Traveler, There Is No Path

Traveler, there is No Path

Everything passes on and everything remains,

But our lot is to pass on,

To go on making paths,

Paths across the sea.

I never sought glory,

Nor to leave my song

In the memory of man;

I love those subtle worlds,

Weightless and graceful,

As bubbles of soap.

I like to watch as they paint themselves

In sunlight and scarlet, floating

Beneath the blue sky, trembling

Suddenly then popping…

I never sought glory.

Traveler, your footprints

Are the path and nothing more;

Traveler, there is no path,

The path is made by walking.

By walking the path is made

And when you look back

You’ll see a road

Never to be trodden again.

Traveler, there is no path,

Only trails across the sea…

Some time past in that place

Where today
the forests are dressed in mourning

A poet was heard to cry

“Traveler, there is no path,

The path is made by walking…”

Beat by beat, verse by verse…

The poet died far from home.

He lies beneath the dust of a neighboring land.

As he walked away he was seen to weep.

“Traveler, there is no path,

The path is made by walking…”

Beat by beat, verse by verse…

When the goldfinch cannot sing,

When the poet is a pilgrim,

When prayer will do us no good.

“Traveler, there is no path,

The path is made by walking…”

Beat by beat, verse by verse.

*

 Antonio Machado, Border of a Dream: Selected Poems

Painting: Sir Galahad's Vision Of The Holy Grail by Sir Joseph Noel Paton.

Who was Mary Magdalene?

Who was Mary Magdalene? Church tradition tells us that she was the ‘repentant sinner’ who in Luke’s gospel washed the feet of Jesus with her tears, before drying them with her long hair and anointing them with precious ointment from an alabaster jar. This is the way in which Mary has been portrayed countless times in art, but this idea of her is based upon a mistaken assumption by Pope Gregory I in the 6th-century, who seems to have confused Mary, the sister of Martha, with Mary Magdalene – a confusion of names which has turned into a traditional portrayal of Mary Magdalene as ‘the woman with the alabaster jar’.

How is it possible, then, that what seems to be such an obvious misunderstanding about these passages in scripture could last for fourteen long centuries? A story which endures for so long tends to point to greater truths. Can we reach beyond this early pope’s misunderstanding to discover why this image of Mary has had such a powerful hold on the human imagination?

Some three centuries before the pope made his erroneous assumption, a manuscript was written that would lay undiscovered in the Egyptian sands before being rediscovered many centuries later in an ancient rubbish dump near the town of Oxyrhynchus – a valuable archaeological site which has also yielded some of the poetry of Sappho. The manuscript is now known as the Gospel of Mary. It offers us a very different picture of Mary Magdalene from the Mary of church tradition: a Mary who is the most loved of Jesus’ disciples, who is the closest to him, and to whom he entrusts the inner mysteries of his teachings. In this rediscovered gospel Mary offers these teachings to the other disciples: instructions about the visions of the mind, the perceptions of the spirit, and the ascent of the soul. 

Intriguingly, we are told that Mary addressed these teachings to her ‘brothers and sisters’, making it clear that other female disciples were present, and were therefore also among this inner circle of followers. Mary tells these things to the disciples after Jesus’ last post-resurrection appearance. The other disciples are feeling alone, afraid and demoralized, but it is Mary who rallies them, who urges them to keep their courage, and who assures them that they are not alone. In this text Mary emerges as a woman of deep spiritual insight, personal courage and dignity. Is there any way in which we might square this very different Mary of the gospel which bears her name with the Mary who holds the ‘alabaster jar’ of church tradition?

The woman is the vessel. She is the bearer of new life, and so is also the bearer of the most treasured and valued mystic secrets. The awe which surrounds the woman as the carrier of the miracle of life has been expressed in figurines carved from mammoth ivory many thousands of years old. To hold these mysteries is to hold a vessel, whether that vessel is expressed in the idea of the womb itself, or in the Holy Grail, or in an alabaster jar whose contents are described as the most precious and costly of all.