A Living Heart

Today’s drawing of Mary Magdalene: Living Heart

I imagine that a saint could create within her heart an invisible fire that grows connection and a sense of love, and that this is the way to walk into a room and transform the hearts of the people within.

And I wonder if a future saint can ever turn into a saint by being in regular life and society, by working every day and going home and trying to create fire in the heart by going inside it.

If human life were longer, it might be possible.

But our lives are so short. You close your eyes, and five years have gone by.

Can we only aspire to live in the confinement of daily comforts and little routines that glue the days together? And once in a while, escape to a garden with blooming flowers, and for a short time witness the glory that real life offers?

It is the garden within that keeps us hopeful, the collective memory of generations that while oppressed and poor, lived closer to nature, drank earth water and ate fruits collected with their own hands. What a hard life it seems, as we wither in luxury.

A delicate drawing becomes a window into the growing garden in the Magdalene’s heart, our own Heart of the Imagination, our own thought of growth and flight.