Better Late Than Never...

Okay, I think I was the last person to read The Da Vinci Code, which I did this fall. As anyone who is a writer or avid reader knows, you have a massive, mental reading list which just gets hopelessly longer with each new release. Then others find you are a writer/reader and cheerfully add more books to the list (whether or not you really want to read the suggested books, you smile and say, "of course I'll check it out!")

Anywho...I found The Da Vinci Code an interesting yarn, if not the best researched or unbiased (as someone with a Bible degree in Old Testament Literature). But I found myself thinking of this blog and it's title and how Mary Magdalene is the perfect heroine for The Sacred & The Profane. I've always been facinated by her...the historical and cultural impact of the words written about her are lost on the modern reader...she was affluent enough to follow Jesus around and support his ministry, no mention is made of a husband or wealthy father or brother and yet in that society, women had no income, no cash without men. This is where the Catholic story of Mary M. being a prostitute cropped up. This is totally unproven, yet so prevasive, and I think that says more about us as humans and our skewed view of faith than of Mary herself. Why are we so quick to think a well-to-do woman who finds faith and saving grace with Jesus must have a sketchy past? Why are we so quick to assume the worst of people? Why do we insist on pinning blame on someone, guilty until proven innocent? The French police did it to Robert & Sophie, the Church did it to Mary Magdalene. It is this concept of guilty until proven innocent and the faithful of Europe to pin their sin on someone else human that our own founding fathers were trying to correct and change with our own Declaration of Independence and Constitution.

As I just posted, this year has been rough, and I'm not proud of how I've behaved and reacted to things around me. But I certainly don't want to be judged for the rest of my life, or all eternity, on this year. I want to be someone who keeps growing and changing and asking for forgiveness and being forgiven and becoming a better person.