Tag: Susan Methvin

Mary Magdalene’s Journey into Foreign Exile

Married Jesus Magdalene ordained female priest PhD
Jesus & Magdalene in the 1973 Movie Jesus Christ Superstar

Margaret Starbird wrote today April 10, 2015 the week after Easter:

Legend places Mary Magdalene in France after AD 42, but she disappears from the Christian narrative sometime between Easter morning and the beginning of the Book of Acts. One of the questions we must ask is WHY? The mother of Jesus and the apostles all reappear in Acts—but Mary Magdalene, Joseph of Arimathea, not to mention Lazarus and Martha, all disappear abruptly and are noticeably absent in the Book of the Acts of the Apostles.  St. Paul never mentions any of them in his epistles either.

In 1988 I wrote the short fictional “novella” that was later published as the “Prologue” in “The Woman with the Alabaster Jar” (1993). The story show how we might have lost all information about Mary Magdalene following the proclamation of the Resurrection. If Mary Magdalene was the wife of Jesus and pregnant with his child (or even possibly pregnant—or already a mother), protecting her from the Roman and/or Jewish authorities would have been a top priority of the friends and followers of Jesus. Legend insists that Joseph of Arimathea was the “custodian of the Grail”—the vessel that “once contained the blood of Christ.”—
In 1995 Susan Methvin, Ph.D. a college English professor in Alabama, sent me a poem she had written in response to reading my book:

“Imagine the Grail if you can, not as a gold cup
nor as one silver, embossed with grapes and vines,
but imagine the grail as the cup of her body,
that rocking place beneath her breast, the deep pear-shaped sac.
Her stomach rounded skin stretched into spun silk,
fills with the fruited seed of their making love.
The unborn child sways in this dark grail as her mother rides
across the searing desert.  Magdalen’s only songs . .
steady breath, heart’s beat, dry sob.
In the heat, sometimes Magdalen
mouths His name, and the child takes form
blessed beneath the name of Jesus.”

A few years later Susan died, a victim of breast cancer.  You can visit a blog commemorating her here:   http://www.susanmethvin.blogspot.com/
These days following Easter are an anniversary of the trek of Mary Magdalene across the Sinai to Alexandria—into nearly 2000 years of exile…
In memory of her—
Margaret