The Buddha’s Mother & Mary Magdalene - Wendy Garling, Cynthia Bourgeault, and Vicki Mackenzie 

I listened to this during mass. I have recently returned to going to church to support my partner who is starting into the dementia journey. But, last week, I almost lost my my mind, my hope, my ability to be present with my partner at this important part of his communal need. So, when I was a pastoral worker, I often told people to bring their own homilies and listen to that when they knew they needed more. Today I followed my own advice. Truly received inspiration ...direction... Nourishment...challenge

Thank you so much for the amazing talk

Thanks to Vickie, the moderator of this program.👍 Wendy Garling's talk about the Bhudda's two mothers was quite interesting, especially as I really did not know anything about the origin of the original person called "Bhudda". St Mary Magdalene I know of, and did appreciate Cynthia Bourgeault's talk on her. I have read both the gospel of Thomas and St Mary Magdalene. I found the gospel of Thomas to be down to earth. The gospel of Mary Magdalene, I found much more complex. I am not an Intellectual and have a limited vocabulary. I found some of it to be understandable, but some of it became convoluted and that causes disturbance in spiritual thinking. In relation to the Sacred Scriptures, I did not think that those parts corresponded properly to the Sacred Scriptures. I am not looking for debates, so I will not even think about the controversy still going on about them in the Catholic Church and others. But I do not think that Mary of Magdala represents the woman's liberation movement of her day. She certainly was different , and that was a grace from God for a reason, but I think that she probably appeared quite ordinary to most people. Her skin was probably covered from head to toe, as well as her hair the same as the other obedient women of her time. I saw a recent movie of her, and the very beginning was a leader-mentioning the Pope Gregory that Cynthia Bourgeault spoke of, but then they blended only some negative aspects of the gnostic gospel, and maybe two or three truthful lines from Sacred Scripture, and the rest was grossly distorted fabricated fiction, that made Jesus look pathetic as a healer/the messiah, which has always been the M.O. of the manslayer/the devil. 👎

This was great but I want to point out, that to a enlightened one, such as Buddha or Jesus, there are no "men" or "women." Gender is attached to the ego which is "the false self." The True Self (our True identity) is gender-less. All talk about women's roles keeps the mind tied up with worldly things and thus strengthens the mind and makes it much tougher to attain enlightenment. and anyone who believes in reincarnation knows that all of us have lived lives as members of both genders.

Jesus surrendered to his humanity, his humanness, Mary Magdalene, the sensual-spiritual-sexual. She was the only human to experience him in that way. She surrendered to him in all ways when he was alive and when he gave up his body.