I wrote this article in a five day period from December 20, 2012 to Christmas day, 2012, a very special time of year including the Winter Solstice and the beginning of a whole new understanding of ourselves as we fully enter the Aquarian Age. I just finished reading Margaret Starbird’s amazing book, “The Goddess In The Gospels.” What an absolutely hair raising eye opening account of Mary Magdalene, Jesus and the Roman Catholic Church. I have believed for quite some time that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married and had a child. That’s not news to me. What knocked me sideways is two of Margaret Starbird’s most compelling statements: “Service is an important “way” to enlightenment, but abject subservience spawns the beast in others, who then easily take full advantage of those willing to serve.” She also said, “The giant flaw in the foundation upon which Christianity is built is gradually being exposed now as archaeologists, Scripture scholars and theologians reexamine history. Daily they discover more conclusive evidence that the Roman Catholic Church was built on the authoritarian model of Roman imperial administration, not on the blueprint of a Gospel of reconciliation revealed by Jesus.” I intuitively & experientially felt this already but to see that there is archaeological and Scriptural evidence takes it to a whole new plane. Starbird profiles her agonizing frightening journey moving from an orthodox Catholic to a woman “singing a new song” as she uncovers all the documentation that she can no longer ignore; that there is “a mountain of circumstantial evidence” that Jesus and Mary Magdalene were indeed married and had a child, a daughter; that Jesus and Mary Magdalene’s partnership was an absolutely common knowing all throughout Europe where Mary Magdalene was highly revered and where this reverence is still highly visible today in the stonemason’s work in the many cathedrals throughout France, where Mary Magdalene fled after Jesus was crucified. I particularly love her spelling of Godde expressing her understanding of the partnership model. Starbird also details the common cultural expectation of the day that Jewish men were married. These are just a few of the eye-popping revelations!!!

Margaret Starbird’s story is important to me because it is a story of Courage, standing up and speaking out for a Truth passionately believed even though it shattered her previous belief system she followed her intuitions and all the synchronicities her research revealed until she fully understood and accepted that this was indeed the Truth; that the Church utterly distorted Jesus’ message and how this distortion is tearing the Church apart and needs to be healed. Jesus was not a solitary man!!! That was not the Church’s original teaching. The original teaching (Jesus’ original teaching) was a partnership model where both the feminine and masculine are equal partners. Starbird eloquently and passionately details evidence in the Old and New Testament of the existence of and relevance of the partnership model, and that the feminine face of the Divine needs to be reincorporated (re-embodied) in the Church today to heal what she calls the “fatal flaw in Christianity.” This story is also important to me on a very personal level. Margaret Starbird is just four years older than I am. I don’t remember when I first understood that Jesus was indeed married and that his real story was indeed different than anything I ever read or heard growing up. I do indeed remember understanding as a nine year old that the authoritarian dominance model didn’t work for me at all and I was able to calmly verbalize that as a nine year old. I officially left that model of dominance the nanosecond I went away to college. Shortly thereafter I was able to calmly verbalize, “No, I didn’t go to church today. Don’t ask me again. It doesn’t mean anything to me.” The response I received was a very respectful, “I understand.” The issue was never brought up again. The dominance model doesn’t work for me because I have always understood and lived from the Understanding of the immanence of Deity. I have said time and again that we are the Divine in Expression. That is a knowing I deeply treasure. Long before I had the words I do now I have always honored respecting myself and respecting others. I want no part of ruling by guilt, fear, shame or blame. I want to live from the Understanding of Power within and Power with, meaning a cooperative Understanding of honoring myself and all others. I have long since found a spirituality that embodies my long held knowing. I cried and cried for weeks and months when I first found my spiritual home in Unity. I was so overjoyed to finally be home and be comfortable. I heard what I had intuitively known all my Life. It is a partnership model!!!! I’d have to write my own book to share all I learned reading this book. In particular I learned about the Albigensian heresy (the real story of the Holy Grail and what it was), the church of Amor which stood in direct opposition to the Church of Roma (Amor as you can see is Roma spelled backwards). Amor means Love. The proponents valued Love, not domination, as their spiritual ethic. They understood that Understanding comes from Intuition and direct experience. I learned yet again that for 500-600 years it was not safe to be in Europe if you disagreed with the party line. I learned about the Knights Templar who were so brutally sexually tortured during the time of the Inquisition because they wouldn’t give up their information about the Holy Grail. I learned about the symbolism of the foot, thigh and leg being references to the phallus, not to a physical injury, and that impotence in the king meant his people would perish and his power would end. I learned about gematria and how this Greek number/letter symbol system allowed secret communications.

On a little bit of a comical note I learned how much the timing of Margaret’s learning paralleled my own. She was speaking of times in 1986 when she happened upon Tarot cards. She knew nothing about them and yet she said she could see how they directly pictured details of the Albigensian heresy. In 1987 I was introduced to Tarot cards and the Goddess tradition. What I particularly love is that I don’t have to know a thing about Tarot to understand the meaning of the cards. Just by looking at them I could see and feel what the story is saying. You can too! This is another statement of how immanent our Inner Knowing is. On a more serious note I particularly value and treasure Margaret sharing her fear when she realized she was a heretic, that her friends might leave, might not understand, and that authorities might come after her. What she found instead was her community called Emmanuel that she had been a part of for years supported her. She spoke her Truth!!!! In our shared journey of Life what I value most of all is that we love and appreciate ourselves and others, that we learn to live from Love, that there is no need to dominate others and that the partnership model is alive and well and growing as the old model slips away into oblivion because there is no true Power there. There is no Love there. There is no Wholeness there. I don’t particularly expect it to be a smooth transition. I do look forward to sharing this ongoing Journey with you as we move toward the Summer Solstice, where in a very meaningful time and way the Sun seems to stand still as this embodiment of partnership shines anew! Namaste!!!!!!!! Peace & Joy to you!!!!!!