The Magdalene Mystique - The Path Inward

Many of us in the Magdalene Community are seekers. Some of us have found in our seeking what we call the “shared peace” within. Just what that means is a matter of much discussion in our Sunday morning conversations. (You may remember the central message that Jesus gives to the disciples in the Gospel of Mary. To paraphrase, Jesus says, Find the peace within - don’t look over here or over there but look within. If you seek the peace within, you will find it. If you find it, you will follow it.)

We understand that peace is not just a matter of bliss or rest but a peace that has an active impulse with it - an impulse to look out into the world and to pray and actively work for a better world. One could say that a justice impulse is inextricably tied to the peace within.

This is a peace that we all want. It takes time to process that this peace resides within us and that we can find it, if we seek it. It takes time to understand what this peace might mean to each of us on an everyday basis and what it might mean if all of us followed the peace we can find that resides within us.

I have been reading Jacob Neddleman’s The American Soul recently. His thoughts on the American Indian are helpful in sorting out what we want to say about peace. I selected some readings from his section on the American Indian to present for conversation in our Magdalene Community for this morning. I thought you might want to read some of Neddleman with us and enter into conversation as though you had been with us this morning at 10:00 am at the Rothko Chapel in Houston, Texas.

I will begin with the meditation we started out with this morning. The words are those of Jacob Neddleman. I don’t know that he meant them as a meditation but we used them as such this morning as we opened our hearts to conversation.

From Chapter Six of The American Soul:

“Will we ever know who [s/he] is? And can we ever feel what was done to [her/him]? Can we feel it in a way that goes deeper than guilt?

We can begin by looking more closely, albeit from outside, at the culture of the American Indian.

Inevitably, the first thing that strikes us is the American Indian’s relationship to nature. We know now that there was nothing “primitive” about it; we are beginning to be aware of the subtlety and sophistication of American Indian religion, its symbolism, ritual and mythology which altogether embody a vision of the universal world as profound as anything offered by the Judeo-Christian tradition. And, with this awareness, we are all the more struck by the fact that this religion is immersed in the realities of the natual world. For us in modern society it is only in special moments that we directly sense meaning in nature. Experientially and psychologically, nature, virgin nature, is only part of our world. For the Indian, nature is the world. How is it that a people who lived directly in nature also exhibited extraordinary qualities of wisdom, generosity and deep social intelligence?

…We do not understand the Indian’s relationship to nature, perhaps because — even with all the knowledge that science brings us –we simply do not understand nature itself. Perhaps it is from the Indian that we can confront the fact that we do not understand the earth — and what the earth really needs from us.”

Think on these things and drop a comment if you feel so inspired. This is the beginning of what I hope will be a continuing series of the thoughts of Jacob Neddleman that seem particularly relevant to our community that takes its inspiration from The Gospel of Mary, where Jesus encourages the assembled community to find the divine nature within.

More on peace from Neddleman later.