Easter Morning

 

 In Orthodox Christian iconography, Mary Magdalene always holds an egg. Whose egg? Has it been fertilized? By whom? 

According to the Vedas, the cosmos springs from Hiranyagharba, the Golden Egg. In the book of Genesis, the egg is implicit in the Hebrew word roots. Earth is born from the primal sea of "Tohu Bohu: formless and void." Over the oceanic abyss breathes "Ruach elohim": literally "breath of gods." The Spirit-breath is described as "moving over the face of the waters: m'rekapheth al pane h'yom." The verbal root for "moving" is "rekaph," which originally depicted the ruffling feathers of a mother bird brooding on her egg. Thus the Spirit of God stirring the waters is an image of motherhood.

Who stirs the void like a hen warming her egg? Quantum physicists call these ripples in formlessness "fluctuations of the vacuum." Pulses of pure intelligence, waves of mathematical probability, vibrate into virtual photons of light, virtual electrons of matter, hidden within the veil of Plank's Constant: 6.626 × 10^-34 Joules.

O mysterious Mater, Mother of Matter! O Mere of Mary, Sea of Light-Bearing Darkness! You are not only Mother of Sorrows and Queen of Heaven, you are the Bride of the Beloved. 

Every good pagan knows that the Goddess is three-fold: Crone, Mother, Maiden. Just so, in the story of Jesus, she takes three forms: Mother of Sorrows, Madonna, and Magdalene. The Gnostic Gospel of Philip tells us, "There were three Mary's." And one of them was Jesus' dearest disciple, whom the Gnostic Gospel calls his "companion."

We know that Mary Magdalene is Jesus' partner because, by Easter morning, she is the only disciple who hasn't fled into hiding! Alone she comes to the tomb in the garden of Joseph of Arimethea, the wealthy mystic who sponsored Jesus and his disciples. This same Joseph would soon travel with Magdalene to the coast of France and on to Britain, transporting the grail used at the Last Supper. Mary would stay in Province, living in a forest cave, to become the first Christian mystic in Europe, planting the seed of prayer in the West. Joseph would travel on to Avalon and Glastonbury, founding the order of Grail Knights, planting the seed of service. This is as good as any history, all history being myth, since the past does not exist...

In the breath of dawn, Mary's grief and loss deepen when she finds the tomb empty. Yet out of emptiness, waves of life are born, and in April, the sepulcher becomes a womb. She hears footsteps. She turns, and there in the sunrise, she sees a man approaching. The gardener? 

She thinks he is the gardener because his hands are stained with dandelion wine, the mead of earthworm and dahlia bulb. He's been weeding fermented valleys, running his fingers through the loam, stirring up the pale virescent nipples of the earth.

Old men with long beards tell the story like this... The stranger says, "Woman, why are you weeping?" Mary asks, "Where have you laid his body?" Then he speaks her name, "Mary." Immediately she recognizes him. This is no gardener, but Jesus in his divine form, about to ascend to heaven. Reaching out to touch him, she cries, "Rabboni!" which means, "my Master!" But he admonishes her, "Do not touch me, for I have not yet ascended...."

Now there is another account handed down by wanderers, mad lovers, and mystics pregnant with astonishment... Mary asks, "Where have you laid his body?" He steps from the shadows into the light of dawn. Immediately she recognizes the truth about Jesus. He is a gardener, and earth is the sacred garden. She reaches out to him, crying, "My Beloved!" He whispers, "Mary, Mary," tenderly repeating her name, and puts his arms around her. "This is the first day," he says, "this is the last day, and this is eternal life." They touch, they hold each others warm and perfectly human bodies.

Friend, the garden is within you, blossoming through every cell of your flesh. Each breath you breathe is the path that leads you there. Meet the Beloved in your sacred humanity.