This year’s Mary Magdalene Celebration’s theme is Coherence. In part, it’s inspired by the painting I chose for the announcement, and in part because it’s an idea that has come up repeatedly for me.

In terms of the Mary Magdalene Celebration, I strive to always be coherent: when I say I will do it, I do. Some years I have decided at the very end of the month of June, other years I have planned it since January. In a deeper sense, I am searching for coherence in my life as a way to align all the parts that compose my life and myself.

For several years, I kept my “two lives” separate. The details of my art life were a secret from my work life, and viceversa. At first, it was a way to believe that I would go back to that persona that I loved, that I created myself into in past years. Then it was disappointment and embarrassment at not going back fast enough. Now is acceptance that change is inevitable and I can be all in one. Approaching coherence is the goal.

Why do we become incoherent, how? I’m thinking that change is a process that inevitably transforms all the parts of us, but some parts go first while others take more time. In the process we can experience a sense of loss that makes us mourn those parts of the past that stay behind, instead of looking at the potential that awaits in the other side of transformation.

Those discordant tones are ready to be fine tuned. With our actions on behalf of ourselves, with our creations and our relationships. Achieving coherence requires community. The right community.

And the Mary Magdalene Celebration is all about community, but not the community that wants to define you in it’s own terms, but the community we create by connecting on the level of the heart.

It always ends with a communal dance, which in the past few years has been led by the young dancers we cultivate to foster growth, renewal and positive change. This year the oldest guest might be 94 years old. Now all we need are a few babies to complete a future.