Please join our celebration of Mary Magdalene in Dallas Oregon, Sunday afternoon on July 20th. For those in person, we will begin our blessing with a guided tour of the newly named Mary Magdalene Retreat Center at 2 pm, including the Tiny House, the Dream Incubation Guest House, and the Interfaith Secret Prayer Garden and twelve altars on twelve trees over the five acres.
The new Labyrinth and Wailing Wall offer more sacred portals and places for prayer and contemplation. Please bring your prayers and blessings to this beautiful sanctuary. The Anointing Ritual at 4-5 pm is offered both in person and on Zoom. Dinner will immediately follow at 5 pm, for our weekly potluck party. We will be serving a salad bar with fresh vegetables from our garden and quiche made with our farm fresh eggs.
New interest, scholarship, writing and artwork about Mary Magdalene has revitalized the teachings of Jesus in recent years. The Beloved Companion the Complete Gospel of Mary Magdalene, translated by Jehaanne De Quillan was
published in 2010 and is considered to be a part of the "gnostic" tradition of newly discovered gospels. These "secret" teachings of Jesus are about self-transformation and highlight the inner heart knowing too often left out of the institutional church for the last 2,000 years. This breathtakingly beautiful newly published gospel features Mary Magdalene as teacher as well as the beloved companion and partner of Jesus. God is not seen exclusively male and is most often named Spirit. Jesus calls Mary Magdalene a tower of strength. She is presented as the most spiritually advanced of the disciples and the one Jesus appoints as his successor. ""When all have abandoned me, only she shall stand beside me like a tower, a tower built on a high hill and fortified cannot fall, nor can it be hidden, from this day forth, she shall be known as Migdalah for she shall be as a tower to my flock and the time will soon come when her tower shall stand alone by mine."
Mary Magdalene, the Beloved Companion of Jesus gifts us with a revisionist history and a story of radical spiritual maturity. Jesus and Mary offer us a partnership model that we desperately need at this historic time.
Don't look outside yourself, Jesus says, "....rather The Kingdom of God is within you and it is outside you......when you know yourself you will be known." Jesus repeats many times that our spiritual practice is to tell the truth. "The Kingdom of God is within you, and outside you, as well as spread upon the earth but too many do not see it." We are encouraged to trust our direct experince of the divine, not to be dependent on a priest, teacher or intermediary, but the truth of our heart. Spirit is found in the natural world and, "the Kingdom is spread upon the earth and people do not see it." This is our practice at Church for Our Common Home.
Perhaps the most extraordinary gift of The Beloved Companion, is Jesus' invitation for us imagine our Inner Great Tree of Life, “There is a great tree within you that does not change , summer or winter......…..and he showed me a vision in which I saw a great tree that seemed to reach into the heavens; ……..the roots of this tree are in the earth which is your body………… And I felt my soul and all that I could see dissolve and vanish in a brilliant light, in a likeness unto the sun. And in the light, I beheld a woman of extraordinary beauty, clothed in garments of brilliant white. The figure extended its arms, and I felt my soul drawn into its embrace……”
You are invited to draw, paint, color sculpt etc. your Inner Great Tree of Life and to share your artwork with us. Our reflections together with this new gospel and guided meditation about our inner tree are a fantastic way to revitalize our religious imaginations and deepen our spiritual practices to connect to Spirit, Mother Earth and the vast cosmos of galaxies. We hope to hang your tree icons and create a "Love Forest" of artwork. May we experince our oneness and sacred interconnected web of life underground, above ground and spread out upon the earth and in the cosmos reaching toward trillions of galaxies. Please take a photo and send, email, snail mail or hand deliver your tree artwork as a kind of blessing for the Mary Magdalene Retreat Center. We will treasure your artwork and share it with others.
Please find an audio meditation about the Inner Great Tree of Life that may aid or inspire you to make a tree artwork on our church website homepage.
Come love and be loved in the natural world at the Mary Magdalene Retreat Center. We offer self-guided or structured retreat stays, counseling services, dream honoring, nature experiences, an art studio in the barn, barn mural painting, gardening in the biodynamic vegetable and flower gardens, berry and apple picking, as well as care and interaction with the goats, chickens, cats, rabbits and ducks. Enjoy bonfires, sing-alongs and spectacular star gazing. You are welcome to join our weekly Dream Group, Centering Prayer and Lectio Divina group, and weekly Sunday worship often with the animals in the barn.
We invite your blessings and prayers for this sacred sanctuary and our common home, Mother Earth. Contact us to make a reservation and with prayer requests, revtarwater@yahoo.com (858) 248-5123.Camping available, WWoof host farm, World Wide Opportunities for Organic Farming