Margaret Starbird writes:
A “paradigm shift” occurs when we honor the “Feminine Face of God” –as incarnated in Mary Magdalene, the Blessed Mother [Mary] and other holy women.
Katia writes:
I wish there was a Sunday School near me that did just this — honored both the sacred masculine and sacred feminine, God and Goddess. My kids could sure use that balance. This paradigm shift is so new and mainstream churches need to catch on. I’ve heard a handful of Methodist Churches honor Sophia as Christ’s “spouse” and as the Sacred Feminine. But none are near me and my family. Time to start our own Alternative Christian Church, we realized(!). And that’s just what we did here in Dallas / Fort Worth!
Margaret continues:
One of the major points I try to make in my books is that when Magdalene’s voice was silenced, the voices of women were silenced as well, since she is the “model” for our relationship to Christ (the Church and each soul as “Bride” or “Partner.”)
The “Partnership model” was lost in the cradle of Christianity, before it could even get off the ground…. For me, THAT is the paradigm we’re trying to reclaim. It’s a HUGE shift from the “Patriarchial” model (God with a long white beard)– and is illustrated in the “sacred marraige” window posted at the top of my website which shows Jesus and Mary Magdalene “hand-fasted”–holding right hands, a symbol for marriage. Margaret’s website is here:Â http://www.margaretstarbird.net/
In reclaiming Mary Magdalene, we reclaim a piece of ourselves and restore the paradigm of “cosmic balance” of masculine and feminine energies.
Peace and well-being,
Margaret
AÂ lady named Rhonda had posted this:Â “I was thinking that for so many years Mary was considered a prostitute and with all the historical evidence proving that she wasn’t and even the Vatican itself saying she wasn’t, that this is causing a VALUE SHIFT in how we think of not just Mary [Magdalene] but all women in the bible.”
All the women in the Bible. Yes. First we re-evaluated Magdalene and Mary, the mother of Jesus.  Magdalene went from being a prostitute with a demon problem to being the first Apostle and first witness to the Resurrection. Some of us have shifted our value judgement of her so far as to make her a spouse of Jesus and co-Teacher with him. And Mother Mary – we realized she does not have to remain a virgin even after giving birth to Jesus. The Church came up with the idea of her eternal virginity in order to satisfy celibate Catholic priests who were/are so against sex they condemn/ed it as filthy and dirty.Â
Mary is now coming into her own, too, and is probably an incarnation of Sophia, the Goddess in the Old Testament (she is present during creation helping God, see Proverbs). Mary can be a full living, loving woman, she doesn’t have to be sanitized and de-sexualized into a virgin any more than her son has to be sanitized into a celibate monk disdainful of women.
So back to Rhonda’s point about viewing all women in the Bible differently. Yeah. Look at poor Tamar, and Dinah, and even Sarah. Our opinions of them are changing, too. That’s the Old Testament, but the New Testament women should all be re-evaluated also. A shift, a definite shift is occurring where women are not viewed as either harlots or virgins, whores or chaste mothers. This is good, this is revolutionary, we must keep it up.
We must never forget that however we view them now, we cannot change how their husbands, fathers and brothers viewed them when they lived, which is usually as property, as prized breeders, but not as equals. Very, very, few men if any viewed women as intellectual equals, as full human beings. Jesus was very avant garde in his time.
The Church says Jesus was fully human but deny he did human things like experience sexuality, mate and produce children. Ah, the contradictions. But we are figuring all these flaws out and re-shaping our spiritual system, our Christianity, to include God-ess right alongside her pal God.Â
It’s a great time to be alive, people!
Katia
Katia is right, it IS a great time to be alive. Alive to see TRUTH once again emerge from out of the shadows of injustice. And while to largest injustice was obviously done to women, there is also the underlying injustice that was truley done against all mankind and even to our Most Holy Godhead. How wonderfully blessed we are to have witnessed such a grand event come to pass.
In the revised Swedish Lutheran Lectionary, the St “John” Gospel of Mary Magdalen’s meeting with the risen Christ is the resurrection account NOT set for Easter Day in ANY of the 3-yearly lectionary gospel readings. Sweden, that’s supposed to be the cradle of modern egalitarian society (at least in Europe,) has an (otherwise) quite modern church, but Mary Magdalen just hasn’t “got to” them, yet. This “not seeing women as primary bearers of god-intuition and deepest knowledge” is still so hidden that it doesn’t occur to people what glorious god-knowledge we’re really missing! Pity it took someone so badly read/knowledgeable as Dan Brown to show people that there might be another truth – or was this The Divine’s paradoxical way of really getting this knowledge out – the orthodox church daring to talk about this since Dan Brown himself is so easily “disproved” – but once people realize their thirst for the more flowing truth, then the spring-flood river cannot be stopped. Laus Deo!
You may be interested in the Madgalene Community that has formed here in Houston.
Paradigm shift? Absolutely!! We have embraced the transcendant masculine aspect of God…..when we think of God we usuallly think of Something that is way above and beyond us. But it is now time to embrace the immanent feminine aspect of God..the Spirit that moves within and through all. As Jesus said, the Kingdom of God is withiin.
….AND THIS IS GOING TO CHANGE EVERYTHING… we can only hate attack that which we see as different to us, as being without God…..and this pretty much explains our world….when we become aware of the experiential aspect of God within…and see it wihtin all people and the earth itself…that is when we will stop destroying ourselves and eachother…
Nothing new. Find a web site discussing Mother God and the origin of the sect at http://www.mother-god.com/index.html . If you find you can’t believe it, it is at least very interesting and thought-provoking reading. As for me, I have been unable to participate in paternalistic theology for some time. There is something missing in Deanist (Mother God) faiths- the waters. The water should definately not be omitted as a “Christian thing,” the waters of baptism, etc. The waters are the crux of the sacred feminine, IMHO. It’s rarely mentioned, I notice, but I find it imperative- the waters of the earth, the moon, the tides, our amniotic waters- that which nurtures and protects new life- and, of course, that which constitutes 70% of our bodies. Water is magic, water is a sacred gift, water is, at present, known only to be found upon earth- though they are trying. And water protects, nourishes and nurtures, comforts, refreshes- water is a gift of woman. Namaste.
Sue