The Passion of Mary Magdalen  | Magdalen Rising  |  Bright Dark Madonna   |  the author  

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Tales from the Mystery Tour

The Ambassador

 I am in a Borders in Canoga Park, somewhere in the vast, disorienting sprawl that is LA. I have been driven through the city all day by a media escort who knew her city so intimately that she could predict how long a traffic snarl would last, where it would clear, and if it wouldn’t she’d make a U-turn and have five or six alternate routes in mind. She drove me to two radio interviews and to sign stock (or pitch the book) at more suburban Barnes & Nobles and Borders than I could count, interspersed with the odd surviving independent bookstore. She dropped me off an hour ago at a shopping mall eatery where I was supposed to meet my husband and step-daughter before the gig. Many cell phone calls finally determine that they are caught in traffic and will not make it for dinner.

 Now I am upstairs at Borders in a remote corner where the only traffic is to the rest rooms. This is one of the Bad Borders, as I have come to think of them. No visible display of the book near the entrance and no manager in charge of the event. Instead of standing at the podium by myself, looking hopeful and/or pathetic as the few shoppers pass by with averted eyes on their way to the bathroom, I decide to sit in the audience, as if I am there for the performance, hoping that someone may be encouraged to join me. My husband and step-daughter continue to be late and later.

 I am tired and cranky, but I decide to look on the bright side. I could have the night off. No need to break a sweat trying to warm a wary audience of people who have come not to hear me but to find out more about Mary Magdalen, because they have read The Da Vinci Code. Five minutes pass, ten. I decide to go to the bathroom again.

 “Maeve,” I say out loud as I enter the stall, “if there’s someone who needs to be at this event tonight, send them quick, because otherwise I’m out of here.”

 When I emerge from the bathroom, my husband and step-daughter have finally arrived, and are the only two people sitting in the rows of chairs. But there is a man, all of about five feet tall, standing in front of the table of books, gazing at the cover.

 “I’ve never seen her so beautiful,” he says without taking his eyes off the luxuriant, naked Magdalen. “So beautiful. So naked. So unashamed.”

 “Sit down,” I say to him. “You are my audience.”

 And I do a full-out dramatic performance of the prologue, complete with the blues singing. My three audience members clap enthusiastically. As always, I give some background about the book, including explaining why my Mary Magdalen—unlike most of the current crop—is a prostitute, and an unrepentant one at that. When it comes time for questions and answers, my command audience member becomes voluble and regales us stories of with prostitutes he’s known from Nevada to Japan. He speaks with enthusiasm—and what I can only describe as awe, even reverence. At one point I venture my opinion that some prostitutes are healers.

 “Absolutely!” he says. “They are. What they do is a gift.”

 Then I do something I have never done before, I inform the man:

 “You are buying a book.”

 “Absolutely,” he says. “I am buying a book. And you are signing it for me?”

 “Absolutely!”

While I am signing the rest of the stock, the man confides to my husband that he has never before spoken of his experience with prostitutes. “But I feel like I can talk to her,” he says. A compliment I treasure.

 When it is time to go, he gives me a hug.

 “I have a mission for you,” I say to him. “Next time you go to Nevada, take the book with you and tell the whores there is someone on their side.”

“Absolutely,” he says. “I will take the book. I will tell the whores there is someone on their side.”

 And off he goes with The Passion of Mary Magdalen in his arms.

 I open with this story because it always reminds me that the tour, which has often been trying and tiring, is about more than promoting a book, it is a mystery tour. Maybe that’s what all our lives are, what life is. Being away from home, outside of my every day routines, has brought that mystery home—brought me home to mystery again and again.

 I’ve been on the road with Maeve, performing far and near, off and on since March 24^th. Fifty-five performances to date: up and down the Hudson Valley, Great Barrington, the Boston area, New York City, Washington DC, the West Coast as far south as San Diego and as far North as Seattle, Madison and Milwaukee, Chicago, Minneapolis, Detroit and environs, Ann Arbor, Kansas City, Denver, Colorado Springs, Fort Collins, Colorado, Santa Fe, Pittsburgh, and Cleveland. Still to come: several Hudson Valley events, Asheville, Charlotte, and Durham, North Carolina, Buffalo, Toronto, and at the very end back to Wisconsin. (Note: to see where I’ve been and where I’ll be: click on tour.)

Something good has come of every event large or small. I have met many wonderful, kind, inspiring people. Most are new to Maeve’s story, but here and there people who have read Daughter of the Shining Isles would appear, and we would greet each other as old friends who share a history—Maeve’s. These longtime friends of Maeve’s always warmed up the audience and often fed and feted me before or afterward the performance. I am so grateful to you all.  

 (Note: those of you who are currently waiting for Daughter of the Shining Isles, just wait a little longer. Also note, as of this writing we are considering a new title. Whatever we call the prequel to The Passion of Mary Magdalen, the novel will be re-published in Spring, 2007. Do NOT buy an expensive used copy of Daughter of the Shining Isles on amazon or ebay! Support the author and her hard-working publisher and buy the new edition!)

 I will only be able to tell a few stories, so I apologize in advance for all the omissions. I am selecting stories that have an inherent plot.  Each story I will tell reminds me that I never know where this mystery tour will take me, what or who I will meet.

The Church of Maeve

 I am at Book Soup in West Hollywood—which I still think of as Duck Soup—an independent literary bookstore with a small event space crammed full of books. I have been amused and appalled that instead of a poster of the gorgeous jacket cover there is a window display of my author photo. Inexplicably they have set the headshot on top of something that looks like a sci-fi spacesuit. The photo makes me look an aging Joan of Arc from a far galaxy. No one will come to this event, I think grimly, and I am almost right.

 An old friend and her husband come as promised. There are only two other people in the audience. (Please note: not all events were sparsely attended—but mysteriously some of the best stories come from those that were).  I give the performance my all as usual, and I don’t remember much about the ensuing discussion until a man, who hasn’t spoken before, raises his hand and says: You say there is a connection between suffering and healing. How does suffering heal?”

 There are questions I am asked over and over. The answers have become stories, almost set pieces. And then there are questions that stop me in my tracks, shake me to my roots. This is one of them.  In Maeve’s voice, I have said to these people, “By our wounds we are healed.” Now I am being called to account. Fortunately I have the wit to say, “Give me a moment.” I become very quiet. I don’t think about what to say, it’s more like a prayer: “Help, Maeve! Give me the words that need to be spoken.”

 I have little memory of what I said. Something about how we mistake suffering for punishment, something about mystery. Afterwards the man comes up to me with tears in his eyes and says, “I have leukemia, and your words have helped me.” He leaves that night without buying a book but with something that he must have needed more. The next day I call my publisher and say, “Listen, I know we want to sell books, but there’s something else happening with this tour, and it’s important.”  

The man who asked me that question has since bought and read the book, written to me, and given me permission to tell the story. I am very grateful to him, and will end this story with his words.

 “Your comments at Book Soup in West Hollywood were greatly appreciated. Your answer to my question about how suffering is healing was perfect theology. I have heard no one else on the planet say "It is not a test". When you start your church I want to be a charter member.”

Madonna

I am in another Bad Borders in a place called Bridgeport Village about a half hour outside of Portland, Oregon. Village, in new parlance, actually means upscale shopping mall. And I have had a couple of glasses of upscale wine with dinner before the gig. The manager means well, but he has stuck me in a corner of the café, walled off on one side by sound equipment. To join the audience you actually have to walk through an archway, which means you’re committed. You can’t hover with half your ass on a chair in the back row ready to bolt if necessary—which is how I get some of my audience, the ones I sweat to seduce. And so if it were not for three intrepid long-time fans of Maeve who are determined to come out in support of her, I would have no audience at all. A trifle tipsy and so happy to meet these women—fast friends who share books and a neighborhood where they’ve created a communal labyrinth—I become giddy and burst into a silly song in front of the manager:

 I am a poor wayfaring author

traveling through this world of woe

and there’s no Borders, Barnes and Nobles

in that bright land to which I go.

 “Sorry,” I say to the manager.

 “Oh, that’s all right,” he says graciously. “I used to work in an independent bookstore before I went over to the dark side.”

 As the performance goes on, the longtime readers, (who have also read all my other books, Isis bless them) are joined by one brave woman who enters through the archway, sits all the way down in an easy chair. It turns out she is the daughter of a Nazarene minister and so gets all the biblical references. A lively friendly discussion ensues with everyone telling stories. One of Maeve’s longtime friends tells this one:

 She is a devout pagan, she explains, and had long since considered herself happily done with Jesus and all things Christian. To her surprise—and even dismay—she found herself moved by Maeve’s Jesus. She decided to celebrate Easter for the first time in years by cooking a ham and a turkey for her family. On Easter morning, when she was getting the turkey from the refrigerator, she found that it had dripped, and the drippings had formed —here she whips out photographs—a Madonna and child! She called to her family to come and see. Her seventeen-year-old son immediately grasped the implications and the opportunity.

 “Mom! We could sell this on ebay!”

 (Note: As of this writing, the turkey basting Madonna and Child has no takers and resides in her freezer.)

 Everyone is doubled over laughing by this point, while our storyteller protests that she still doesn’t know what to make of this bizarre apparition.

 “It’s a miracle,” laughs one of her friends. “Deal with it.”

 “Have there been any miraculous healings yet?” I ask.

“No,” she says. “Everyone at our house is hacking and sneezing with allergies.”

“Maybe you need to rub the turkey basting on chest area,” someone suggests.

 And an evening of laughter continues that takes us from Bridgeport Village back to a bar in Portland. Before we head back to our hotel we visit the street labyrinth at the heart of their neighborhood.

In Which the Author Learns Not to Make Assumptions

 I am at a Room of One’s Own in Madison, Wisconsin, a wonderful independent feminist bookstore. I am feeling welcomed and at home. I have just attended a weekend gathering priestesses, and some of the women I met are in the crowd tonight. Many appear to be lesbians couples. Making the assumption that I know my audience, I emphasize the pagan elements of the book and how Maeve survives because of her deep connection with her sister-whores. The passage I select to read recounts Maeve’s first encounter with the Goddess Isis.

 Then a woman in the front row raises her hand and asks how writing the book how affected my faith and if am I still a member of the Episcopal Church. The woman identifies herself as a practicing Christian, and I see that she wears a small gold cross and a wedding ring.  

I answer the woman honestly. I am a lover of Jesus but no longer member of the church nor a professing Christian. And I go on to speak about the experience of writing the book, reading and re-reading the Gospels and feeling my way into my own understanding of the passion story. All the while, I am wondering if I have offended the woman with my careless assumptions about the make-up of the audience. It turns out the Christian woman is a fan, has read all my books, and has brought her worn copies to be signed. I am humbled and grateful that the stories speak across religious divides even if I sometimes forget to myself.

Connection

 Radio interviewers almost always ask me if my book has stirred controversy. In the beginning, my flip answer was “We’re hoping!” And I would feel mildly embarrassed that it hasn’t, assuming the lack of flack reflects my obscurity as an author.

 One day I am waiting in the green room of a TV studio with a young, thin blonde woman in a leotard who is slated to demonstrate an exercise routine. She is curious about the book and asks me what I think about The Da Vinci Code, of which she clearly disapproves. “If God had wanted us to know if Jesus was married, he would have told us,” she reasons. I agree with her that no one knows whether he was married or not. “Thank you for that,” she says. But as I answer her questions about my book, her brow begins to furrow.

 “Are you a Christian?” she finally asks me point blank.

 “I don’t call myself a Christian,” I say carefully. “But I am a lover of Jesus.”

 Her whole face softens and opens. And I believe that even if she reads the book and disagrees with every word I write, she will still connect with the love the book expresses.

 Since then I have answered interviewers differently. “The intent of the book is not to stir controversy but to open the possibility of connection between people who might consider each other strangers or even enemies.”

 After the night at A Room of One’s Own, I never again make assumptions about my audiences. I ask who people are, what brings them to this event. Temple Magdalen, Maeve’s community, is a place where everyone is welcome. As I reflect on the tour, I realize that the audiences have included Christians, Jews and Pagans, the churched and unchurched of all stripes, women and men, gay people and straight people, people of all races, old and young, people whose first language is English and those whose first language is Spanish, Polish, Latvian among others. By the end of most evenings there is laughter, storytelling, tears, and more than once singing and dancing. Temple Magdalen is alive and well on the open road.

Jesus’s Neighborhood

I am driving to Milwaukee in a rented car by myself. I seldom drive in cities, and I have no one with me to navigate, so I am nervous. It doesn’t help that the exit I am supposed to take is closed. I follow detour signs for what seems like forever. The interstate is built high over what looks like an industrial waste, a ghost city, but it finally dumps me on a street I recognize as the bookstore’s address, so I stop following detour signs and start looking for street numbers. The neighborhood is decidedly down-at-heel, and I recall the warning of a cousin-in-law who went to school in Milwaukee. “There are parts of town you don’t want to get lost in.”

And what if you find yourself there? I am wondering. That’s exactly where the bookstore, A Broad Vocabulary, seems to be. Who on earth is going to come to this little hole-in-the-wall store on this almost-deserted street? I park the car, go in and introduce myself, get directions to my motel and ask if there’s any place to eat nearby. The motel is about fifteen minutes drive away in the same derelict part of town, and appears to be a welfare motel. As I drive back to the bookstore past seedy bars and operations that cash money-orders, I complain to Jesus and Maeve: “I am in a slum!” And Jesus (yes Jesus) answers:

“And where do you think I would be?”

That shut me up, and I decide to get over myself—again. The woman at the bookstore has mentioned a Mexican restaurant nearby. It is so unprepossessing from the outside, it takes me a while to find it. But as soon as I walk in, I am in a small enchanted world. Colorful cloths drape the ceiling. On the back wall is a sculpture with a smooth sheet of water flowing over it. Near me is a carved cabinet with mythical creatures perched on the corners about to take flight. The menu features “traditional” cuisine that I have never before encountered, sauces that have ground toasted pumpkin seeds among the ingredients. When I tell the waiter how much I am enjoying my surroundings, he invites me to meet the owner who is in back building a garden patio. He is the artist. I express my appreciation for his work, and he asks me how I heard of his restaurant. I tell him the place was recommended by the bookstore down the street where I’ll be doing a reading.

Shortly after I sit down at my table again, the owner of the restaurant appears with a copy of The Passion of Mary Magdalen in hand for me to sign. We sit and talk of art and religion, Mexico and Milwaukee as I eat my extraordinarily delicious dinner.

 OK, Jesus, I say, as I walk back to the bookstore. I get it. Thank you. You’re right. But I don’t yet know how right.

 The shift has changed at the bookstore, and I am greeted by a girl with pink hair, body-piercings and ripped jeans, who looks all of about eighteen. (I later realize she probably is. The bookstore is owned and run by a high school English teacher, and all her help is volunteer). Battered chairs have set up in a small space at the back of the store. To my surprise, every one of them fills. Among the audience are two women veterans, one from Desert Storm and one from the Vietnam War. The younger woman works for the Department of Veterans’ Affairs and is quick to defend the government’s treatment of veterans. When I tell the story of Madge (who becomes Maeve)—the peace prostitute whose book of cartoons was drawn during the First Gulf War—I take care to tell the truth about Maeve’s source with as much tact as possible.  

 Later someone asks me about The Da Vinci Code and the Holy Grail being the womb of Mary Magdalen. I go into my riff about lineage and out of my mouth comes, “Do we really need any more sacred lineages? Look at this country. I mean…The Bushes? The Clintons?”

 There is a burst of belly laughter. It’s coming from the Vietnam vet.

 “You’re talking my language, sister!” she says.

 Afterwards every person in that tiny bookstore in that scruffy neighborhood buys a book.

 Sometimes I feel as if I am living in one of Jesus’s parables—particularly the one about the man who gave a feast and invited all his prominent friends. Each one gave an excuse about why he could not attend. So the man told his servants to go out into the highways and byways and to invite any and everyone he could find.

 At other times different aspects of Maeve’s story come to life.

Street Whore

A friend is throwing a Temple Magdalen style party for the book. She has invited all her friends and co-workers, people I don’t know who might not otherwise hear of the book. She has planned to hold the party in the yard outside her apartment building. But rain forces her to fall back on an alternative plan. Because of her teenage son’s work on a local mayor’s campaign, the third story of an historic town hall is on offer. With the last minute change in location, my friend is worried that people won’t be able to find the building or the appropriate entrance, so I volunteer to go outside, with a copy of the book in hand, to direct people.

 Later the mayor of the town asks how my friend the event went.

 “Fine,” she says. “Great.”

 “Is my young assistant ok?” the mayor asks, a trifle anxiously and suspiciously. His protégé, my friend’s son, had helped to serve hors d’oeuvres.

 “Sure. Why wouldn’t he be? He had a great time.”

 “Well, I was wondering,” says the Mayor, “because when I drove past the Town Hall last night there was a scantily clad woman, standing on the curb in a suggestive pose, holding a copy of a book.”

 “Oh,” she says. “Don’t worry. That was the author!”

 In closing I want to thank everyone who has come to the events and all the booksellers and managers who have hosted me. A special thanks to Marva of Hue-man in Harlem, Sarita of Gateways in Santa Cruz, Barbara of Aquarius, Kansas City, Connie of Spiritwise, Denver, Sashe of A Room of One’s Own, Madison, Amy of A Broad Vocabulary, Milwaukee, and Ann of Women and Children First, Chicago, Suzanne of Mac’s Backs, Cleveland all of whose stores are centers for community and celebration—and finally thank you Team Maeve, Paul Cohen, Georgia Dent, Isabella Michon, Linda Woznicki for being with me (at least figuratively) every step of the way. And thanks always to my intrepid husband, Douglas Smyth, who went with me almost everywhere (at least every place that he wanted to visit. As noted, he was not in Milwaukee).

  Elizabeth Cunningham

Maeve’s Feast Day

July 22, 2006