Sacred Texts:
Text #1 - Gospel of Mary - 5: 6-7, 9: 16-27, 29 (Karen King translation)
The Savior answered, ‘A person does not see with the soul or with the spirit, Rather the mind, which exists between these two …’
When the soul had brought the third Power to naught, it went upward and saw the fourth Power. It had seven forms. The first form is darkness; the second is desire; the third is ignorance; the fourth is zeal for death; the fifth is the realm of the flesh; the sixth is the foolish wisdom of the flesh; the seventh is the wisdom of the wrathful person. These are the seven Powers of Wrath.
They interrogated the soul, ‘Where are you coming from, human-killer, and where are you going, space-conqueror?’
The soul replied, saying, ‘What binds me has been slain, and what surrounds me has been destroyed, and my desire has been brought to an end, and ignorance has died. … From this hour on, for the time of the due season of the aeon, I will receive rest in silence.’”
Text #2 - From Centering in Pottery, Poetry, and the Person by M. C. Richards.
“Center” and “centered” have come to be fairly widely used. They tend to imply a connection with the navel, with one-pointedness, on the way to bliss, realization, and inner peace. But these are not the goals of the Centering process. For it is a continual engagement with experience, not a withdrawal from it. It begins with pain and ends with paradox. It wrestles with evil and the daimonic as it does with angels and repentance. It is an activity of consciousness, not a stage of spiritual achievement. …
It must be admitted that the experience of Centering is especially ambiguous. … It is part of the language of the Quakers to speak of a centered meeting, of “centering down,” which leads to a focus of attention, of inner listening to the inner voice.
The Centering I have learned about from the potter’s practice is in some ways the exact opposite of this. For in centering the clay on the potter’s wheel, one centers down yes, and then one immediately centers up! Down and up, wide and narrow, letting focus bear within it an expanded consciousness and letting a widened awareness … have the commitment to detail of a focused attention.
Not ‘either .. or,’ but ‘both .. and.’ You can perhaps feel the inner movement of a Centering consciousness that plays dynamically in the tides of inner and outer, self and other, in an instinctive hope toward wholeness.”
This has been a tumultuous few weeks in the world around us. Although some unknowns are now known, there remains an ever-expanding list of what is still pending and a continuing incredulity of stories, lies, truths, and half-truths exploding on social media and the various pundits we may follow.
The Olympics and the balloons are giving us a brief reprieve, but I’m aware that in many conversations recently, there is anxiety around what is happening as we move closer to this fall’s election cycle. Sometimes it is expressed as a low-level sigh. More often it is a prolonged fear and escalates as the conversation continues. These discussions center on the recent Supreme Court decisions, the health of the presidential candidates, gun violence, the policies and stances that are based on exclusion vs. inclusion, discussion about what is Christian, or Nationalist, or patriotic, or loving, or … or… or… The feelings run the gamut from hopeless, helpless, depressed and angry; to relief, skeptic optimism, but still fear about what may happen.
In the Gospel of Mary, most of the disciples show up as anxious, depressed, and scared of what will happen to them because “if they did not spare him, how will they spare us?” (5:3) This two-thousand-year-old comment seems to summarize much of what I’m hearing these days. It is a classic “flight or freeze” response to what we are experiencing.
I’m sure that you’ve heard of this classic “fight-flight-freeze” response that all animals have as a way to quickly and effectively respond to danger. My guess is that we have all experienced it at least once during the course of our lives, and probably multiple times. But what is it and how does it happen?
Over time we have developed an area in the brain whose primary function is to constantly scan the environment to keep us safe. Primarily in the amygdala, its function is to act rapidly, so that in mere milliseconds, danger and safety are evaluated and we react. In less time than it takes to read this sentence, the amygdala receives and processes stimuli, assesses whether there is a match between past experiences and the current situation, and if it senses danger, then it activates an autonomic reaction of either fight, flight or freeze to keep us safe. This split-second reaction affects our emotions, our breathing, our nerves, muscles, digestion, adrenaline levels, as well as our senses.
The neuropathways that exist to the neocortex part of the brain do not even have time to receive the initial information about the current situation until after the amygdala has completed this entire circuit and reacted! It is when the amygdala can’t find a suitable “danger” match, and thus pauses while continuing to scan, that the neocortex or so-called “rational” brain can influence and direct actions if needed. To describe this action, Daniel Goleman coined the term “amygdala hijack” nearly 30 years ago in his book Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More than IQ.
This amygdala rapid response is designed to protect us - and it does - protecting our lives and possibly those of others, and when it works well we feel gratitude at its effectiveness to do so. We don’t need our burning fingers to linger in a fire while we think about it!
But if the amygdala finds a match to a perceived danger that’s not really there or is not a real threat to us now (even if it was for example, when we were a child), then we can react impulsively, irrationally, even destructively, potentially causing harm instead. We realize, but sometimes only much later, that our reaction was inappropriate or “over the top”, possibly a reaction to a previous pain or situation that is basically unrelated to the current event or person and is not helpful for us at all. PTSD and other trauma responses are examples of this amygdala hijacking. In this kind of experience, we become “deadly serious” in our fear and our reactions. Any connection to play or joy are completely absent.
I have two older brothers who both served in the military during the Viet Nam era. My second brother spent a year in the infantry in Viet Nam, while at the same time, my oldest brother lucked out spending the bulk of his time stationed to a base in West Germany. Both served in the army, at the same time, but in two very different arenas. Both of them moved back home after their time in service and for a few months shared a room in our family home. During that time, one night my oldest brother awoke to go to the bathroom, noticed that the sheet had fallen off my second brother who was sleeping, so pulled the sheet back over him, then returned to his own bed and went back to sleep.
However the next morning, my second brother pulled him aside and said, “please do not ever do that again”. Confused and wondering what he was talking about, my oldest brother asked what he meant. The chilling response was, “I could have killed you last night.” My oldest brother was stunned, “you mean pulling the sheet up? But you were fast asleep! You didn’t move at all.” And again the response … “I’ve been trained to sense movement but remain perfectly still until I can defend against or kill the enemy that’s attacking. Although perfectly still, with my eyes closed, I was wide awake the moment you came over, and gratefully that gave me the few seconds to realize I wasn’t in ‘Nam anymore but at home, and that you weren’t the enemy, but my brother. But please, don’t ever do that again because I may not get those few seconds next time.”
Amygdala hijack. What has happened before we think is happening now, in real time. We become “deadly serious” in our reactions. So what can we do about it?
The newest studies in brain development focus on the Adaptive Brain because they are discovering that the brain matter in all creatures (including reptiles) is wired to be interdependent, adapting and developing based on experiences and needs. Various studies conclude that one aspect of our adaptive brains evolved not just to react but to simulate and predict potential outcomes to cope with challenge and threat. The faster and more accurately this can happen, the safer we are.
Researchers now propose our minds work in two ways simultaneously. First as an “interoceptive system” that crosses over various parts of the brain’s cortex, transmitting information through connections in the amygdala, hypothalamus, ventral striatum, and periaqueductal gray sending signals to control and activate the spinal cord for autonomic responses. At the same time, it sends information to other areas of the brain including the neocortex to help determine the prediction error for what is being seen as threatening. This is helpful news because this explains how the brain adapts and becomes organized so to respond to stress both quickly and rationally. Our very survival can depend on our ability to change our current course of action to respond accurately in the face of potentially advantageous or threatening events.
In one of our Sacred Text readings for today, the potter and poet M.C. Richards, discussed the process of centering clay on a potter’s wheel – centering down, but then reversing and centering up, then repeating the process again and again. She sees it as a spiritual practice as well, keeping a person continuously engaged with experience “beginning with pain and ending in paradox.” As a potter, the process creates flexibility and adaptability in the clay, all while remaining centered on the wheel. Only then can a new pottery piece be formed.
I have a friend who is a potter, Jessa Decker Smith, and she has made some short videos of her work. With her permission, here is a video of the centering and formation process that M.C. Richards describes. Let’s watch it … and pay attention to the process as it unfolds. What is it like to move from a chunk of clay to a centered functional vase?
Fascinating! M.C. Richards also says that the spiritual experience of centering “wrestles with evil and the daimonic as it does with angels and repentance.”
So returning to Mary Magdalene, it's important to remember that in Luke’s gospel, she is described as having been freed from seven demons. Mary had wrestled with “the evil and daimonic”, as well as with “angels and repentance.” And in the passage read earlier from the Gospel of Mary, her vision and message from Jesus includes a description of the Seven Powers of Wrath – darkness, desire, ignorance, zeal for death, realm of the flesh, the foolish ‘wisdom’ of the flesh, and the ‘wisdom’ of the wrathful person. Those are things that keep our minds and souls bound, keep us traumatized. In other words, they keep our amygdalas hijacked!
And it wasn’t just her own demons. Remember that Mary also experienced and witnessed all the pain and trauma that happened to Jesus – his betrayal, his trial, his disgrace, his whipping, his crucifixion and death. Mary remained visibly present to Jesus, and others, through it all. She stood watch while he was being laid in the tomb, watched while the stone covered the opening, gathered the burial spices for his body, and then returned to the tomb preparing herself to deal with her friend’s dead body. Although not all of the disciples experienced all of this, they experienced most of it, and Peter carried a personal shame from having denied his friendship with Jesus (at least 3 times).
So when Peter and some of the disciples are fearful and say “if they did not spare him, how will they spare us?”, it is a valid and realistic fear. Their amygdalas have scanned the environment, and have fairly accurately sensed real danger. Their reactions are to freeze and flee. They are not necessarily overreacting to the situation and are seeing the real possibilities of their own deaths if they continue on this path.
So why was Mary different? I’m fascinated with this. How was she able to experience all of that, and yet move through it? Maybe it’s because she had experienced the seven demons in her life and yet had also experienced healing from them. Had she spiritually centered down, then centered back up, then down again, wrestling with the daimons and the angels so that her brain adapted to know that although demons exist, they don’t necessarily win?
If we follow the discoveries of Dr. Elizabeth Schrader Polczer (with the scribal changes of Mary’s name in various manuscripts that I’ve talked about before), she presents as one of her conclusions that Mary Magdalene is probably the sister of Lazarus. So had Mary’s brain adapted to the wonder and joy of Lazarus being raised from the dead? I wonder if she and Lazarus laughed and celebrated together at the realization that death was no longer the enemy to be feared. I wonder how was her mind continuously centering, adapting to new options, new opportunities, new visions that allowed her to move beyond her amygdala’s freezing fear as well as Peter’s despair and challenges?
This summer we have had the opportunity to see the world differently, through the Gospel of Mary, and through a feminine perspective on community and connection. In this maybe ideal world, Mary and later Levi (presumably the tax collector called by Jesus), speak up and speak out, preaching against the powers that would dominate and silence. Mary concluded her vision with, “The soul replied, saying, ‘What binds me has been slain, and what surrounds me has been destroyed, and my desire has been brought to an end, and ignorance has died. … From this hour on, for the time of the due season of the aeon, I will receive rest in silence.” (Gospel of Mary 9: 27, 29)
I am struck that our minds can help us but can also trick us. When we finally stop our busyness, and there is silence, often our thoughts keep swirling. Demons arise in our minds, thinking and reacting as though we are in danger even if we aren’t, leading us to cut off, despair, and fear. But as Mary reminds us, our adaptive mind, like that clay, centering up and down between our souls and hearts, can provide rest, compassion, courage, and even joy and laughter instead, in that silence.
Yes, the amygdala can protect us, but it also can hijack us highlighting our anxiety and fear responses - problematic politics, social media, personal crises and trauma, family struggles, unknown outcomes - all the situations that activate us as though we’ve been through this before. But can we quiet the amygdala, train it to be curious about what else might be going on? Can we enhance our adaptability and live into the power we do have?
As we move through the next few weeks and months, we need to turn our minds to the Good, to relax the amygdala with laughter, joy, and play; to see others through eyes of compassion, to center and re-center ourselves between heart and soul, so that we experience God’s rest and peace in our lives. We need to remember that we are called to be faithful, even when we sometimes despair.
Ultimately God’s truth and love will come to light, even when dismissed, or hidden in jars and buried in the desert for two millennia. May we adapt and be shaped into new vessels of clay, remembering that Grace will be with us and will shelter us, preparing us and making us true human beings, even in the face of danger, as Mary is our witness.
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