Feast Day of Saint Mary Magdalene
“Magdalene
her name means tower
not whore, not sinner, not infidel of the seven devils
they labeled her less-than
because they feared what her tower held:
not sin but scripture
not shame but sacredness
not filth but flame
a tower of truth
but towers fall, don’t they?
when men build stories from stone
and forget the word was born in woman’s body
at the edge of things
cracked open with knowing
she was never the footnote
not the soft epilogue to his ministry
she was his equal, mirror to messiah, goddess to god:
his counter-spell, his mirror myth, his ritual in red;
not whore, not slave, but beloved;
a woman undone by the very thing that made her divine: her desire.
But listen, love— she didn’t break the jar because she was desperate
she broke it because she was called
called to speak when silence was safer
called to stay when the others fled
called to embody the towering truth:
that strength and softness are not separate
that holiness can wear hips
that god grew inside a womb but also walked beside one
loved and worshipped one
when the world bloomed in bruises and blessings
this kind of power will not do
if we let a woman be beloved, be equal, be tower
what’s next? a tabernacle? a sanctuary?
a truth that eclipses all the lies of smallness and inferiority?
so they silenced her with ink and pulpit
turned her hips into heresy, her hair into sin
her hands into something not fit to beckon or bless
they scraped the sacred from her body and called it repentance
scrubbed her clean of her wildness
tried to bleach her into silence
folded her into a cautionary tale
the scarlet stain on holy scrolls
but history is porous and so is the grave
after centuries of redacted gospel
after pulpits built on her silence
she is waking from shadow in boots of fervor
incense clinging to the brazier of her spine
this is not a tale of repentance
this is a story of theft
and now it is a tale of return
another kind of resurrection
the tower stands again, friends
not in lace and halos but barefoot
with red clay on her soles
and a voice like an earthquake
wrapped in linen
she does not walk back into scripture
she bursts through the margins
mud-footed and mythic
pulling the divine back into the body
she has risen again
not with trumpets but with soil under her nails
the rhizome gospel under her tongue
green and feral and determined to grow
she’s coming back
to reclaim every woman called ruin
for daring to know spirit
by touch and tenderness
she’s here to walk the crooked path again
the one where myth and marrow meet
she is not looking for apology
she is looking for fire
in the eyes of humans
who remember
that holiness can wear hips
that sacredness is not silence
and that sometimes the most faithful thing you can do
is stand tall
a tower of truth
a sentinel at the beginning of a new story
rooted in love that outlasts hatred
a tower of belonging that outshines fear”
Magdalene’s Tower by Angi Sullins
Artwork by Lars Doerwald
Chorlton Unitarians 