Author and Inspired Writer

So yesterday my book finally arrived, the book I won in a little contest Vanessa Shields ran on her blog a couple of weeks ago.  Vanessa is a dear friend and something of a scamp and she addressed the package to “The Fabulous Penny-Anne Beaudoin” – which accounted for my postman staring me up and down yesterday with a look that said, “Don’t know what all the fuss is about.”  (My bathrobe might have been working against me there.)

Anyhoo, I anxiously tore into the envelope to get my first glimpse of Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within by Natalie Goldberg, and I discovered that Natalie, in addition to writing ten books, has also practiced Zen meditation for over 30 years.  In fact, this book is all about how to make writing your meditative practice.  Fascinating, n’est pas?  All the more so since the other book I’m reading right now (and loving), Rilke’s Book of Hours was co-translated by Joanna Macy, a Buddhist scholar and meditative practitioner.

Then, as I flipped through Writing Down the Bones, out fell a little pamphlet advertising the other books available from this same publisher (Shambala) and what should I see but the lovely face of the Magdalene which graces the cover of Cynthia Bourgeault’s book, The Meaning of Mary Magdalene, the book and author I referred to in my very last post!  To top it all off, Cynthia is an instructor and practitioner of meditative prayer at the Contemplative Society in BC.

And around and around we go…

I have been receiving so much support for my current work in progress, The Magdalene Poems, I feel like I’m riding a wave!  My dear sister Chris after reading my last post about my concern over the slow pace of the work, thought an exquisite e-card would lift my spirits.  She was quite right, as usual.  People who have read some of the poems or even just heard about the new collection have been cheering me on and asking me to put books aside for them once it’s published.  (Might be jumping the gun there just a tad, but I love the confidence it shows!)

So I’ve returned to my work renewed and refreshed, but facing another issue.  I cannot put off asking the big question for much longer – did they or didn’t they?  My research indicates very little support for the idea that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married, but many scholars are surprisingly open to the idea that they could have had a sexual relationship.  Mind you, reaction to the idea in mainstream churches is decidedly negative, and I’m not just speaking of the hierarchy here.  Cynthia Bourgeault, an Anglican priest, describes in her powerful and beautiful book, The Meaning of Mary Magdalene – Discovering the Woman at the Heart of Christianity, the time when she made mention of that possibility in one of her sermons, and the uproar it caused in her congregation.

The problem seems to be, if Jesus had a sexual relationship with someone, then he was not sinless.  Rev. Bourgeault wants her readers to examine the premise behind that statement – that sex is sin; to lay aside all those years of mental conditioning by religious authority, and for a moment just think about what it would mean for our idea about who Jesus was and who we are if that original statement is incorrect, that sex is not sin but gift.  What then?

And that’s the question I’m asking myself as I face the rest of this manuscript – what then?

That was my response last week when someone asked me how The Magdalene Poems were progressing.  Yesterday, I completed a trilogy of poems for the new collection, but even at that I am still far below the halfway point, and come August, I’ll have been working on it for a year.

I was unprepared for this.  holy cards gushed out of me in a torrent.  Two or three poems a week – a prodigious output for any poet, but for me bordering on the miraculous!  The process is so different this time.  The research is much more in depth for one thing, but where the holy cards poems dropped on to the page complete and needing very little editing, I’ll write a Magdalene poem, move on to something else, and then find myself coming back to it again and again to rewrite it.  Huh.

And the poems need to percolate and consolidate in my brain for a much longer period of time before I can even begin to write them down.

I feel like I’m on a journey here, traveling through scriptures (canonical and gnostic), legends, and art to get to know the Magdalene and watch her live out her life so I can write it down.  But I need to write more than just another biography of her.  I need to write her emotional story too.  And that, as I’m finding, takes time and thinking and revising.

Very well.  I’m content (even honoured) to sit at her feet, and be her disciple.

Amherstburg no longer has a laundromat.  Imagine!  The Amherstburg Laundromat has been a fixture for as long as I’ve out here and that’s close to a quarter century.  And the mister says it been in operation for as long as he can remember and that goes back quite a ways longer than a quarter century.  Then in February, it just up and closed.  Up and closed, I tell ya!

As soon as the sign went up warning patrons of the impending closure, the two of us had to have an urgent talk.  See, Pa is in charge of laundry.  Every Thursday like clockwork, he’ll announce, “Alright now Ma, get your knickers t’gether, cuz  I’m takin’ a load downtown.”  I never dally when he says this as I don’t have that many knickers to begin with – everyday knickers and my Sunday-goin-to-meetin’ knickers, but that’s about it.  And the thought of running out is enough to give me the shivering sweats.  Pa has suggested countless times, “Jest turn ’em inside out and you kin stretch ’em out to two whole weeks, like I do,” but hillbilly though I may be, there are certain lines even I won’t cross!

So then what?  Do we add in the cost of the drive to the nearest laundry establishment every week?  Do we haul our knickers down to the river and pound them on a rock?  (As if the neighbours don’t talk about us enough already!)  Or do we bite the bullet and buy a washer/dryer?  We decided we’d go with the latter if we could eventually get our weekly outlay to less than $8, which is what it cost us (minimum) to use the laundromat.

Yowza!  Turns out with these new fangled energy efficient washing machines, the yearly cost averages about $13!  Well.  Alright then.  We were sold.  But when the good people at Sears tried to throw in an extended warranty, we balked until they told us that if we never use the warranty, we get every cent back in store credit.  Okie dokie, artichokie – sign us up!

It’s been lovely every since!  Everything is humming along nicely and Pa doesn’t have to worry about making the trip in bad weather as it rarely snows in our basement.