The Gospel of Mary and the Practice of Peace
How to remain a centered and effective force for change during violent times
What Peace Feels Like
Do you know what it's like to be in the presence of someone who's at peace?
I was asked this question this morning. "Yes!" I said quickly. "You can feel it." I was thinking of the Dalai Lama, how his presence is palpable like warmth from a fireplace. Even when you don't see him or know he's there, you can feel him. Or rather, you can feel groundedness and peace moving out from him in every direction.
I don't use the term "groundedness" lightly here, either. It's the best I can do in trying to describe something that felt essential, true, and more real than anything else – cutting through layers of crap and illusion that we humans spend our lives focused on.
I've mentioned this in more than one essay, and can't seem to stop talking about it, even though I experienced this phenomenon 25 years ago. It really shook me, in a good way.
The Dalai Lama isn't the only time I've felt this peace. Working with a small group of progressive pastors from various denomination, who'd spent their careers working with those in need, with the unhoused, those struggling with addiction...any room that held them hummed with warmth, connection, and compassion. Every meeting left me feeling like I'd been cleansed – like I'd taken a spiritual and emotional shower.
I've felt this from time to time with other spiritual leaders too. In fact, I'm privileged to be able to know so many deeply good, genuinely caring people. Not that they're perfect; it's not that I never got miffed at my old colleagues. I did (but one might argue that was on me, not them). On rare occasions I saw them make mistakes of perception – where they genuinely misunderstood something or someone – but they were never mean-spirited.
I assume even the Dalai Lama slides from time to time. Even Jesus did. Remember him waking up grouchy and cursing the fig tree for not having fruit, even though it wasn't the right season?
The kind of perfection many people assign to Jesus and other religious figures isn’t even remotely interesting to me, because it would make them cease to be human. The ability of humans to grow, change, or even “perfect” themselves — a concept I keep circling back to despite myself — only makes sense if those whose path we follow have actually walked it.
The Gospel of Mary as Mirror
What I have come to realize is that this quality of peace — the kind you can feel in a room — is exactly what the Gospel of Mary describes as the mark of spiritual maturity.
In it, we see Mary calm the other disciples who are fearful for their lives, and distraught over the Savior's taking his leave of them.
Once he had said these things, he departed from them. The disciples grieved bitterly, shedding many tears and saying: “How are we supposed to go out preaching to the rest of the world, proclaiming the gospel of the Kingdom of the Son of Man? If they did not spare him, then what will become of us?” --THE GOSPEL OF MARY MAGDALENE, David Curtis, trans., Page 9.
The disciples knew what God wanted them to do – go out and bring the radical equality and agape love to the world. The Roman Empire, on the other hand, was ready with its armies to brutally put down anything that threatened the status quo.
Why This Matters Now
We're in a similar place, now too, given the current domestic and geopolitical situation. We're both angry and worried. Where we'll be in a year is uncertain when each day brings deeper wounds, more bitter outrage.
It's easy to be swept up in the panic in times such as these, but Mary didn't. She remained centered, steady in the knowledge and wisdom she'd received from Jesus.
Then Mary rose up. She embraced them all, kissing them tenderly and began to speak to her brothers and sisters: “There is no need to remain stuck in sorrow, grief, and doubt! For his Grace will be with you all; it will guide you, comfort you, shelter, and protect you. Rather, let us be thankful and praise his greatness, for he has brought us together and prepared us for this. – Ibid.
Her words are as calming for us today as they were for the disciples. She calls us back from fear and isolation with a reminder that we're not in this alone.
"He has brought us together and prepared us for this." Like those early followers of Jesus, we're not just here by chance; we are on this earth at this point in time because we are the ones who can rise to this occasion. We're the ones whose heart, passion, drive, and skillset was architected for this moment.
Karen L. King underscores what Mary Magdalene's calm leadership means:
The next layer models the true disciple: Mary's complete comprehension of the Savior's teaching is signaled by her stability, her capacity to comfort and teach the Savior's words, and ultimately by her restful silence. – The Gospel of Mary of Magdala, Karen L. King.
In ugly intersections of history, Mary's able to reassure us, just as she did the disciples. She mastered her fear – or rather she simply didn't participate in the commonly accepted narrative anymore. Her faith and spiritual development had taken her to a place where she her focus was on higher things.
This is significant now, when the daily news is causing so much pain that I can hardly breathe, it seems. The pain is from remaining in the realm of illusion, and remaining within the false self, however. That's what the Gospel of Mary is telling us. "Acquire my peace within yourselves!" Jesus says. "For the child of true Humanity exists within you. follow it! Those who seek for it will find it." – Gospel of Mary 4:2, 5-7.
How sweet it would be to acquire that kind of peace for ourselves.
Pressure as Formation
As she said to the disciples, he has brought us together and prepared us for this. In that light, this moment may be the best time to attain that goal. The pressure that domestic and world events are placing on all of us is intolerable, but it is also the energy we need to press us (as the old saying goes) into diamonds.
I know from experience that pressure can either fracture us or deepen us.
Years ago, my spiritual progress got a real boost during boot camp. Veteran – don't laugh here; basic training isn't the hardest thing I've ever done in my life, not by half, but I was young, and it was rigorous – with a bunch of Vietnam-vet Drill Sergeants toughening us up in expectation of the next conflict.
Someone had been giving out little green leather New Testaments at the reception station; I kept mine in a cargo pocket and pulled it out at every opportunity. The pressure that was intended to break me down and remold me as a soldier worked instead to strengthen my spirit.
The key was refocusing my attention away from the shouting and physical exhaustion to a calm center inside myself where peace reigned.
Attachment to matter gives rise to incomparable suffering, because it goes against your true nature. Then the whole body becomes disturbed. This is why I taught you to find contentment at the level of the heart. When you feel disturbed and out of balance, reclaim wholeness in the presence of all the different forms of your true nature. Those who have ears, let them hear.” – THE GOSPEL OF MARY MAGDALENE, David Curtis, Trans., p. 8.
What the Gospel of Mary suggests — and what I learned through experience — is that peace is not something we stumble into when life becomes gentle. It is something we cultivate precisely when life becomes destabilizing. The soul, in Mary’s telling, does not ascend by avoiding disturbance, but by passing through it without being ruled by it.
It is questioned, accused, unsettled — and only then does it say, “It is what dominated me that has been vanquished.”
Peace, in the End
This was what happened to me in boot camp, and in various difficult passages since then. The pressure that threatens to crush us can instead clarify something on the inside. The world tries to impose its narrative, but we can push through to a deeper, more authentic one.
My small green Bible wasn’t an escape from reality; it was a way of learning how to remain inwardly stable within it.
Peace, in the end, is not the absence of threat. It is the capacity to remain undisturbed in the presence of it. Now is the time we need to cultivate peace within ourselves. Frightened disciples would have accomplished nothing on their own; only after Mary calmed and reoriented them could they go out and preach. In the same way today, we can only be effective instruments of the good if we first firmly root ourselves in God's peace.
Only from that place can we create positive change.
The world may not grow calmer anytime soon. But the question Mary leaves us with — and the one I keep returning to — is whether we will.
The answer is yes. We must.
