Clarice Leslie and I recently returned from a week-long Wisdom School at Praxis Retreat Center in Elwood, Texas.
The teaching was led by Rev. Cynthia Bourgeault, who focused on the Gospel of Mary Magdalene. While the Gospel is a very fragmentary text from the Berlin Codex, she pieced together its relationship with the canonical gospels; a rich approach which bore much fruit.
We used a combination of the Jean-Yves LeLoup translation and Lynn Bauman’s very recent translation of the text.
What emerged was very strong image of Mary Magdalene as the Apostle to the Apostles, and it was clear that she had done her inner work.
Most magnificently, through piecing together just the canonical gospel references, one is unavoidably struck by the following: Mary Magdalene offered UNBROKEN WITNESS to the crucifixion, burial, vigil, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
What also emerged was an impression that Mary and Jesus walked the path of conscious love together.
The teachings contained within the Gospel of Mary Magdalene grow more lucid when the Gospel of Philip and the Gospel of Thomas are brought in to fill out the whole zeitgeist of these three gospels: A dialogue running between them begins to emerge.
Cynthia interspersed these teachings with lively romps through the world of chant. At one point she even had us have a go at Sufi turning. I highly recommend her most recent book, “Chanting the Psalms” as a resource for learning the art of chant. She got our group up and running with the basics, which greatly enhanced the liturgy in chapel.
Lynn Bauman, the abbott of the Praxis priori, was our most gracious host. His cooking is fabulous and rivals his personal library in richness. Lynn has devised a wonderful system of team work, and this year there was a new team–the liturgical team, headed by Cynthia. Clarice was assigned to the kitchen team, while I worked on the outdoor team. Clarice took copious notes on Lynn’s cooking techniques, which was international in its breadth, with a Mediterranean backbone. He indulged us with a Tex-Mex meal near the end of the week. I’ve never had such wonderful food in my life, bar none!
I ate without guilt, since I was working so hard on the great labyrinth and climbing rooftops to trim back trees.
Our days were highly structured, beginning and ending with services in the chapel, plenary sessions, meals, work hour, and afternoon break. Each day had a steady and peaceful rhythm, enhanced by periods of the Great Silence following evening chapel. In fact, Wednesday was a completely silent day in the Benedictine tradition.
The 7th Wisdom Academy group came to Praxis from all over the US and Canada, hailing from diverse denominations and backgrounds.
Recommended reading:
(books and essays cited by Cynthia Bourgeault
during the course of her lectures)
The Gospel of Mary Magdalene
trans. by Jean-Yves LeLoup
The Gospel of Mary Magdalene
trans. by Lynn C. Bauman
Journey of the Heart: The Path of Conscious Love
by John Welwood
The Annunciation
by Denise Levertov
The Elegant Earth
by Brian Green
The Knowing Heart
by Kabir Helminski
The Pearl
by Jacob Boehme
“The Virgin Point”
essay by Thomas Merton
Christophane
(dense book on the Trinity)
by Raymond Pannikar
Gospel of Matthew
19:3- high teaching on marriage,
the nature of mystical union
Grace and Grit
by Ken Wilber
Toward a Psychology of Awakening
by John Welwood
Letters to a Young Poet
by Rainer Maria Rilke
The Luminous Web
by Barbara Brown Taylor
The Mystery of Death
by Ladislaus Boros
