synchronicity, clues of the holy in the ordinary and mary magdalene...

In two unrelated blogs that I read regularly - Richard Rohr and Matthew Fox - each have been exploring separately the sacred feminine and the divine masculine. These two foundational archetypes are too often segregated; but when they embrace, they comprise a healthy whole. This unintended parallel was for me yet another encounter with what Jung called synchronicity: a variety of separate events that when seen as a whole evoke both deep personal meaning and reveal a small slice of the order of grace built into the universe. Over time, and in conversation with Albert Einstein, Jung became increasingly convinced that the sacred coordination of coincidence was a part of "the theories of relativity and quantum mechanics." 

Jung believed life was not a series of random events but rather an expression of a deeper order, which he and Pauli referred to as Unus mundus. This deeper order led to the insights that a person was both embedded in a universal wholeness and that the realization of this was more than just an intellectual exercise, but also had elements of a spiritual awakening. From the religious perspective, synchronicity shares similar characteristics of an "intervention of grace". Jung also believed that in a person's life, synchronicity served a role similar to that of dreams, with the purpose of shifting a person's egocentric conscious thinking to greater wholeness. (https://en.wikipedia.org/ wiki/Synchronicity)

Like many North Americans, I had never heard of synchronicity until The Police released an album of the same name in 1983. The youth group at my first church in Saginaw, MI played nothing else that summer and soon the sound and ideas captured my imagination, too.

Prior to Jung, meaningful coincidence was treated as a squishy sub-genre of the spiritual life. Mystical experience has long been held at arms length by religious institutions for its subjectivity. Clearly with no observable, objective standards to evaluate the inward journey, some choose well-defined dogma over revelation because the wisdom of the heart takes time to comprehend. Small wonder that G.K. Chesterton quipped that "coincidences are spiritual puns." Albert Einstein wrote that "coincidence is God's way of remaining anonymous." That many still denigrate the revelations revealed by synchronicity is a fact of life. Currently, some claim that chaos theory renders the insights born of the intentional coordination of coincidence as untrue. But after 50 years of listening and honoring these gentle, subtle and unexpected clues, I have found they help me live into my deepest truths. Indeed, I trust that what some call coincidence are more often that not invitations into grace and wholeness.

A text that I return to over and again from the Hebrew scriptures is Psalm 85: 10-11: "Steadfast love and faithfulness will meet; righteousness and peace will kiss each other. Faithfulness will spring up from the ground and righteousness will look down from the sky."  My hunch is that one of the multiple insights within this verse has something to do with what we can experience when the radical and restorative unity of life's polarities are married. This Hebrew prayer/poem uses nuanced words to evoke what it feels like to encounter the embrace of yin with yang, light with dark, trust with reality, and all the rest. I tend to rework the text like this to tease out the mystical truths:

When individuals and societies nourish compassion (hesed) and also cultivate a commitment to honesty (emet) solidarity (tsedeq) is born: right relations (tsedeq) and social harmony (shalom) will kiss one another with passion. And their embrace will give birth to a sacred balance within creation as dignity is restored to the earth and divine love inspires us from the heavens.

Matthew Fox has written in his major work, A Spirituality Named Compassion, that Western understandings of justice all too often look to a law and order, crime and punishment tableau when it comes to justice; and treat mercy as pity and peace merely the absence of physical violence. But this ode to spiritual integration celebrates the fecundity of compassion's marriage with right relationships: not only are our differences embrace, but the result gives birth to joy and tenderness.  

When the Sacred Masculine is combined with the sacred feminine inside

each of us, we create the 'sacred marriage' of compassion and passion in ourselves.... (Remember) Compassion is not pity ... compassion never considers an object as weak or inferior. Compassion, one might say, works from a strength born of awareness of shared weakness, and not from someone else's weakness and from the awareness of the mutuality of us all. (Matthew Fox)

In his reflections on the divine feminine, Rohr reminds us that conscious love is rooted in solidarity: we need partners, lovers, friends, family, and mentors to guide us beyond ourselves into relationships of trust. Rohr writes that many of us have been taught to love others as an act of the will. But it can't be sustained any more than a dry-drunk can bring about a life of sobriety.

Many pastors and priests have done the people of God a great disservice by preaching the Gospel to them but not giving them the tools whereby they can obey that Gospel. As Jesus put it, “cut off from the vine, you can do nothing” (John 15:5). The “vine and the branches” offer one of the greatest Christian mystical images of the non-duality between God and the soul. In and with God, I can love everything and everyone—even my enemies. Alone and by myself, my willpower and intellect will seldom be able to love in difficult situations over time. Many folks try to love by willpower, with themselves as the only source. They try to obey the second commandment without the first. It usually does not work long-term, and there is no one more cynical about love than a disillusioned idealist... Until we love and until we suffer (for love) we try to figure out life and death with our minds; but afterward a Larger Source opens up within us (after we experience love and grace from within and from others) and then we “think” and feel quite differently: “until we know the Love, which is beyond all knowledge” (Ephesians 3:19)

The Greek word translated as "know" (γινώσκω (ginóskó) is experiential. It means to perceive, to encounter, or to be sexually intimate as in Luke 1:34: "Mary (the virgin) said to the angel, 'How will this be since I do not know (ginṓskō - with sexual intimacy) this man?" This spiritual knowledge is intimate and holistic, it brings together the polarities of creation, it honors the embrace of compassion and right relationships. And it is profoundly attuned to the clues some still dismiss as mere coincidence.

Cynthia Bourgeault writes in her book, The Meaning of Mary Magdalene: Discovering the Woman at the Heart of Christianity, that Magdalene was the first disciple to hold all the love of Christ in her heart while also giving it bodily expression. She both knew the love of Christ - that is, experienced it within her being - and shared it consistently in her living. She alone remained faithful and present with Jesus not only as he was taught throughout Israel and Palestine, but she was the only disciple who stood her ground through the passion, the betrayals, the crucifixion and the resurrection. For this, she has been called "the apostle to the apostles." Yet her witness - and testimony- has systematically been erased by misogyny and culture. Still, Mary is the one who promises to restore balance, as well as give shape and form to disciples in the 21st century. "Who is an apostle?" asks Bourgeault.

The answer is simple and bold: the one who does the work... of purifying the unconscious. Magdalene is the one from whom seven demons have been cast out... She has tamed the inner beasts, confronted the passions that hold human being enchained to the powers of the world. The fruit of this work is not only psychological wholeness, but the capacity to see. Her clear heart is her intimate channel into the fullness beyond time... (She is the one) who lives in continuous communion with the Master in the imaginal meeting ground through the power of a pure heart, so that 'Thy kingdom come" is in fact a living reality. (Bourgeault p. 68) 

My heart was awakened by the synchronicity of reading both Rohr and Fox on the same day. Once again, they invite me to hear the call of the holy within the ordinary events of living and loving. And just so that I would hold no argument, later that evening during our benefit music and poetry concert, my friend Patricia Mason-Martin, read this poem:

Mary Magdalene
gods and goddesses watched
as she pulled the sword out from her back
and held it up to the sky..........

Excalibur....

from the deep recesses of flesh
that long denied a memory too hot to hold..
a memory that burned and scorched the waking cells
in her heart..
scorched the waking cells in her heart and in her brain...........

and in the very depths of her soul..
a memory of love that felt more like pain....
The love felt like pain..
as she learning to love herself....
she’s learning to love herself...
She’s loving herself now............

And the curve of her back....
and the curve of her lips........
and the curve of her hips and belly..
as they rose and fell with the heat of her breath....
they rose and fell on the night
when the clouds raced across the moon..
to see which would collide with the horizon...
clouds racing across the horizon..
while Mary Magdalene combed her hair
and prepared the oil to wash her Beloved’s feet

credits:

+ Compassion Icon: Robert Lentz https://www.trinitystores.com/artwork/compassion-mandala
+ The Rescuer by Michael D. O’Brien https://www.philipchircop.com/post/38468827356/justice-and-peace-kindness-and-truth-will-meet
+ By the Hand - https://www.blackburncathedral.com/event/by-the-hand-of-
+ Mary Magdalene: Of Fire and Blood by Jennifer Mayol - http://www.jennifermayol.com/contemporary-icons-i/mary-magdalene-of-fire-and-blood