Communities
Our Magdalene Community, composed of both men and women, takes its residence in the Gulf Coast city of Houston, Texas, USA. We meet regularly for conversation at the interfaith Rothko Chapel on Sunday mornings at 10:00 am and at other times for study and reflection. We visit temples and synogogues and spiritual centers in our multicultural city.
It all started when a group of us began to read a fragment of a Christian Gospel entitled the Gospel of Mary [Magdalene]. We couldn’t put the fragment down. Its pages entered into our hearts and we decided to take it as our own.
We had already been studying the new research on the Biblical figure Mary Magdalene - how the Christian tradition had transformed her from a spiritual leader in the early communities to a prostitute. With the Magdalene energies carrying us on, we began to awaken to a more general truth: that we label people in harmful ways when we don’t understand them or fear them in some way.
As we studied more thoroughly the Gospel of Mary [Magdalene], we became more aware of divisional and divisive thinking and our preferential treatment of “my group.” We began to recognize our responsibility to change the level of respect we hold out to all peoples. And in the process of our soul journeying, we came to a new way of understanding who we are and how we belong to this earth.
Now we are feeling more deeply rooted in this earth and in the good and gracious God of creation. We’re learning to make peace within ourselves, both as strangers to ourselves and as friends to ourselves. We are seeking to become what we call the connected and shared peace.
The city Houston was officially founded in the early part of the nineteenth century by merchants and traders, mostly Christian and Jewish. However, during the last three decades, thousands of Asian Buddhists and Hindus, and Muslims, Sikhs, Jains, Zoroastrians from all over the globe have made Houston their home. So today Houston is a multicultural city in the process of incorporating new Americans into our way of life. [photographs of Houston]
Embracing our new neighbors is part of the spiritual work of our city. Having conversations with our new neighbors is an intentional part of the mission of our community. We are clear that we DON’T want to say to our new neighbors, “Come be like us.” We are clear that we are NOT trying to convert anyone to our specific religious tradition. What we want is to engage in conversation, and to stand “between” religious and cultural divisions and separations. What we want is to genuinely engage in real talk and in spiritual conversation with those we might have heretofore considered “the other.”
We are interested in expanding our conversations beyond our city and across the globe. That’s where you come in. We are branching out beyond Houston - into your world to make contact with you. We hope you will plug into our energies and become part of our community on the web.
As a beginning we want to talk about what we have learned to call the “finding the shared peace.” This is not a peace for a special group of people who are gifted in some way. It is a peace that can be sought and found by everyone: as Bill and Patty in our community say, for “absolutely everyone, without exception.” It is a peace that resides within and a divine force that changes us in remarkable ways.
