On Mary Magdalen

August 13, 2009

Dear Fellow Travelers,

“It was in the month of June when I saw Him for the first time. He was walking in the wheat field when I passed by with my handmaidens, and He was alone. The rhythm of His step was different from other men’s, and the movement of His body was like naught I had seen before. Men do not pace the earth in that manner. And even now I do not know whether He walked fast or slow. My handmaidens pointed their fingers at Him and spoke in shy whispers to one another. And I stayed my steps for a moment, and raised my hand to hail Him. But He did not turn His face, and He did not look at me. And I hated Him. I was swept back into myself, and I was as cold as if I had been in a snow-drift. And I shivered. That night I beheld Him in my dreaming; and they told me afterward that I screamed in my sleep and was restless upon my bed.
It was in the month of August that I saw Him again, through my window. He was sit-ting in the shadow of the cypress tree across my garden, and He was as still as if He had been carved out of stone, like the statues in Antioch and other cities of the North Country. And my slave, the Egyptian, came to me and said, ‘That man is here again. He is sitting there across your garden.’ And I gazed at Him, and my soul quivered within me, for He was beautiful. His body was single and each part seemed to love every other part. Then I clothed myself with raiment of Damascus, and I left my house and walked towards Him. Was it my aloneness, or was it His fragrance, that drew me to Him? Was it a hunger in my eyes that desired comeliness, or was it His beauty that sought the light of my eyes? Even now I do not know.
I walked to Him with my scented garments and my golden sandals, the sandals the Roman captain had given me, even these sandals. And when I reached Him, I said, ‘Good-morrow to you.’ And He said, ‘Good-morrow to you, Miriam. And He looked at me, and His night-eyes saw me as no man had seem me. And suddenly I was as if naked, and I was shy. Yet He had only said, ‘Good-morrow to you.’
And then I said to Him, ‘Will you not come to my house?’ And He said, ‘Am I not al-ready in your house?’ I did not know what He meant then, but I know now.
And I said, ‘Will you not have wine and bread with me?’ And He said, ‘Yes, Miriam, but not now.’ Not now, not now, He said. And the voice of the sea was in those two words, and the voice of the wind and the trees. And when He said them unto me, life spoke to death. For mind you, my friend, I was dead. I was a woman who had divorced her soul. I was living apart from this self which you now see. I belonged to all men, and to none. They called me harlot, and a woman possessed of seven devils. I was cursed, and I was envied.
But when His dawn-eyes looked into my eyes all the stars of my night faded away, and I became Miriam, only Miriam, a woman lost to the earth she had known, and finding herself in new places.
. . . Then He stood up and looked at me even as the seasons look down upon the field, and He smiled. And He said again: ‘All men love you for themselves. I love you for yourself.’
And then He walked away.
. . . on that day the sunset of His eyes slew the dragon in me, and I became a wom-an, I became Miriam, . . .” [Kahlil Gibran, Jesus, The Son of Man (Alfred A Knopf, Inc., 1928), pp. 12-15.].

This was simply too good for you to miss!