So, every once in awhile, I get snarky about the Integral* universe where I can feel myself getting preachy/teachy ( a sure sign of stress) that Integral is not the end-all and it is simply an elegant and useful map marking out a vast territory.  

Then, I might proselytize that maps are flat while Reality is living and breathing.   If I really get going on tangent, I might say something like “Stop talking about the damn map and take the risk of being vulnerable enough to share your own inner experience without categorizing it in safe and certain boxes.” (My son would say, “Just listen to me for Christ’s sake without talking about Integral or the Enneagram.”)

When it reaches its grouchy peak, something usually happens which help me value people who write or speak through an Integral and Enneagram lens.

This happened today after one of the groups I facilitate.  I left a group of women in a warm and fuzzy mood mixed with a measure of sadness that the Christianity of my experience  is rarely practiced.  It is mostly misunderstood as a belief system with doctrine and dogma rather than as a living breathing experience which is provides a mirror template for our lives. (My husband has Lord of the Rings and I have Mary Magdalene, Jesus and the Gospel of Thomas).  

We were talking about Cynthia Bourgeault’s new book on Mary Magdalene and everyone was smiling and nodding which was kind of cool as some of us are non-Christian and some of us are kind-of-Christian…none of us identify much with the Jesus Saves school of religion while all of us identify with being saved by Love.  

We are loving how Cynthia is blowing old notions of Jesus out of the water even as she honors time tested teaching and practice.  We are are thrilled that the silenced women of the past are finally being heard in a way they couldn’t be heard when celibate men in collars ran the whole show.  I am beaming that I no longer need priests and hierarchy to create and participate in profound sacred ritual. 

So, I am driving along and wondering if I am, as Bourgeault says, a hospice worker helping people gently allow their old religion to die or a midwife to a whole new way of Be-ing Kind of Christian.   I am writing an article in my mind to articulate this experience when I turn on my computer, click on Beams and Struts, an Integral geek website. I click on popular articles and find this article.

This woman, Chela Davison, nails my experience beautifully.   She’s not Christian, but being an Integral sort, she heads off to Mass in Canada with her friend, Episcopal priest, Chris Dierkes (a lovely man who happens to be from my hometown and who joined me for a lovely lunch during Lent).  She participates in an anointing ritual between Jesus and Mary Magdalene.  (Chris played the Jesus part). Her heart cracks open and she doesn’t surrender her life to Jesus or anything so dramatic, but she writes something far more poignant: 

And while I could feel the cracks in the armor of my heart giving way, I looked across at Chris and realized that I was about to anoint Jesus, not Chris.  This feels ridiculous to say, not being a Christian. I could feel that the anointing that was coming was both the surrendering to death and the proclamation that love transcends even death. That this ritual was not about Jesus and Mary Magdalene as people, characters or even teachers, but a call to feel into our own death and resurrection, to feel into the places where we may open deeply and lovingly to all that is arising and dying.

Now, quite honestly, I don’t know if this is even what this part of The Bible is actually about. But as I sat there, tumbling open wider and wider, I could feel all the grief of loss and death that has been so real in my own personal life over the past couple of years. The literal deaths of loved ones and the painful deaths of meaningful relationships waved through me.

And as I walked across to kneel before ‘Jesus’ and then reached my hand out to place on his heart, saying the line “Place me as a seal upon your heart, for love is as strong death”, I could feel that there is nothing to be done with pain but surrender. There is nothing to be done with loss but surrender. That in the face of death, the face of anguish and the darkest, most painful night, that strength may always be found in the profound humility it takes to open past every contraction and ache in full surrender of devotional love.

I notice my own fear of narcissism in writing this account, as the whole unfolding I have been making direct correlations to my own personal experience. ME as the heart of Mary, MY own losses and deaths as represented by the death of Christ, the anointing and sitting at the feet of Jesus as a surrender to death and to the power of love to prevail beyond death as a moment for healing for MY own small self. And yet, is this not what we are meant to be doing with these teachings? Allow them to press into us, penetrate us, deeply move and open us so that the love of the divine may move through us?

My snarkiness melts away and I am grateful for people who are curious and open and yes, Integral (whether they name it or not) because one of the Integral rules is you can’t really know something fully unless you’ve experienced it from the inside out.  So, gracias to Chela Davison for stepping outside your world with an open heart and mind.  

*(Integral is a map of human consciousness and holds the notion that every belief system, political system, religious system, inner experience…you name it…is true…but partial. It’s humbling because you realize quickly you don’t know quite as much as you thought you did).