All Within a Circle

Today’s drawing of Mary Magdalene is the beginning of a painting.

As I begin planning the Mary Magdalene Celebration, I am thinking of all the aspects that compose it. The art, the dance, the music, the food, the guests, the space, and and all the little details like the invitation and what to put on it.

In a conversation with Corazón Tierra, who has been a partner in creating this event almost since the beginning, she shared that she is thinking about circles and cycles, and how to frame her dance within these ideas.

In connection with the natural cycles of the Earth, the Magdalene has appeared in my drawings surrounded by a circle and by natural elements in her halo and heart. She brings with her an eternal Spring of green leaves and bright flowers, a Spring that is a desired version of heaven or bliss.

The connection to nature arises from my own desire of course, and from the openness of the Magdalene to be what we need her to be at the moment we are in our lives. I met Mary Magdalene at the end of a cycle of illness that lasted 2 years and that provided the space for my soul to recognize it’s needs. I started painting and created artwork full of live that put into images my own wishes for transformation and survival.

Then I met Mary Magdalene through continuous reading, painting, conversations and encounters that took me on a journey that continues today. My focus has evolved as it’s natural, but the basic quest of the soul is always the same: how to live the truest life that I can. This is, in essence, the teaching that Mary Magdalene encourages in me and that I explore as I encounter the different situations that life brings.

In this process, I can see the bigger circle, the return to the roots and to the origins of my own consciousness, when at the age of 3 or 4, as far as I can remember, I felt the same things I still feel today, I became the person I would be. There were no great traumas or challenges, I had a good childhood in general, but I would always feel different and apart from the normalcy of any group, including family groups. Or perhaps I was too aware of the differences, in ways that other children would not stop to notice. I have always thought too much, felt too much.

I can imagine this long circle of a life, as I approach the beginning, with a line that connects and onto which I can hold in times of need. I can touch the past and the future that this continuous line contains, and feel present in the certainty that this is the way for me.

At the time Mary Magdalene made her appearance, I deeply needed her because I deeply needed a spirituality. I had woken up one day in the hospital feeling a return to life after a week that vanished from my mind. I remember the moment of reawakening, feeling a profound disconcert. I was back and I was healed. And it was time to live again. But I didn’t really know how to live with the fear of death or the disillusion of limitation.

But in the moment that I learned about Mary Magdalene, from the basics I could perceive a greater truth and depth to her story. She also connected my past with my present, having grown up with the Catholic teachings of my grandmother and with parents who had left behind these beliefs. Here was a saint that connected it all, and who opened new doors of learning to topics I had never encountered. Here was a saint that offered reconciliation and undogmatic teachings.

As I think about that circle of a life, I can see a red thread entwined and infinite. I don’t know where or when life ends, but I know it continues as long as it lasts. Once I arrive at the beginning, it will be a discovery. In the meantime, it’s an opportunity to create a philosophy of life, a unique path made of what the Magdalene has helped me learn.