The Living Water

water, water everywhere but not a drop to drink

I thought I would try something new today. A voice recording. As much as I truly LOVE to write, I am not finding the consistent flow with it as much as I would like to. Managing the home, school schedules, meal prep, business needs, and all the various aspects of life vying for attention, cuts too deeply into this dyslexic’s need for time and space to prepare prose.

Perhaps a podcast style will provide easier access to our connection.

Enjoy this long-winded story of one of the most profound experiences I had recently on my pilgrimage to France and the sites of Mary Magdalene.

This article was originally published on Substack. You can read the original here.

Video Transcription:

What a thing it is to be such a devout heathen and to be so intimately drawn to Mary Magdalene. I just returned home from over to Mary Magdalene. I've been immersed in what will be a 15 month long priestess training in service to Mary Magdalene. And this was a bit of a culmination event. We still have a few more months to go but it's just been so interesting. I have felt deeply, deeply connected to whoever that figure is in our hearts and minds since time out of mind.

My grandfather gifted me the Gnostic Bible. Oh gosh, I must have been about 16 years old. And so I don't know that that was my first introduction to her. I didn't grow up in a Christian family. But certainly I've always been driven by the quest for spirit and my spiritual growth even as a very, very young child. So I would attend like one of my best friends growing up would have me come with her to Latin Catholic Mass. I remember going to Sunday school with her and even collecting First Communion with her even though I wasn't baptized or a part of the faith. And I went to, you know, when you're in junior high school there's the youth groups and whatnot. But I'll be honest, even as a young child being proselytized to by my grandmother, I knew that that was not a story for me. And after reading the Gospel of Mary at 16, it was so obvious to me what is presented in that book was true. That God resides inside all of us. I mean God in whatever way we, you know, if that word is unnerving as it is for me, choose whatever noun or verb suits your spiritual needs. But that whole process is individuated and that it isn't found outside, it's found inside.

So then when I grew up and grew older and heard the stories of Mary as prostitute, as whore. I was like, oh, come on, what a group of jealous old men to see the Apostle of the Apostles, to see Jesus's one true love in the flesh being so divided. I don't know. And I'll admit as well, I have a giant chip on my shoulder about Christianity in particular because that's the religious medium that I grew up in. Obviously, the country that I live in is moving through a moment of evangelical nationalism. And so it's not like that chip is finding repair in this moment. And quite frankly, I just think that all of Abrahamic monotheism needs to find its way off stage, but we will reserve that conversation for another time.

I wanted to share with you about a moment of deep impact on this trip and its impact. I'm still sitting with, wondering about integrating. So, curiously, from the moment that the leader of this course reached out to me and asked if I wanted to be a part of it, I knew I very much did want to be a part of it. And it was at a price point that was daunting. All together worth it. At this point, I will definitely concede. But initially, I was like, ooh, I don't know about that. And then once she circled back, I was ready. I was ready to say yes, and jump in. And yet still for 11 months.

Well, maybe it started a little bit earlier than that. But, you know, it was almost a solid year that I showed up to our Zoom calls. When I participated in the group, I read some of the material that was presented to us. But there was so much I could feel in my system that I was really holding at arm's length. And it was a nice way to spend the Sunday afternoon. I knew I enjoyed so many of my fellow priestesses. But the, maybe the connection that I was looking for wasn't, I don't know, it wasn't there. And I just saw it as curious. In fact, I didn't even really realize what was happening until it was time to take this trip. It was time to buy the plane tickets. It was time to look at the hotels. It was time to sort out the train rides and all of the finer details, packing, etc. And I became aware of just an incredible well of anxiety.

I don't love to travel in the first place. I mean, I like being different places, but I really don't like the getting there. So I cramped up in a plane for hours on end and deal with jet lag and all those things. I just don't love it. I love my home. I love my garden. I love my kitties. I love my bed. I love my pillow. I love my family. And boy, howdy, do I love California. I'm fifth generation Bay Area born and raised. My daughter is sixth. If she chooses to have children and if she decides to stay here in the Bay Area, my grandchildren will be seventh generation Bay Area people. And to me, that means something. That means a great deal, in fact.

But what I was noticing in preparing for this trip was that despite being an incredibly high strong and anxious individual, just naturally, I was, this was to the end to me. Something was happening with this trip and something, but I was unable to use my logical brain to suss out. What are you going to do? You just put one foot in front of the other.

And travel on this trip was harrowing. We encountered more than a few unsavory situations. On the train from Paris with the group down to Marseille, we had a situation where a part of the track went dead and it was a transformer issue. So it wasn't like they were able to easily repair it. We also happened to be there for the day that I landed in Paris was the day that it hit 90 degrees. And it didn't cool back down to normal French temperatures until the day that I fucking left. Anyone who knows me knows I'm a goddamn polar bear and that is just not the most savory situation for Genevieve.

So there we are trapped in a train, sweating in ever increasing temperatures, much like a sweat lodge for an hour and a half. Unfortunately on the train, it wasn't like you could say, uh, you know, oh my gosh, I'm, I'm, my peri-meta-plas brain is, you couldn't ask for the doors to be opened. But in, in their, their all-encompassing wisdom, after about an hour and a half, the whole train was allowed to disembark. And there we stayed on the side of the tracks for another eight hours. Eight, I think it was nine hours altogether that we were. That's neither here nor there. It was a very, very long time.

One thing that was interesting though in that observation was to see that the only other person out of hundreds of us who was having a hard time, kind of freaking out a bit, was a fellow American. And all of the French took it in stride, well, seemingly. You know, they lit up cigarettes, they bought bottles of wine. The train funnily enough ended up providing an abundance of water. And that is something that will become funnier as you listen to this story.

But what that presents to me was so many things, but the value of having a 35 hour work week, having space and time to exist as a human, to just be, to experience the joie de vivre, right? To have a cigarette, to drink some wine, to eat the best gas station style sandwich of your life on the side of the tracks with 300 fellow passengers stranded. But they aren't in a hurry to get somewhere. I'm sure some are. But the theme of life seems to be to just have the space to take it in stride and to know that if you have a medical emergency, you won't lose the family farm over it. There is something to be said for all of that.

Well, eventually we did make it down to Marseille. A little worse for the wear. And it was a bonding moment. It was a very, very enjoyable moment.

So there we are in Marseille. And we're visiting all of these sites dedicated to the Magdalene, to Mary, the other Mary. The one that truly encompasses the wide range of the feminine experience. She was a woman. I mean, if we're going to call her a prostitute, then she is a woman steeped in the sexual mysteries. She has desire and she has acted upon those desires. She even is a woman of wealth. That is something that historians and theologians both agree on. She footed the bill for the apostles for the Christian movement in its infancy. She had the wealth. And some believe she even was mother. So in the image of the Virgin Mary, the one who supposedly gave birth to Jesus.

Now I got to tell you, my verdict is still out on whether or not Jesus actually existed in the flesh. Who knows? And if he did, he certainly wasn't the canonized character that we are privy to today. He was a human. The most convincing argument for him being a human that I've ever heard is him being King Isis of Edessa. And there's all kinds of reasons why that is inflammatory to believers, but he wasn't who we know this archetypal character to be portrayed as today. And that is another side note. Perhaps we can go down later.

So we're visiting all of these churches and going to all of these sites and many of these churches as you probably know in the Christian and Catholic traditions are just ostentatious, gaudy, awe inspiring for sure, but portrayals of incredible wealth. And I end up having big and challenging feelings inside of most of them. You know, they're literally gilded in gold. There's marble statues that are larger than life. The artisan ray is just incredible. And that is something I will always revere is the art itself.

But I find myself just incredibly enraged inside most of these churches, in part because the only pictures that you ever see of women are, you know, that Virgin Mary, the endlessly surrendered and sweet and nurturing woman, quiet, giving birth to male children. And then you see a bunch of fucking dudes doing whatever they are doing. And it just pisses me off. It pisses me off how the church has hoarded so much wealth when the edict has been to feed the poor. It pisses me off the incredibly long and bloody history of missionaries and wars and proselytizing. You know, all in the Prince of Peace's name. I hate it.

And in fact, I found myself incredibly enraged in the Church of the Magdalene in Paris. There was a carving of Joan of Arc. And that one I just, I was seething. She brought tears to my eyes that, here was this girl, this girl who received divine vision, led the country in battle to victory and then was murdered for it by the church. Oh, and then oopsie poopsie, sainted and reclaimed and tethered forever to the church that fucking killed her. And I just, I might never stop being angry about that.

So, a trip. Sorry, some squirrel ran across my path just now. So a group took a trip down to St. Maurice de la Mer. And as the story goes, Mary is set adrift in the ocean on a ship with no sails, she and her crew. There's a couple other Marys in there and there is Sarah, the Black Madonna, who is traveling with them. And, you know, obviously you're put on a sailboat with no sails out in the Mediterranean Sea and whoever put you on that boat is pretty much sentencing you to death. I'm fairly painful death about starvation and thirst, water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink.

So here they are, washed up on the shore in St. Maurice de la Mer. Of course it's not named that at the time. But it's a beautiful and desolate strip of hot, sandy beach. And again, they notice, wow, wow, we've reached the shore and yet they still don't have food or, more importantly, water to drink. So those Marys get down on their knees and start praying and up gurgles a spring of fresh water. A spring of fresh water that continues to this day to provide nourishment to us seekers.

And in this church I walk, so the spring is of course encrusted with this church. It is protected, let's say, by the church. It is, it is. I'm also crusty. So I go over and I'm looking down, it's covered with plexiglass and there's this just a loom and pale hanging up on a hook. And I ask one of the ladies on the trip, hey, what's going on? And she's a fellow heathen along with me, so she gives me the annotated version.

And this happens to be one of the hottest days, too, that we're there. And the church is one of the coolest places in town, so I take a seat on one of the pews. And I'm looking around and I'm finding that I actually feel at home in some ways in this church in ways that I'm unfamiliar with in so many other churches. And it's just a stone. It's just, it's, you know, expert mason range for sure. But there's no adornment. There's no gold gilding. There's no human sized marble statues. There's, you know, not even any frescoes or anything. It's just the stone and the water. And then down below in the crypts, people have left their offerings and there is a statue of the Black Madonna down there. That's it.

And up to the spring, two older gentlemen walk, obviously they work for the church and they open up that hatch and lower the pail down and retrieve a pail of fresh water and then they left that hatch open. And I felt myself overcome, overcome with emotion. And I started to cry. And still, I could not tell you why. I just cried and cried and cried, ugly cried for an hour it felt like.

And up walks another woman who's part of our group and she is, I think that she had grown up evangelical or Baptist or something. And so she knows the story very, very well. And she has a way about her. She's very quiet. And loving, honestly, I think that one can, whoever meets her, you can feel the gentleness and the love that's there. And she tells me the story in greater detail as I'm crying.

Now, on this entire journey, the 15 of us, there's 13 priestesses and a couple of helpers for the woman who is leading this course. And we are all water drinkers. You know, some of us, myself included, like to drink wine share, but it doesn't substitute for water. And it's hotter than sin. So we would be constantly asking for water when we would sit down to eat at any of these restaurants. And they'd bring out a single bottle of still water and sparkling water for a table of fucking 15. Every single meal we'd be asking for more. All of us would be asking for more water to drink in our rooms and rarely receiving it.

So the conversation of living water came sprung up, if you will, before we visited this church and me not being steeped in the traditions of Christianity. I had an inkling of what living water was, but I had to ask prior to this moment, okay, what does that mean, the living water? And of course, we are the living water. And these sacks of electrified flesh. It's the water. And then it's also a metaphor for the spiritual seeking. We seek the living water.

So there I am crying for reasons unknown. I still couldn't tell you after coming in contact with that miraculous spring in St. Marie's, where in this woman, the dawn offering up to me that this is the water I seek. Of course, I wanted to punch her in the face a little bit. Because, but I also knew she was right. And she didn't say it, she didn't say it in a way that was to convert, right? I mean, she's having her own challenges in the both end of life and the unbearable lightness of being.

Because we're humans. It's humans who run the church. It's humans who did the translations. It's humans who chose the books that would be canonized. It's humans who interpret the message. And she was right. This is the spiritual water. This is the living water I seek.

What was present to me in that moment was all of it was the anger that I felt at the lack of justice exacted in the church and with the beloved St. John of Arc. It's the way that the church has treated women since in section. And it's being in this church dedicated to the women who brought about the miracle of fresh water. Who brought about the miracle of delivering the apostle of the apostles to safety so that she can live out the rest of her days doing what she and her beloved divine masculine counterpart had dedicated their lives to and what he lost his life to.

So as a returned home on more adventures which I will, I might or might not share with you later. Excuse me. I realized that our group had talked about a few things. They were the wealth codes. They were the love codes and they were the spiritual codes of Mary Magdalene. I had obtained those spiritual codes when I was very young. And I realized that on my trip home and I had obtained those love codes at 34 when I met my husband. And there was something about this trip and then returning home that really allowed me to take that in.

I was watering my garden in the back and really absorbing how he came to be in my life and all of this love that I really got to enjoy. And sometimes it's not always joy. And it is a human partnership after all. But after so long and kissing so many frogs and dealing with so many yucky men I had shared with one of the women on the trip that I used to pray for my soulmate.

And then I was aware that we have 144,000 soulmates in any given lifetime. We travel with these energetic soul bundles. And soulmates, yeah they could be good loving partnerships and relationships but more often than not they are in our lives with some karmic attachments. They're here to teach us lessons. And God's damn it I was over. I was over learning lessons in my intimate partnerships at least in that way. I had had enough karmic debts and clearing. I didn't want that anymore.

So then I started praying for my twin flame. Now that's not what you're looking for either honey. Twin flame is the reflection of yourself. And that guy reflected all of the deepest, darkest, shadowy work and bits that I really never wanted or needed to know about myself. I mean I say that now but it was valuable but it was excruciating. It left deep, deep scars. And I don't necessarily wish him well. Between you and me. Oh I mean my higher self does because I know it for what it is.

But you read the stories, the myth about twin flame. And they are shackled together with actual chains. It is bondage. It is not liberation. So once Kali swept through my life and painfully, brutally liberated me from the shackles of that relationship I said okay I'm done with twin flame. I want to walk this life with my divine counterpart. And that's when I met my husband.

And coming home I really realized that it's this partnership that is allowing for so much of this life I get to lead and the continued progression of my spiritual life, my spiritual seeking of this water that I seek.

So as I said I'm still integrating. I'm still figuring out. My Virgo brain loves to figure it out. And this might be a situation, it might have just been a moment of spiritual recognition and awareness that I will never be able to translate into words. But that was the most powerful and profound moment for me on this pilgrimage on a deeply, deeply impactful, pleasurable, challenging adventure with these women who I have grown to love so, so deeply.

Ah! Thanks for listening. And who knows, maybe I'll be sharing more in the days and weeks to come as it unfolds. I hope you like this story and I'll talk to you soon.