Voices of the Magdalene Community

Just for a moment let me take you into this contemporary community to hear some of our voices talk about what we're looking for-and what we've found.

"What is it about the Magdalene that attracts you in the first place? Why did she draw you in? Is it Mary, or is it something else?"

"It's the message, more than the messenger--the mesage from the Teacher about the Human One. I think I am changing. The traditional Gospels seem more about proving a fact. The Gospel of Mary is more about love and mystery."

"It the justice and the calm. When I hear the words 'Peace be with you. Acquire my Peace within you," I stretch out my arms in an enfolding gesture and I feel the peace."

"It's the interconnectedness of all things that gets me. I have been reading about that and here in the Gospel of Mary we find this idea--it's the first idea that surfaces in the Gospel--the disciples ask Jesus about matter--if matter will be utterly destroyed or not. Then they ask him about sin. What is sin? The answer to the first is that all the elements of nature are interwoven and united with each other. The answer to the second goes right through you for the Teacher says there is no sin in any original sense, it's what we do to one another that generates the sin. That's not the message you get in the church!"

"It's the Magdalene herself that draws me in. She is very real for me. She was a person--not a symbol or representative. She was the authentic voice of Christ. That's why we come here- to hear what that voice is, without all the church stuff. To me she is very real."

"But the church shut it down, but why?"

"That's a long and old story of divisions rather than connections."

"I love that her Gospel starts off with the question of matter--do we matter? It's a different take on that word, but what she has done for us is to say we do matter--that's part of that attraction for me."

"I think she was a historical person. I don't even want to start doubting that. Then I have no place to start."

"What she got was never going to pay for buildings and Cathedrals and gold trimmed robes."

"What Jesus taught wasn't going to do othat either."

"What they got was the original good."

"And it all comes from love--you don't need all these rules if you come from love."

"I think that divinity is in all of us--when we explore other religions, we find that. We are always looking for a connection with a higher being but it has to be somewhere in there to start the looking."

"I get so much out of these studies and then the conversation in our Sunday services. To me that's enough right now. I am on a path inweard, so I can go out."

"To me it is so much more than what I've been getting I can't conceive of more."

"There may be more, but this is enough."

"Perhaps we have found the Grail of True Humanness!"