I have been thinking about parallel stories in the last couple of days. Margaret Starbird begins her book, Woman With the Alabaster Jar, with a retelling of the story/legend of Mary Magdalene and Joseph of Arimathea fleeing across deserts to Egypt to safety. And I couldn’t get out of my mind the images of the Flight to Egypt, of Mary and Joseph–the parents of Jesus–fleeing with a donkey and the child of promise across the deserts to safety.
Jesus is the sandwich of the stories. In one, an elderly Joseph and his young bride Mary flee with their newly-born child from Herod’s wrath. In the other, an elderly Joseph and his friend’s young bride Mary flee to protect her child or soon-to-be-born child (Jesus’s child) from the wrath of the whole Empire. Knowing how the stories of the second flight were part of medieval European lore, I wonder how many of the Flight to Egypt images from that period may have intended to hold the mystery of the second as well as the first.
There are many historical explorations of the likelihood of Jesus’s marriage and the suppression of this knowledge by 3rd and 4th century patriarchs. I won’t go into that discussion here, except to note that when a story is forced underground, it will find its way to remain within the human collective unconscious. It will show up on the other side of the looking glass. Joseph and Mary flee with the child of promise into Egypt. And beneath that story, reflected in pools of history, wavery and unclear, but there all the same, another Joseph and another Mary flee with another child across the deserts into Egypt.
Gratitude List:
1. Meaningful work. Six years ago today, I interviewed for a job that would change my life. Grateful that I got the job.
2. Ellis. Fourteen years ago today, I began a long and arduous labor that ended with a most incredible young person coming into the world. He arrived unconventionally, and he took his own time, and he opened his eyes and lifted his head and gazed at the world within hours of his arrival. And that’s how he’s been ever since: He moves to his own drumbeat, he’s got his own timeline, and he’s obsessed with figuring out how everything works.
3. That touch of flame in the branches: oriole.
4. Greeeeeeeeeeeeeeen
5. Moon: Tonight is the Full Flower Moon.
May we walk in Beauty!
“One of the greatest tragedies in life is to lose your own sense of self and accept the version of you that is expected by everyone else.” —K.L. Toth
“Believe me, you will find more lessons in the woods than in books. Trees and stones will teach you what you cannot learn from masters.” —St. Bernard of Clairvaux
“A woman with opinions had better develop a thick skin and a loud voice.” —Anya Seton
“The best teachers are those who show you where to look, but don’t tell you what to see.” —Alexandra K.Trenfor
“It doesn’t interest me what you do for a living, I want to know what you ache for. It doesn’t interest me how old you are, I want to know if you are willing to risk looking like a fool for love, for your dreams, for the adventure of being alive. I want to know if you can live with failure, yours and mine. It doesn’t interest me where you live or how rich you are, I want to know if you can get up after a night of grief and despair, weary and bruised to the bone, and be sweet to the ones you love. I want to know if you can be alone with yourself and truly like the company you keep in the empty moments of your life.” —Oriah Mountain Dreamer
The Bridge
In a trivial gesture, in a greeting,
in the simple glance, directed
in flight toward other eyes,
a golden, a fragile bridge is constructed.
This alone is enough.
Although it is only for a moment, it exists, exists.
This alone is enough.
—Circe Maia
translation from the Spanish by Jesse Lee Kercheval
“If you have good thoughts they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely.” ―Roald Dahl
“To live in this world, you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.” ―Mary Oliver
“What should young people do with their lives today? Many things, obviously. But the most daring thing is to create stable communities in which the terrible disease of loneliness can be cured.” ―Vonnegut
Mockingbird Chronicles 