PART ONE
THE PENTECOSTAL ALLEY BLUES
CHAPTER ONE
FAILURE
The Pentecostal Alley Blues
Well, some say I’m a sorry whore,
Lord, and some call me his bride.
I said some folks call me a whore
and some say I’m his holy bride.
All I know is I’m in this alley
and I’m heavin’ up my insides.
Well, now some will say I’m the number one
disciple of the bunch.
Yes, some folks call me the number one
disciple of the bunch.
But me I’m in the alley
just tossin’ up my lunch.
Well, you know I loved that man,
loved him all my life.
You know I loved that man,
all his life and death and life.
But don’t call me no disciple
cuz I’m a priestess, whore, and wife.
Well, I raised him in the tomb
and I rocked him all night long.
Yes, I raised him in that cold, dark tomb
and I rocked him all night long.
till I found him standing
by the tree of life at dawn.
You don’t have to be a virgin
to get knocked up by a god.
Don’t have to be no virgin
to get knocked up by a god.
That’s why I’m in the alley
where no angel feet have trod.
Well, the preacher men are preaching
they’re starting up a church.
Yes, the preacher men are preaching
they’re starting up a church.
But I’m here in this alley
with my lunch still in the lurch.
IF BLUES HAD BEEN INVENTED in the first century, you know I would have been singing them, maybe not at that precise moment, because I really was being sick in the alley. But I thought the song might be a succinct way to catch you up with my story, alert you to my present predicament, and to warn you that this story begins with a failure on my part, if you want to see it that way. And some people do see my failure to wrest the mantle of Jesus’s authority from Peter’s shoulders as the beginning of problems that still haven’t ended. But they tend to blame my defeat (for they assume I fought) on Peter, then Paul, then the Church Fathers, and then all the Popes. Don’t forget the Protestants, still splintering into uncountable (and unaccountable) sects, just as bad in some ways, even if most do allow the ordination of women these days. (Do you notice the succession of Ps? You could just file them all under P is for Patriarchy.)
But not everyone is—or was—so willing to exonerate me, starting with my dear friend and enemy Mary B, short for Mary of Bethany—the sister of Lazarus and Martha. Many people still think we are the same person, but you know we can’t be. I was born on an island in the Celtic Otherworld, the only child of eight warrior witches. As for how I came to be connected with the good-time town called Magdala, ask my mother-in-law, Miriam aka Ma aka The Blessed Virgin Mary aka The Mother of God. She’s the one who holds a running conversation with the angels. Mary of Bethany, daughter of an old priestly family, brilliant and learned as any rabbi, is the woman my beloved was supposed to marry but didn’t. By mutual consent, the pair ran away to an Essene monastery on the eve of their wedding day. But I am not going to tell you all the stories I’ve already told. My beloved once said, “There is enough trouble for each day.” This day was to be no exception.
So back to this present moment in the alley, a particular alley in a rather seamy section of Jerusalem. Some of you may recognize it as the alley I fled to after I threw figs at Jesus in the Temple porticoes. (I had my reasons.) Up a flight of stairs is the room where I hid out for a time, which we later transformed into a makeshift temple, the site of what I call The Last Party. Since Pentecost the upper room has been HQ for the companions of Jesus, as I prefer to think of us. For those of you who remember the dove I painted over the door and the murals inside of Isis and Osiris (and/or Maeve and Jesus) well, Peter and the others whitewashed all the walls (as white as any whited sepulcher) immediately. You can’t blame them; painted images of pagan gods are not exactly acceptable décor for Jews. Pretty high up on the list of The Ten Things the Lord says Not To Do. Peter didn’t mean to be unkind or repressive; he was even apologetic about it.
“We just can’t afford to draw attention to our whereabouts,” he said in that gruff embarrassed manner he’s had with me ever since we met in a moment of misunderstanding at the gate of Temple Magdalen (yes, a whorehouse, albeit a holy one dedicated to Isis). “Things are still pretty tense in Jerusalem.”
“It’s all right, Peter,” I patted him absently, not bothering to take offense as he yanked away his arm as if from a flame or a snake.
Maybe that is the beginning of my offenses, that I couldn’t summon the energy to be offended, didn’t have the oomph to get on my high horse. Death and resurrection tend to put things in perspective. Or anyway leave you really worn out. Not to mention what people call the ascension. You will hear in the Nicene Creed that Jesus ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of God the Father. Me, I don’t pretend to know what really happened that day, even though I was there, flying with him in my dove form as far as I could go until he walked through the Beautiful Gates of the Temple of Jerusalem and disappeared.
Yes, disappeared—because he is not apparent. Not to me. He is no longer here in the flesh, resurrection or no resurrection. And I miss him. Terribly. In my flesh. And it is all so confusing. Am I a widow? I don’t even know. Never mind how terrified and grief-stricken the men were at first, now they have decided it is bad form to mourn when there’s been a miracle and all the prophecies have been fulfilled. Still, no one has found a way to stop me from throwing up on a daily basis. There, that’s better. I think I’ll just lean back for a few minutes and rest.
“Mary!” Mary B called me Mary, as do most Jews. Ma started it; the angels got my name wrong. It’s not my fault that no one can keep all the Marys straight.
“Mary, just leave me alone for a minute,” I murmured. “I’ll be all right.”
“You are obviously not all right.” Her bony knees cracked as she squatted next to me and tucked a loose strand of my bright hair back under my head scarf, her touch more tender than her tone. “You’ve missed another meeting.”
“Why do we have to have so many meetings, Mary?” I complained. “We never used to have meetings. We had parties.”
“Come on, get up, Mary,” she ordered me, and she put her hands—very large for a woman’s—under my arms and helped me to my feet. “You can’t sit here in the alley next to your vomit, like some drunken….” She stopped herself before she could say whore. “It’s not seemly. If you don’t care about yourself, think about him.” I won’t bother to capitalize; we all know what him she meant. “He would hate to see you like this.”
“Well, he’s not here.” I snapped.
Mary B grabbed both my shoulders and turned me towards her, her eyes black and fierce as when I first met her one moonlit night in Bethany.
“How can you say that?” she demanded. “How can you of all people, say that!”
I didn’t answer; I know a rhetorical question when I hear one. It always means there’s more coming. I was too tired to resist.
“Don’t you remember what you said the morning he went on before us?” Notice her careful phrasing. “Peter asked where the Master went. What did you say to him?”
Mary B knew as well as I did, but that was not the point. This austere woman who knew the Torah by heart, who had patiently and impatiently explained to me all the fine points of the Law whenever my beloved held a debate, she was as vulnerable as a child. She needed me to tell her the story again—and not change one word.
“I said: ‘He’s here.’” And I gestured as widely as I could in the narrow alley, a gesture more dramatic in the Kedron Valley wh
ere we had been at the time. “And here.” I touched Mary’s heart. “And here.” My hands came to rest on my own.
Her eyes were shining now, the way eyes do when tears stand in them.
“And what did he say?” she prompted.
“When?”
“You know. Just before he left.” Her exasperation with me was familiar and comforting, part of the story.
“He said: Love is as strong as death.”
“And?” She scowled at me.
“And he said: If you don’t remember, ask her. Maeve of Magdala knows.”
“There!” she said as triumphant as if she had just bested the chief Pharisee in an argument. “That is why you have to be present at the meetings, Maeve. He doesn’t want everything left to Peter and the men. He wants you to speak for him.”
She took my arm and started leading me from the alley.
“I’m not sure that’s what he meant,” I fretted. “Anyway, Mary, I don’t understand what exactly it is we are trying to do in these meetings.”
“We meet in his Name. To decide how best to continue his work.”
“What? Healing people? Loving people?”
“Well, yes, that of course. But more than that, restoring the house of Israel.”
I was quiet a moment. “I don’t know if I am welcome in that house, Mary.”
“That is one of the questions under debate. Whether Jesus’s message is for Jews and proselytes only. You have a duty to speak, Mary. You were his wife.”
I noticed she used the past tense this time. It was confusing. He wants you to speak for him. You were his wife.
“But I wasn’t given the gift of other tongues,” I reminded her.
In case you are wondering where I was when the tongues of fire ignited the apostles, turning them multi-lingual in a flash, I was in the same alley. I did see the men spilling out onto the street, jabbering and staggering, laughing wildly, rushing up to strangers on the street. The word on the street is they were drunk, despite the early hour.
“You already speak five languages,” Mary countered.
“Not particularly useful ones,” I objected. “Lots of people speak Greek, Latin, and Aramaic. It has not been given to me to speak the languages of Parthians, Medes, and Elamites. And almost no one in Jerusalem speaks the Celtic dialects I know.”
Mary didn’t bother answering, just stepped up her pace and kept a firm grip on my arm.
“Where are we going?” I changed tack.
“Peter is going to preach at Solomon’s Portico.”
“But I’m hungry,” I protested. “I need to eat something.”
“Mary, you were just sick. Don’t you think you should give your stomach a little rest? It seems as if all you do lately is eat and throw up and sleep. You’re not yourself at all. I wonder if you have worms,” she speculated with as much curiosity as distaste.
I could almost hear her brain sifting through Leviticus for advice in such a case. The Most High concerned himself with minute details of diet and health. He not only numbered the hairs on your head but he knew if you had dandruff and what to do about it.
“I’m fine,” I said. “Just a little overwrought.”
Mary B still hadn’t guessed my condition. No one had, so far as I knew. I wanted to keep it that way for as long as I could. A secret that only I knew. A secret that I contained. Literally.
No matter how many times I’ve approached it, the Temple of Jerusalem always takes me aback. As you emerge from the warren-like streets with their pungent smells and donkey-cart jams and behold the vast southern steps, your sense of scale changes. All at once you are tiny, something to be swept away or crushed should that be the will of the invisible god who lives in the empty chamber at the Temple’s heart where only the High Priest enters once a year. But if you are accustomed to thinking of a temple as some place hushed and removed from the fray with dust floating in filtered beams of light, scratch that image. This Temple was alive, monstrous, breathing smoke and fire. And it was noisy, clamorous. A temple in those days was marketplace, school, court of law, as well as the site of bellowing sacrifice (animals did not always go quietly to their deaths) and loud prayer and praise.
As Mary led me up the southern steps—hot and fully exposed to the sun—I felt dizzy and also disoriented not in place but in time. The last time I had come to the Temple, I’d been dragged here as an adulteress to be judged by my own beloved. The mood was not as tense today, but something had happened to excite the crowd.
“What’s going on?” Mary asked a man at the edge of the crowd.
“Ssh! I’m trying to listen to the preaching.”
“A healing,” someone else answered. “A cripple, just got up and walked.”
“One of the Galileans healed him in the name of the dead Nazarene. Jesus.”
“Not dead. They say he rose again, just like it says in scripture.”
“That rabble rouser. I wouldn’t put it past him to fake his own death. I bet he’s hiding out in the desert laughing up his dirty sleeve.”
Mary and I began to duck and weave our way to the front. It was all so familiar. It had been our way of life for years, healing, teaching, debating, dealing with the press of crowds. For a moment I let myself believe: he’s here. He’s come back; he never left. Any minute now, I’ll hear his voice telling a story or turning a question on its head.
“Now I know, brothers, that neither you nor your leaders had any idea of what you were really doing, but this is the way God carried out what he had foretold, when he said through all his prophets that his Anointed One would suffer.”
But it was unmistakably Peter speaking in plain Aramaic, his voice a little hoarse, for he did not have Jesus’s knack of projecting to a huge audience without shouting. I also noticed that the Pentecostal tongues of fire had left his Galilean twang intact. But I had to admit something about Peter was different. He used to remind me of a big not-very-well trained dog who would bound up to you and lick your face, and then be ashamed and a little bewildered when he found he had knocked you over. Now that doggy impulsiveness had given way to a dogged determination. His nickname the Rock (as in Rocks for Brains) now seemed to describe his immovability.
“Now you must repent and turn to God, so that your sins may be wiped out,” he continued pausing to wipe away the sweat that was stinging his eyes, “and so that the Lord may send the time of comfort. Then he will send you the Anointed One he has predestined, that is Jesus, whom heaven must keep till the universal restoration comes which God has proclaimed, speaking through his holy prophets.”
“What’s he talking about?” I whispered to Mary.
“The coming again of Jesus as the Messiah,” she answered impatiently, as if it should be obvious.
“He’s coming back?” I said, hopeful and doubtful in equal measure. “When did he say that?”
“It’s in the prophecies. Ssh. Listen.”
“Moses for example said ‘From among your brothers the Lord God will raise up for you a prophet like me; you will listen to whatever he tells you. Anyone who refuses to listen to that prophet shall be cut off from the people.’ In fact, all the prophets that have ever spoken, from Samuel onwards, have predicted these days.”
“What days?” I disturbed Mary again.
“The last days, of course. He talked to us about them.”
“I don’t remember—”
“That’s because you weren’t there. Have you forgotten what you did? Now hush.”
I had not forgotten, and apparently Mary hadn’t either. I had gone my own way, back to my old ways, in the upper room, under the sign of the dove. Jesus should have repudiated me at the very least. My adultery, according to Jewish Law, was punishable by death—although it was never clear if I was a legitimate wife. But my beloved had not only protected me and forgiven me, he had begged me to forgive him.
“Here is my sin, Maeve. All the things I’ve been saying, the horror I’ve been prophesying, I may have spoken the truth, but it
’s not the whole truth; it never was. I let myself forget this.” He touched my breast. “And this.” He kissed me softly. “I forgot the beauty of a desert night full of stars, the taste of wine and fresh bread, the smell of the earth after it rains, Peter’s face when he finally gets a joke. That’s why you were so angry with me, isn’t it? I forgot the Kingdom of Heaven. I betrayed it. How could I be calling people to the feast when I was blasting fig trees? It’s crazy. I’ve been crazy. Will you forgive me?”
“You are heirs through the prophets,” Peter was shouting now, waving his hands, “the heirs of the covenant God made with your ancestors when he told Abraham, ‘All the Nations of the earth will be blessed in your descendants.’ It was for you in the first place that God raised up his servant and sent him to bless you as every one of you turns from his wicked ways.”
All at once, in one of those moments of what seems like great clarity at the time and total insanity in retrospect, I decided that Mary was right. I needed to speak. I wanted to tell people about the Jesus who had wept in my arms that night, the Jesus who had the grace to doubt himself, who got angry with people and got over it, the one who fed people and touched people. The one who had wanted to go on living.
“I don’t want to die. Not without loving it all more. Maeve, what have I done? Was I made for this death or did I make it for myself? I don’t know. I don’t know.”
“What are you doing, Mary?” Mary B hissed as I began to move toward Peter.
“My duty,” I answered.
“Not here. Not now. You’ll only make trouble.”
“Peter,” I greeted him, remembering all the things I loved about this big, passionate man, how he had gotten drunk the night we fed that huge crowd and jumped out of the boat to prove his faith by walking on water. He’d jumped out of the boat again, stark naked, when Jesus appeared in Galilee. “Peter, I just wanted to—”
Bright Dark Madonna Page 2
