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'A Light Above' - Yarmouth, Maine
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One of the most beautiful love scenes in Christian Scripture is in the Gospel of Mark 14.3-9 (CEV). An anointing story is recorded in all four Gospels. In one Gospel, the anointing occurs in a different region than in Bethany. Also, possibly two traditions of the same event or two different anointings are evidenced, as the Gospels differ on whether the woman anointed Jesus' head or feet. These matters do not concern us here. We are concerned not with history but with story.
In the story, we see a contrast between 'masculine' and 'feminine' consciousness. Some interpreters see the woman as Mary Magdalene through comparing with other Scripture about her. It is best to leave the woman anonymous since the story does. This anonymity invites us to see the unnamed woman as a universal figure, transcending one person. We are invited to be the woman, her story becoming our story.
Jesus was eating in Bethany at the home of Simon, who once had leprosy, when a woman came in with a very expensive bottle of sweet-smelling perfume. After breaking it open, she poured the perfume on Jesus' head. This made some of the guests angry, and they complained, "Why such a waste? We could have sold this perfume for more than three hundred silver coins and given the money to the poor!" So they started saying cruel things to the woman.
But Jesus said: Leave her alone! Why are you bothering her? She has done a beautiful thing for me. You will always have the poor with you. And whenever you want to, you can give to them. But you won't always have me here with you. She has done all she could by pouring perfume on my body to prepare it for burial. You may be sure that wherever the good news is told all over the world, people will remember what she has done. And they will tell others.
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An unnamed woman expresses extravagant love for her friend and teacher, Jesus. He welcomes her devotion while she breaks an expensive bottle of perfume - a year of wages - and pours it on his head.
Guests protest the lavishness. To them, it is impractical, wasteful. They may be into social action - here helping the impoverished - so much they miss the centrality of love, here and now. In their view, her gift to her friend, Jesus, is impractical, wasteful. She is thinking like a lover, they like economists.
Jesus tells them to leave her alone, for she has done something beautiful for him. Unlike the muttering discontents, he sees her beautiful act as also practical - preparing his body for burial. Hence, beautiful and useful are not necessarily opposites, even as 'masculine' and 'feminine' are not adverse modalities.
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The breaking of the bottle and pouring of the perfume signify important matters about Mary and us. Let us note some of these matters briefly.
1) Grace is present to open us up for the pouring out of ourselves in for others and Spirit. We are the bottle and the perfume; the woman - 'feminine' - is the power that breaks us open. Likely, we each can name a Mary who has been instrumental in illuminating the imperative and capacity to open ourselves in compassion and, thereby, give of ourselves - for we cannot just give something, we give ourselves. We are the scented oil of healing. We are healed to be healers.
2) Love does not place practicality before the beautiful; instead, in Life, the two go together. The onlookers can only see practical; they see purely from a 'masculine' viewpoint. The 'feminine' knows 'beautiful' does not mean 'impractical'; it means 'beautifully pragmatic' or 'pragmatically beautiful.' In Unitive consciousness, these two seeming opposites are wedded in awareness. We discover they were never two, always one.
On a silent retreat four years ago, I was reading a classic Zen text. I was considering becoming Zen Buddhist and had received a reading list of Zen tomes. This one book was difficult reading, not inspiring. Instead, the book reflected a militant stance to spiritual practice - apparently reflective of traditional Japanese Zen. After three-fourths through, I put the book down. The book, classic or not, was so thoroughly pragmatic - like a Zen boot camp -, it lacked the sense of the beautiful, and I felt no love - only instruction on how to do Zen rightly. The sense of the beautiful is integral to spiritual practice and life, and where beauty is, love is.
If your spiritual path is not lovely, you need another one. If you do not enjoy the beautiful daily, even on emotionally overcast days, you need to welcome the beauty that does not hide on 'overcast' days.
3) The scene reflects to the reader a sacramental, incarnational lifestyle.
This means life becomes a means of Grace through its physicality. The flesh of the world, of objects, becomes means of Spirit-manifestation.
In an incarnational spirituality, nature, physical bodies, traditions, sacred sites, relationships, social institutions, sex, holy books, poems, flowers, sunshine, raindrops ... are channels of blessing. These open to be seen and experienced from a consciousness that can receive the blessedness and pass it on to others.
4) We, like Jesus, need to allow ourselves to receive the outpouring of love.
Jesus could have agreed with the onlookers; he could have scolded the woman for her extravagance. Jesus did not. For the act to be complete, he allowed himself to receive and be served by a woman follower-friend. He joined in the 'impracticality.'
We are inspired to be like Jesus - and other Love-beings - in welcoming ourselves to be loved by others. Some of us may find this most difficult while serving others, feeling they need us but not allowing ourselves to receive the love of others. Yet, allowing them to love us, that is as healing likely as what we can offer them.
One of the most common ways to hide from being loved is to love, and in this loving others, we control the narrative - that is, we think we do. Yet, we are all in the same story, whether we choose to be or not, and it has its own wisdom.
5) I mentioned above 'woman follower' ... for a rabbi was not to be touched by a woman in public.
Yet, here, this man, Jesus, welcomes the woman's touch. Her beautiful gift transcends custom. Beauty exceeds the rules and norms by which we live. Beauty has no rules. Beauty is. Beauty belongs to beauty. The 'masculine' says, "That is not the right way," while beauty says, "I have no 'right' or 'wrong' way,' yet a way I have, and it is neither."
Can we ever love too much? and Can we ever be loved too much?
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*(C) Brian K. Wilcox, 2021
*Brian's book, An Ache for Union: Poems on Oneness with God through Love, can be ordered through major online booksellers or the publisher AuthorHouse. The book is a collection of poems based on mystical traditions, predominantly Christian and Sufi, with extensive notes on the poetry's teachings and imagery.
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