm, with bright sun above, and Mary took it all as a good sign.

And then she spoke.

On the first day a man watched her for a minute or so, before wandering off.

On the second day a different man watched her and it turned into a conversation.

On the third day a pair of women came across Mary and her conversation partner. (He worked nearby, he'd told her. This was his lunchbreak. Would she be here everyday? He loved hearing what she had to say.) The pair of women stayed for a bit before leaving. One of them returned on the fourth day, listening from a nearby tree but saying nothing.

On the fifth day another two had joined the circle. By the seventh, another three.

Mary rarely spoke like this, but when she did people listened. People heard. She had not been chosen by Jesus for nothing. Within that little group, gaining followers, Mary preached just as she had done in Judea. Only here no one tried to silence her voice. Here when people argued with her words, she was no cowed and having to return to her brothers in shame. She spoke with them all openly, let them ask questions, let them share their own thoughts and opinions. She wanted this to be an place of free ideas, of faith and the discussion of Jesus as not only a divine being but as a man. There was a lot of talk from her on the human nature of the son of god, and because of that a lot of talk on the real her. Mary Magdalene was a name - an idea - that brought out of them a lot of passionate talk - there was anger from some about the idea that Jesus had a wife, or that Mary had been an apostle, but others embraced it, talking of feminism and the ideas of Jesus and the role of women in his ministry, and of what roles may have been cut out of the Bible, or if it was the direct word of God or or or and and and

Mary felt stronger. She felt better. This was the eighth day of whatever this experiment of hers was, and she felt like she was finding a place in the world for the first time in half a century.