Terror of the Tender

Namaste Staff Writer

When Dan Brown was asked by ABC, “Why do you think your book has touched such nerve?” he responded, “These are topics that resonate at a deep, deep spiritual level, really the core of the human psyche.”

Brown has hit the nail on the head in this comment.

In his bestseller The DaVinci Code, Brown weaves into a murder mystery a legend dating back centuries that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene, and they had a daughter named Sarah whose descendants are still alive today.

In the last century, gospels the church thought it had expunged back in the time of the emperor Constantine have come to light. The DaVinci Code quotes the Gospel of Philip, in which Jesus is the “companion”––the word can mean spouse, or partner––of Mary Magdalene. “Christ loved her more than all the disciples and used to kiss her often on her mouth,” says this gospel. Where in the biblical gospels do you hear about Jesus making out?

Were they married? The DaVinci Code imagines them so. But listen to what the gospel says next: “The rest of the disciples were offended by it and expressed disapproval. They said to him, ‘Why do you love her more than all of us?’” If they were married, what would be so shocking about this? It does however sound like Jesus, in this Gospel at least, was romantically involved with Mary.

The DaVinci Code has caused quite a stir. The reason for the stir is nothing new, however. The idea Jesus was intimate with a woman was threatening as far back as 1900 years ago. In the Gospel According to Mary Magdalene, suppressed until discovered in Cairo in 1896, Peter demands, “Did the Saviour really speak with a woman without our knowledge? Are we to turn about and all listen to her? Did he prefer her to us?” Levi, another disciples, retorts, “Peter, you have always been hot-tempered. Now I see you contending against the woman like an adversary. If the Saviour made her worthy who are you indeed to reject her? Surely the Saviour knows her very well. That is why he loved her more than us.”

A woman from the south of France, where it’s claimed Mary Magdalene and her daughter Sarah fled for refuge after the crucifixion, when interviewed by ABC’s Primetime yelled, “Sacrilege! Sacrilege!” Millions just don’t want Jesus to be really human––certainly not sexual.

Why such resistance to the idea Jesus was involved with a woman? What’s the big deal?

Let me refer once gain to Dan Brown’s statement, “These are topics that resonate at a deep, deep spiritual level, really the core of the human psyche.”

Legends often speak not to historical fact, but to psychological realities. Whatever the historical reality, which remains shrouded in antiquity, it’s my belief that Mary represents the suppressed feminine aspect of our humanity. The legend of Jesus and Mary having a child together says to me that the truth about ourselves that each of them represents lives on, regardless of the repressed’s repeated attempts to squelch our sexuality.

In centuries past, there was such a systematic discrediting of the sensuality Mary Magdalene represents that she started out as preeminent witness to the resurrection and by the fifth century was declared a whore. But of course, what you suppress ultimately bites you in the butt. So the Magdalene springs to life in the twenty-first century on network television! Repressed people despise her, yet they can’t shake her.

It’s not the biological aspect of sex in itself that’s so scary in all this, though. Our real terror is of what sex symbolizes. Males have within them a female aspect––it’s the tender part of us. Our putting down of females is rooted in a terror of the tender.

Male dominance of women is male resistance to the reflection of our own tenderness in the female. When we control and denigrate women, we are saying don’t let a woman have sufficient intimate impact on me to really touch me and awaken the tender side of me.

We need to connect the words hateful and hurtful, and realize that we are terrified of being shown the pain of being disconnected from our tenderness––which is why something like five million women were burned at the stake in the middle ages as witches, and gay bashing is alive and well today. When we can’t accept the tender in ourselves, we lash out at symbols of our tenderness .

Yet The DaVinci Code suggests that it is in the full embracing of our humanity that the divine Presence that undergirds our humanity is revealed. Women claiming their strength, and men claiming their tenderness—this is what our world needs today more than ever.

We are talking about the sexes finally “showing up” as whole men and whole women, loving everything about themselves, embracing their humanity in all of its aspects.

If you would like to be free of your reticence about showing up as a strong woman, or showing up as a tender man, you’ll want a copy of Michel Brown’s book The Presence Process. It’s all about how you can reclaim the fullness of your being and live in the richness of your humanity.