Amelia Earhart

 July 24 is the birth anniversary of the famous aviator Amelia Earhart, born in Atchison, Kansas (1897). She was a tomboy. Her parents let her wear pants when she was growing up, even though it was not acceptable yet for women to do so. She spent her childhood hiking, fishing, and exploring caves. She built a small wooden roller coaster in her backyard and practiced riding on it without falling off.

She had been studying medicine when she went to her first air show in California, and it was then that she decided to become a pilot. She was the first person to fly from California to Hawaii, and she tried to fly around the circumference of the globe. She was photogenic and well-spoken, so the aviation industry used her as a symbol to improve its image and to reassure women that flying was safe. Unfortunately, on her second attempt to fly around the globe she disappeared in the central Pacific, somewhere near the international dateline.

Considering Mary Magdalen

 I'm no expert, but this is considered Mary Magdalen's feast day. I had a good friend who knew much more about her, and I know some friends who have even gone to shrines in southern France that are dedicated to her.

I must just simply say, the real stories are probably somewhere in these newer ones, rather than a papal  (patriarchal) damning of her that happened in 591 CE. Never in the historical records was she called prostitute.

I love that she has a book in the Gnostic texts about her, and that she was mentioned in the Gospel of Phillip as well.

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My friend, Annelinde Metzner wrote this poem several years ago.

Magdala, Tower

Magdala, Tower, Queen of my days,

You are not Spirit, not Ether, not Will ‘o the Wisp.

but flesh and blood, a woman like me,

and my teacher.

I see You in burgundy-red, the Blood-Root flower,

the Wake Robin, deep red trillium of the mountains,

the royally curled and woody flower of the Spicebush.

You are so real.

And when You walked on Earth,

the steps of Your beautiful feet were firm.

Priestess, daughter of Isis,

Well-trained in lore and wise,

how I crave the touch of Your oil upon my face.

MM is here!  Mary Magdalene,

here for Her own millennium,

and the voice You bring has no shame in who You are,

who we all are, Woman, strong, deep,

burgundy-red and sexual.

You walk in the power of the Sacred Night,

here to walk wherever You must,

through Love, through Transformation,

unto Union with the Divine.

With Your powerful arms

and Your dark-red hair glinting like amber,

You guide us all through these darkest of days.

Mary Magdalene, You stand grounded

even as we hang in torment,

with Your strong and womanly Priestess arms

ready to carry us through.

Annelinde Metzner

April 17, 2012

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THIS APPEARS IN THE AUGUST 2022 ISSUE OF SOJOURNERS

I had enjoyed Mary Magdalene’s exotic transportation via zebras, her fury at being scorned, her verbal sparring with the men who doubt her ability to win Judas back. But as I watched the “demons” drain out of her, I felt her life draining too. Now docile and meek, she responds to healing by clothing herself more modestly. The viewer, I take it, is supposed to feel amazed at her transformation. Instead, I felt horror, like I was watching Christianity’s centuries-long suppression of women captured in a 20-second clip, with Mary Magdalene standing in for all of us. The film was silent, but I could hear it speaking to women loud and clear: “Cover up. Lower your eyes. Kneel. Repent. Leave your body and your sexuality behind. Submit. That’s a good girl. You are allowed to belong now.”

Centuries of obsession

WHILE CHEETAHS AND zebras and Judas as Mary’s patron were new adornments to the Mary Magdalene story, the rest of the film’s portrayal was consistent with how Mary has been painted in popular culture for the last 1,500 years: Mary, the prostitute and sinner, turned repentant.

In the earliest accounts, Mary Magdalene is never called a prostitute. Luke 8 says she was healed of demons, but nothing is mentioned about her line of work. It is not until 591 C.E. that Pope Gregory I preaches a sermon calling Mary Magdalene a prostitute, and the misidentification has stuck. Sculptures and paintings throughout history depict her as repentant sinner, dressed in little to no clothing, accentuating her disreputable past. She eventually became the patron saint of sexual temptation. In Ireland, “Magdalene asylums” were founded to house so-called “fallen” women—sometimes prostitutes, but also girls or women rejected by their families or deemed unacceptable by the state for other reasons.

Public interest in Mary’s sexual life focuses not only on her past before meeting Jesus but also on the nature of her relationship with Jesus. The musicals Jesus Christ Superstar (1971) andA.D. 16 (2022) depict Mary Magdalene in love with Jesus. The Da Vinci Code shows them married. In the 1955 novel and 1988 film adaption of The Last Temptation of Christ by Nikos Kazantzakis, Satan visits Jesus on the cross with a vision: Jesus sees what it would be like if he married Mary and raised a family instead of dying for humanity’s sins—meaning even after her conversion, Mary Magdalene is not an asset to the gospel but a liability.

The idea of a love affair between Mary and Jesus carries a certain intrigue. I like the way it humanizes Jesus, moving him beyond a sanitized figure and casting him as a regular man who experienced passion and desire like the rest of us. Besides, who doesn’t love a good love story?

Unlike the claims about Mary as a prostitute, Mary as Jesus’ romantic partner does have some historical plausibility. There is tenderness between Jesus and Mary in the garden after the resurrection. Even more evocative are the noncanonical Gnostic texts that repeatedly mention Mary Magdalene as a close companion of Jesus. A line from the gospel of Philip can be translated as “The Teacher loved her more than all the disciples; he often kissed her on the mouth.” If we are to imagine anything about Mary Magdalene’s sexual relations, it is certainly more in keeping with the historical witness to imagine her as Christ’s lover than as a reformed prostitute.

Yet I question our culture’s fixation on Mary Magdalene’s sexual relationships. No matter which version you adopt—the whore or the secret lover, the sex worker or the wife—she is known primarily through her relationships to men and their access to her body. In her groundbreaking book The Meaning of Mary Magdalene, Cynthia Bourgeault writes, “The shadow side of Christianity’s notoriously undealt-with issues around human sexuality and the feminine get projected directly onto her.” While it’s perfectly good to recognize women as sexual beings, are women not also so much more than what we do or do not do with our bodies for men?

I’m not against a Mary Magdalene who slept with men as her livelihood or a Mary Magdalene who was madly in love with Christ. But for the love of all things holy, can we please not reduce her to either?

Wise and worthy

PERHAPS JESUS SIMPLY preferred Mary’s company—intellectually, spiritually, emotionally. Why does Jesus’ attention have to be sexual? We rarely speculate that Jesus had a romantic relationship with the Beloved Disciple, who reclined upon his chest and “whom Jesus loved” in the gospel of John (though some have conjectured that the Beloved Disciple, who is never named in scripture, is Mary Magdalene). I am not aware of films claiming Peter was secretly married to Jesus and that is why Jesus gave Peter the keys to the kingdom. We don’t make such assumptions partly because we’re conditioned to think heteronormatively about same-gender affection but also because we assume a man can be chosen as a leader or a confidant due to his intellect, his character, his wisdom. A man can receive favor from another man without it being sexual. What if Mary Magdalene was chosen simply because she was worthy? This is what the ancient texts suggest: She became apostle to the apostles by merit.

The 2018 film Mary Magdalene gives us what so many books and novels and paintings have never managed to do: a Mary Magdalene favored by Christ without her sexuality on display. Gone are the references to any sordid past, gone are the hints at romance. Relying on biblical accounts as well as drawing from the noncanonical gospel of Mary, the film highlights Mary Magdalene as someone who understood Jesus’ true message. She baptizes people alongside Jesus and blesses them like a priest. Jesus confides in her and asks her advice. Predictably, the male disciples are not always comfortable with Mary, her wisdom, or her voice. Their inability to embrace Mary’s leadership fully is quite in keeping with the historical record. In the Bible, the disciples do not believe Mary’s testimony that Christ has risen. In the book of Acts, when they gather to find a replacement for Judas, they pick Matthias (who the heck is that?) even though Mary Magdalene herself, the first witness and preacher of the resurrection, is undoubtedly sitting right there when he is chosen.

In the gospel of Philip, when the disciples ask Jesus, “Why do you love her more than all of us?” it’s not a romance question. It’s an access question. In Mary’s gospel, after she reveals her vision from Christ, Peter objects, “Did He really speak privately with a woman and not openly to us? Did He prefer her to us?” This is the real tension in Mary’s story, and it isn’t sexual tension. The disciples can’t handle that a woman received Christ’s favor. And apparently neither can history. Men have been discrediting her reputation ever since, and the gospels highlighting her spiritual authority were banned from the Christian canon.

It’s possible that Mary and Jesus had a thing for each other—even if so, I just don’t think it’s the thing worth noting. And clearly, neither did the gospel or apocryphal writers.

What’s notable about Mary Magdalene is her spiritual leadership. Her insight and wisdom. Her role as first proclaimer. Her devotion as tomb-tender. Her appointment as witness. She is the one Christ entrusts with his presence and his most precious news.

Unlike Peter, who denies Jesus, unlike Judas, who betrays him, unlike the disciples who fall asleep in the garden and the disciples who flee the scene at Jesus’ arrest, unlike the male disciples who lock themselves in an upper room for fear of the authorities, Mary Magdalene persists. She continues to follow Jesus even after he is dead. In all four canonical gospels, she is among the first to witness Jesus’ resurrection, and in John, Jesus appears first to her alone. The Gnostic text Pistis Sophia says this about Mary: “You are she whose heart is more directed to the Kingdom of Heaven than all your brothers.” She is the first to proclaim the resurrection to the disciples, making her an “Apostle to the Apostles”—a title officially recognized by the Catholic Church in 2016.

Revealing hope

I believe the task of reclaiming Mary Magdalene from the legends that cloak her real identity is an invitation to our own uncloaking. If Bourgeault is correct that we have projected our collective shadow, our “undealt-with issues about human sexuality and the feminine,” onto her, then re-finding the “real Mary Magdalene” is more than a history project. It’s a spiritual journey into the depths of our unconscious sexism—it’s an excavating of our shadow and bringing it into the light. It’s an intense gaze into all that is messed up about our gender constructs; it’s an exorcism, if you will, of our demons. It’s not simply about retelling Mary’s story without the sex, as if a virgin Mary (we already have one of those) solves the problem. This project to reimagine her is a profound confrontation with the powers that bind us all.

In the gospel of Mary, Mary has a vision in which the soul prevails against seven different powers. Mary’s seven demons and the seven powers she overcomes in the vision feel reminiscent to me of the ancient Sumerian goddess Inanna, who descends into the underworld to be reunited with her sister; at each of the seven gates, she is required to remove an article of her clothing, so that she enters the underworld naked and bare.

I reimagine that scene from The King of Kings in which Mary is healed and immediately covers herself up. This time she sheds her clothing—not covering her ornate costume but dropping it altogether. In my vision of her, discarding the cloak is a declaration, like those early Christians who stripped naked to be baptized, as if to say, “I am fully here.”

I think of Mary painted naked on so many canvases, intended to remind us of her supposedly shameful past. But what if the nakedness isn’t about shame? What if she is someone who brings her full, unadulterated self? Maybe Mary Magdalene makes us uncomfortable not just because she is a woman, but because she fought her demons and emerged fully human—something most of us are still too afraid to try.

Recently it was announced that a statue of a woman bought by a couple in Britain for their garden 20 years ago is in fact an authentic Canova sculpture of Mary Magdalene. It is expected to auction this summer for about $10 million. What if reclaiming Mary Magdalene is like discovering treasure in your own backyard, just waiting to be unearthed? What if not reclaiming her is like leaving a treasure to languish amid weeds and garden overgrowth? Reclaiming her, it seems to me, is about even more than confronting our collective shadow. It’s about witnessing resurrection.

Kyndall Rae Rothaus

Rev. Kyndall Rae Rothaus is a preacher, spiritual director, co-founder of Nevertheless She Preached, and author of Thy Queendom Come: Breaking Free from the Patriarchy to Save Your Soul. 

One small step and ...

 The first man to stop on the moon.

What do you remember about watching the TV broadcast of landing on the moon?

I was in Tampa FL, and my 2 children and husband and I watched on our black and white TV. Incidentally, my husband had won it in a raffle at a car dealership a few years before.

I was thrilled, and my scientifically oriented husband was also. This was such an event for our species, for the abilities of Americans, and for Americans vs. the other world powers.

My younger child probably doesn't remember much as he was just 2, but my older son has a good memory I'm sure.

First American convention for women's rights July 19, 1848

 The Seneca Falls Convention — the first convention for women's rights — began on July 19, 1848. The seed had been planted eight years earlier, and grew out of the abolitionist movement. Lucretia Mott and her husband were traveling to London to attend the World Anti-Slavery Convention. Aboard the ship, they met a pair of newlyweds — Henry and Elizabeth Cady Stanton — who were also on their way to the conference for their honeymoon. Once in London, the six female delegates, including Mott and Stanton, found that they would not be seated and could only attend the conference behind a drapery partition, because women were "constitutionally unfit for public and business meetings." Mott and Stanton were outraged, and together they agreed that they really should organize their own convention.

Eight years later, on July 11, they ran an unsigned announcement in the Seneca County Courier that read: "A Convention to discuss the social, civil, and religious condition and rights of women will be held in the Wesleyan Chapel, at Seneca Falls, N.Y. [...] During the first day the meeting will be exclusively for women, who are earnestly invited to attend." Just a few days before, Stanton took the Declaration of Independence as her model and drafted what she called a Declaration of Sentiments, calling for religious, economical, and political equality.

Later in her life, Elizabeth Cady Stanton wrote in her diary, "We are sowing winter wheat which the coming spring will see sprout and which other hands than ours will reap and enjoy." It would be 72 years before women would be granted the right to vote. Only one of the signers of the original Declaration of Sentiments was still living in 1920. Charlotte Woodward, who had been 19 and working in a glove factory in 1848, was too ill to cast her ballot.

Fellowship of the Ring, July 19, 1954

71 years ago this day, the first part of the Lord of the Rings trilogy came out, The Fellowship of the Ring. It was the sequel to J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit, which came out in 1937. Tolkien had written The Hobbit for his own amusement and didn't expect it to sell well. It's the story of Bilbo Baggins — a small, human-like creature with hairy feet — who goes on an adventure through Middle Earth and comes back with a magical ring.

J.R.R. Tolkien once wrote: "I am in fact a hobbit in all but size. I like gardens, trees, and unmechanized farmlands. I smoke a pipe, like good, plain food, detest French cooking ... I am fond of mushrooms, have a very simple sense of humor ... go to bed late and get up late (when possible). I do not travel much."

The Hobbit sold pretty well, partly because C.S. Lewis gave it a big review when it came out. And so Tolkien's publisher asked for a sequel. Tolkien decided the new book would be about Bilbo's nephew Frodo, but for a long time he had no idea what sort of adventure. Finally, he decided it would be about the magical ring, though the ring had not been such an important part of The Hobbit.

Tolkien spent the next 17 years working on The Lord of the Rings. He was a professor at Oxford. He had to write in his spare time, usually at night, sitting by the stove in the study in his house.

He was well into his first draft by the time World War II broke out in 1939. He hadn't set out to write an allegory, but once the war began, he started to draw parallels between the war and the events in his novel: the land of evil in The Lord of the Rings, Mordor, was set east of Middle Earth, just as the enemies of England were to the east.

The book became more and more complicated as he went along. It was taking much longer to finish than he'd planned. He went through long stretches where he didn't write anything. He thought about giving up the whole thing. He wanted to make sure all the details were right, the geography, the language, the mythology of Middle Earth. He made elaborate charts to keep track of the events of the story. His son Christopher also drew a detailed map of Middle Earth.

Finally, in the fall of 1949, he finished writing The Lord of the Rings. He typed the final copy himself sitting on a bed in his attic, typewriter on his lap, tapping it out with two fingers. It turned out to be more than a half million words long, and the publisher agreed to bring it out in three volumes. The first came out on this day in 1954. The publisher printed just 3,500 copies, but it turned out to be incredibly popular. It went into a second printing in just six weeks. Today, more than 30 million copies have been sold around the world.

(Writer's Almanac, 2014 updated)

Of course we read the trilogy long before it became the wonderful movie series directed by Peter Jackson. His Lord of the Rings film trilogy, was produced by New Line Cinema and released in three instalments as The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001), The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002), and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003). All three parts won multiple Academy Awards, including consecutive Best Picture nominations.

So now people see a Frodo based upon these movies, not to mention the other characters of the Fellowship. 

The eponymous Fellowship from left to right: (Top row) Aragorn, Gandalf, Legolas, Boromir, (bottom row) Sam, Frodo, Merry, Pippin, Gimli

Henry David Thoreau

 It's the birthday of Henry David Thoreau, born David Henry Thoreau in Concord, Massachusetts (1817). He went to Harvard, but he didn't like it very much, nor did he enjoy his later job as a schoolteacher. He seemed destined for a career in his father's pencil factory, and in fact, he came up with a better way to bind graphite and clay, which saved his father money. But in 1844, Thoreau's friend Ralph Waldo Emerson bought land on the shore of Walden Pond, a 61-acre pond, surrounded by woods, and Thoreau decided to build a cabin there. It was only two miles from the village of Concord, and he had frequent visitors. During the two years he lived there, Thoreau kept a journal that he later published as Walden, or Life in the Woods (1854). In the conclusion to Walden, Thoreau wrote, "I learned this, at least, by my experiment; that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours."

A big influence on my reading by this author

 July 7 is  the birthday of science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein, born in Butler, Missouri, in 1907. He studied physics and mathematics at UCLA and then began writing science fiction, or, as he preferred to call it, "speculative fiction." His novel Stranger in a Strange Land, published in 1961, became a cult classic.

He said, "I think that science fiction, even the corniest of it, even the most outlandish of it, no matter how badly it's written, has a distinct therapeutic value because all of it has as its primary postulate that the world does change."

Robert A. Heinlein and his wife, Virginia, in Tahiti in 1980.

Wikipedia says Heinlein...

"...was an American science fiction author, aeronautical engineer, and naval officer. Sometimes called the "dean of science fiction writers", he was among the first to emphasize scientific accuracy in his fiction, and was thus a pioneer of the subgenre of hard science fiction. His published works, both fiction and non-fiction, express admiration for competence and emphasize the value of critical thinking. His plots often posed provocative situations which challenged conventional social mores. His work continues to have an influence on the science-fiction genre, and on modern culture more generally.

Virginia and Robert Heinlein in a 1952 Popular Mechanics article, titled "A House to Make Life Easy". The Heinleins, both engineers, designed the house for themselves with many innovative features.

SOURCE: Wikipedia  

"I began to sense faintly that secrecy is the keystone of all tyranny. Not force, but secrecy ... censorship. When any government, or any church for that matter, undertakes to say to its subjects, "This you may not read, this you must not see, this you are forbidden to know," the end result is tyranny and oppression, no matter how holy the motives. Mighty little force is needed to control a man whose mind has been hoodwinked; contrariwise, no amount of force can control a free man, a man whose mind is free. No, not the rack, not fission bombs, not anything -- you can't conquer a free man; the most you can do is kill him."

 -Robert A. Heinlein, science-fiction author (7 Jul 1907-1988)

Good Trouble

Good Trouble lives on.

July 17, 2025

Coined by civil rights leader Congressman John Lewis, "Good Trouble" is the action of coming together to take peaceful, non-violent action to challenge injustice and create meaningful change.

The civil rights leaders of the past have shown us the power of collective action. That’s why on July 17, five years since the passing of Congressman John Lewis, communities across the country will take to the streets, courthouses, and community spaces to carry forward his fight for justice, voting rights, and dignity for all.

A core principle behind all Good Trouble Lives On events is a commitment to nonviolent action. We expect all participants to seek to de-escalate any potential confrontation with those who disagree with our values and to act lawfully at these events. Weapons of any kind, including those legally permitted, should not be brought to events.

Contact

For general inquiries, please email us at info@goodtroubleliveson.org. Members of the media, please email us at media@goodtroubleliveson.org with inquiries.

See the link at the beginning of this post where a map of the US shows where events are being planned. 

The big ugly budget bill of 2025

 I wonder what memories (in a year, 10 years?) will be of this completely devastating tax bill which Trump and his rich cronies have pushed through congress.

I watched a couple of hours of Representative Hakeem Jeffries marathon speech in the House to delay the final vote on the bill. It had passed the Senate with even more cost cutting to programs which will result in the deaths and suffering of thousands...reducing SNAP food resources, Medicaid and health research...and eventually nursing home closures as well as patients dying... by the Vice President's veto breaking vote. Today the Republicans will vote to give more tax cuts to the richest people in the country instead. And then they can go home for the long holiday. At least Hakeem has postponed their flights a bit.

I don't pay any more attention to politics than the next person...but lately it's been very sickening.

So I'm very sad today, July 3, 2025.

I must say hat's off to Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat Representative from NY, who delayed the vote which was expected around noon whereby Republicans would put a very  unpopular budget in place. The delay meant many Republican's flights for the holiday weekend had to be changed. Democrats too, but they were cheering Hakeem on through out the speech.

House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) spoke on the floor of the chamber for the longest time in U.S. history in protest of President Donald Trump’s big bill, breaking a record previously held by then-Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.).

Jeffries began shortly before 5 a.m. Thursday by saying he was going to take his “sweet time on behalf of the American people.”

And he did.

The New York Democrat took advantage of a House custom that allows party leaders unlimited speaking time, known as a “magic minute.”

 McCarthy’s “minute” lasted over eight and a half hours back in 2021, when he was protesting legislation championed by then-President Joe Biden dubbed “Build Back Better.”

Jeffries beat the record just before 1:30 p.m. Thursday. He ended his remarks at 1:37 p.m., setting a new record of 8 hours and 44 minutes.

“I’m here today to make it clear that I’m going to take my time and ensure that the American people fully understand how damaging this bill will be to their quality of life,” Jeffries said at the beginning of his marathon speech.

(Yahoo News)

Hermann Hesse

July 2 is the birthday of Hermann Hesse, born in Calw, Germany, in 1877. In 1911, he took a trip to India and started studying Eastern religions, and ancient Hindu and Chinese cultures. His travels inspired his novel Siddhartha, about the early life of Gautama Buddha. It became popular among the counterculture movement of the 1960s, more than 40 years after it was published.

He said: "The world is not imperfect or slowly evolving along a path to perfection. No, it is perfect at every moment, every sin already carries grace in it."

Writer's Almanac

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I was among those reading Siddhartha in the 60s. Important addition to my own thinking/belief processes.

JC - 90 before he died

On the obituary below they show JC as 89, but this was the man we sang happy birthday to for his 90th last week at the lunch "pick-up" site...a week or so before his death.

The Seniors at Lakeview Center are still gathering on the patio outside the building which can't be used yet since hurricane damage hasn't been repaired. We then get in line to pick up our boxed lunches from the Council on Aging.

RIP JC !

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 John Columbus “JC” Wright, Jr., 89, of Swannanoa, went home to be with his Lord and Savior on Monday, June 30, 2025.

JC was born on June 13, 1936, in Buncombe County to the late John Columbus Wright, Sr. and Ruby Rathbone Wright. He was an Engineer at NCI for over 35 years. He enjoyed woodworking, farming, his farm animals, and gardening. JC loved singing and led the youth group choir at Swannanoa Heights Baptist Church and was also a Sunday School Teacher. After the passing of his wife, Phyllis, in 2021, he cherished visiting and making friends at the Lake View Center for Active Aging. JC was a quiet man but loved helping others. He also loved and adored his family and will be greatly missed by all who knew him.

More of the obituary is at this link.