A Hidden Gospel

Chapter Seven of Cosmic Heart, a spiritual memoir

Cosmic Heart is a spiritual memoir. You can learn more and read the previous chapters here. Thank you for subscribing and reading - I’m so glad to be writing this book here with you.

Floating in the bath, my eyes closed, and a vision popped into my head. He just stood there, staring at me, the unmistakable iconic image of Jesus. I opened my eyes, turned on the hot water. 

I’m sorry, I said, It’s not you, it’s me. 

Another time, it was the shape of a cross with bright white light shining through, an image so strong and sudden that it abruptly ended my bath time reverie. 

What was it? What was the message? Why was I seeing these things?

I didn’t know, and honestly, I didn’t want to know. 

But then a friend of mine confided in me that he was having a difficult time. He was searching for a spiritual anchor and had decided to find a church. He invited me and two other friends to go with him as support, and I wanted to support him.

So, the four of us went to church. We chose an Episcopal church - not the historic one in my neighborhood - but the one across town in a contemporary building with a woman rector. There was no stained glass, no dark, heavy wood. The large, clear windows allowed for watching birds fly by during the sermon.

And the sermons were good. I liked the priest, who was smart and literary, and I liked her message. I liked the vibe of the place, an open and affirming congregation with a pride flag hanging in the vestibule.

We went out for Chinese afterward. Sitting in the booth in our Sunday clothes, sharing fragrant dumplings and hot tea was nourishing and soulful. We talked about the sermon and our plans for the afternoon.

One rainy Wednesday evening, my friend invited me to come with him to a healing service at the church. The small group sat in circle and read scripture then one by one we knelt and received the laying on of hands; the priest invited us each to stay with her and lay our hands on the next person, so by the time we had each received our prayer, we were standing together, with our hands on one another, moving energy.

The priest didn’t mention energy, of course, but she did talk about the difference between curing and healing, which I appreciated. I appreciated her kind and open-minded approach. She was able to walk adeptly down the narrow line of comfort and mysticism while neither dashing the hopes nor giving false hope to people who had come to her seeking healing or spiritual medicine.

Not long after that healing service, I was sitting in the church on a Sunday morning with my friend when he suddenly jumped up and left the room. The wall at the back of the sanctuary was glass. I turned around and saw him standing there, motioning for me to come out.

So, we left.

He told me he was having a panic attack and that he had to get out into the fresh air. What I didn’t know at the time was that the spiritual crisis that had sparked his interest in the church in the first place was a psychotic break.

We never returned to St. Michael’s. My friend’s psychosis was tragic and terrifying and ultimately led to violence. Because his delusions were tied to spirituality, Christianity specifically, I backed away once more from church-going. I had only ever been going with him to lend support anyway.

It wasn’t something I wanted for myself.

I was sitting on the couch watching the snow fall outside the window when I saw an ad for an online painting workshop. It had been so long since I’d made art, and I missed it. This workshop was appealing because it was led by women. It wasn’t about painting instruction. It wasn’t about producing anything. It was about intuitive creativity and self-expression.

I read the description of the course and my heart lit up. There was a limited-time offer, a discount code. The snow was so beautiful outside, it empowered me to be impulsive, so I enrolled.

And I started painting again.

It was a return to a part of myself I had abandoned years earlier. I had to process a lot of suppressed emotion as I began to move paint on canvas. It was painful at times. But it enabled me to rediscover forgotten parts of myself and bring them back into my body.

My painting practice became braided with my spiritual practice. I wrote prayers on my canvas and then painted circles of color, portals, and invited the image to come through. Faces, mostly.

I became obsessed with painting. It was all I wanted to do.

Then, one night, I had a dream. In the dream, someone said to me, “You’re going to make medicine paintings. You’re going to paint other people’s prayers.”

When I woke up, I knew the dream had been guidance, but I couldn’t imagine painting for other people in this way, and I certainly wasn’t going to use the phrase medicine paintings.

What if someone paid me for a painting and then they hated it?

The whole idea seemed crazy to me, but the guidance was the guidance, so I put the offer out there, and to my surprise, people started to commission Prayer Paintings. I had a steady flow of requests. I found myself painting professionally. Nothing could have surprised me more.

It was scary but fulfilling.

My painting practice was rooted in the feminine, what I referred to at the time as The Sacred Feminine, although I’m not so comfortable with that terminology today. Painting these images, navigating these prayers, allowed me to lean back into my earlier studies of Mary of Nazareth, the Rosary, and Mary Magdalene. I painted Mary Magdalene over and over again and read everything I could get my hands on about her.

She became a sort of lighthouse for me, a beacon. Misunderstood, mistranslated, misrepresented. Literally hidden. I began to meditate on the Gospel of Mary, which is included in the apocrypha. In it, Peter asks Mary to share any special teachings she received from Jesus.

Peter said to Mary, ‘Sister, we know that the Savior loved you more than the rest of the women. Tell us the words of the Savior which you remember – which you know (but) we do not, nor have we heard them.’

Mary responds, recounting a conversation about visions.

(Mary) said, "I saw the Lord in a vision and I said to him, ‘Lord, I saw you today in a vision.’" He answered and said to me: “Blessed are you, that you did not waver at the sight of me. For where the mind is, there is the treasure." I said to him, "So now, Lord, does a person who sees a vision see it through the soul or the spirit?"

This sort of teaching — that the inner self is composed of soul, spirit/mind, and a third mind that is between the two, which sees the vision —felt like a secret code to me, a key that unlocked a long-shut-down part of myself and my understanding.

It did not, however, inspire me to want to go to church.

I was not spiritually searching. I was not hungry. I didn’t feel there was a hole within me that needed to be filled. I was content with my spiritual practice, my beliefs, and my independent theological studies.

I didn’t feel there was anything about religion that I needed to reconcile, reject, or defend.

So the nagging voice that began to whisper, then yell at me to go to church, truly was a nag. I would hear it when I was walking, when I was bathing, when I was in meditation, when I least expected it.

The voices that speak to me wouldn’t shut up about the church in my neighborhood. My brother and his family had started to attend services there. It was an Episcopal Church and literally two blocks from my house.

I had always heard it was a conservative congregation, but there was a new rector, who also lived in the neighborhood, and a quiet buzz had started up about him. Maybe he was worth listening to, the voices said. You should go check it out.

I do not want to check it out, I told them.

I was walking down my street, looking at the ground,d when I heard the voice in my head clearly state, “Easter.”

Notes:

You can read previous chapters of Cosmic Heart here.