I have been torn about the title and tagline on my blog for a while now. I have been considering changing it from “Seeking and Stumbling” to something like “Finding my Way.” “Seeking and Stumbling” seems to imply that there is only one perfect way to follow God and that many times I fail. “Finding my Way” implies that each way is individual and our God is big enough and personal enough for that. My way may not be your way, and that is okay.
“Seeking and Stumbling” represents my previous way of thinking and being as I struggled to find that one perfect way (see my first blog post). Perhaps now I have a different perspective. My path is my own as designed by God. Each path is our own to wrestle, debate, and follow. Others can travel with me for a while, even a lifetime, but my way with God is my own, as your way with God is your own. We, as the body of Christ, have gotten in trouble when we try to define one way or even a few ways. Then, when one cannot follow the prescribed path because it does not align with God’s will for them, it creates distance from others and distance from God. It seems like something out of C.S. Lewis’s book, The Screwtape Letters, where the enemy has devised a system to ensure that we all fall into disarray.
I think we can do better. We can celebrate millions of ways to follow God. We can believe in a diverse, abundant, and creative God. We can celebrate and honor where we have been, we can be grateful for where we are now, and we can be excited about where we are going.
Autumn is a season of letting go. The trees drop their leaves and the flowers fade, but only to create room for what is next. With God, there is always more to come. There is always another season, another chapter, for evermore.
Sometimes that means creating a new way. That is the entire story of Jesus. God created a new way for us to know God. God opened the way for those outside Israel’s religion to be a part of it too. We can trust that God keeps opening doors and creating new pathways to know, follow, and love God. God loves each of us around the globe personally and intimately. We can trust that this loving and faithful God will help us each find our way. God can help us create new ways and even invite others on the journey as well. To quote the popular bracelet, “God is big enough.” God is abundant and loving and faithful. Abundantly more….
When I first started my blog in 2016, I purchased the domain for my name, marissaneil.com. I wasn’t ready to use it then but I had an inkling that it may turn into more than a blog someday. I had what felt like a divine nudge to dream about it and plan for it. Until then I have been using seekingandstumbling.com. Though I still do not know exactly where it is all going, I feel the nudge to start using my name as the domain, like authors and artists do. I don’t know that I am either, but the nudge is strong. It feels vulnerable in good and bad ways. I have always been vulnerable in my writing, but I could always hide behind an anonymous blog. Now there is no hiding, it’s just me.
On WordPress, there is an option for customization of your “Site Identity” where you choose a title, a photo, and a tagline. I don’t know about you but that is a lot of pressure, to present your “identity” in a snapshot and a few words. I have played around with using my name as the title and my artwork as the photo, but having my name in bold letters is a struggle for me and having my artwork on display is a bit uncomfortable. And there is also the tagline. I have considered keeping “Seeking and Stumbling,” since it is familiar. It is what got me here, yet, it no longer fits. It’s like wearing a coat that is too small. I can’t move or breath in the way I feel called to. I feel called to express myself and share my life and my faith in a new way.
Guess what? That is allowed. Sometimes we get stuck or held back by what is comfortable or what is familiar. That can be safe space, yet sometimes we are invited beyond that, through that space to something else, something more. It is like growing pains. It is uncomfortable for a while but it is growth. And becoming. I am still growing. I am still becoming. I am finding my way.
The concept of seeking and stumbling has been a part of my way. But framing all of my explorations, detours, and U-turns as stumbling no longer fits. Those are just a part of my way. That is how I seek, that is how I connect with God, with others, and with myself. That is my way.
How are you finding your way, your individual path with God?
I’d love to hear about it.
~Marissa
I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert.~ Isaiah 43:19
Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light to my path. ~ Psalm 119:105
My final reflection for my Seminary course on the Holy Spirit:
Shortly after starting to put together some thoughts and some notes on creativity and the Holy Spirit, I discovered that this topic was bigger than the parameters of this assignment. I feel I could study the intersection of these two concepts indefinitely. Therefore, for the purposes of this essay I have chosen to stick to the themes that have surfaced in my life in regards to this holy intersection: resistance, hospitality, and permission. Resistance because it has been so dominant in my spiritual life as well as my creative life. Hospitality because it created a pathway and a process for moving through to something more. Permission because it is what I crave most in my spirituality and my creativity. Christine Valters Paintner talks about the creative and the spiritual journey as being a spiral way rather than a linear one.[1]I agree and as such I do not progress only one time through resistance then hospitality and then permission. Instead, I return over and over again to each stage as I spiral toward the center of my true self.
Creativity
In my professional career I worked in banking and project management. However, if I look back over my life, I have always dabbled with creativity without fully embracing it. In those seemingly uncreative positions, I found myself developing new ways to be more efficient and helping employees become the best versions of themselves. I designed databases and spreadsheets. I rewrote training manuals and restructured departments. Even as a child I loved arts and crafts. One year I inherited a set of Barbie dolls and even though I wasn’t much into playing with them, I really enjoyed designing and building furniture for their imaginary home. I used my father’s tools to build a couch, a table and chairs, and a refrigerator (and since the only paint we had was light blue, everything matched). As a young adult this creativity morphed into occasionally making gifts for family and friends. One year I realized I had forgotten to purchase wrapping paper for Christmas gifts, so I took this opportunity to create my own and painted gift boxes and paper. Once I had children, I appreciated the opportunity to do children’s crafts with them. We would make cards for family birthdays. We would make gifts for grandmothers on Mother’s Day. Whenever friends came over to play, we would plan a craft to make with them. I even volunteered in the Kindergarten Art Appreciation program at my daughters’ school, even when they were no longer in kindergarten. Then my children grew older and while they were still creative, they no longer needed me to create projects for them. I struggled at this time to create my own artistic practices.
Resistance
“Just remember, in choosing, that we often resist what we most need.” – Julia Cameron[2]
“When resistance kicks in, do you listen to what it has to say to you, making space for its wisdom?” – Christine Valters Paintner[3]
“For most of us, the idea that the creator encourages creativity is a radical thought. We tend to think, or at least fear, that creative dreams are egotistical, something that God wouldn’t approve of for us.” – Julia Cameron [4]
My mother is an artist, writer, and poet and my father is an engineer. Both are creative, yet in different ways. Somehow, I had come to believe the world accepts engineering as the appropriate and acceptable way to express creativity in the world. It is responsible. Art always seemed irresponsible. It is too free, too creative. There are no rules or boundaries. It is easy to get out of control. I crave control, purpose, and function. Art does not always seem useful and I believed I was expected to be useful. I have really struggled with that expectation in recent years in my writing and my journaling. Is it useful? Yes, but maybe in an unconventional way. Maybe it is useful as self-expression or as a spiritual practice. Maybe it is useful because it keeps me sane, it keeps me in touch with myself and with my creator and therefore in a better position to love others well. Maybe it is useful after all. I find myself having this wrestling match over and over again. I can hear the arguing in my head:
“Be creative.”
vs.
“No. It doesn’t make sense. It is a waste of time, a waste of resources, and a waste of energy. Why should I? What purpose does it serve?”
I wonder where this resistance comes from. In the past, just to avoid the argument I would decide to not create. I was willing to give up my craft rather than defend or explain myself. It was easier to deny my creativity than defend it.
I am realizing that not only have I been resistant to creative ideas that stir within me but I have also been resistant to the work that goes with creativity. There is toil involved. I have learned to be creative when writing in my journal. After I have let that creativity flow, I have a tendency to want that to stand on its own. Sometimes it does and sometimes it requires further work. In wanting to share my writing, there is always editing to be done. There is a tendency to want to skip that step and just receive the gift of the creativity without doing the work of co-creating a final project to share. Even as I worked through my many pages of notes for this paper, I was resistant to organizing the notes, editing, and writing transitions. However, I have found that when I am willing to put in the work of co-creating, taking what the spirit gives me and working further on it to create something new, it is very fulfilling and usually produces something that is beyond myself, something that also serves others in some way.
Hospitality
“The position of the artist is humble. He is essentially a channel.” – Piet Mondrian[5]
“I learned to get out of the way and let that creative force work through me.” – Julia Cameron[6]
“An intentional practice of hospitality calls you to make room within yourself for all the inner voices that rise up in your creative process and contemplative prayer.” – Christine Valters Paintner[7]
“Do not neglect to show hospitality to strangers, for by doing that some have entertained angels without knowing it.” – Hebrews 13:2 NRSV
I remember being surprised to learn that many creatives (artist, writers, etc.) experience their creativity as a movement of the Holy Spirit. I first read about this in Julia Cameron’s book, The Artist’s Way. The concept was very freeing to me because one of the roadblocks to embracing my own creative desires was feeling like I was wholly responsible for coming up with something original. Now I feel like it is more about releasing something that is passing through me but also bringing something of myself out with it. An expression of sorts rather than a wholly new creation of my own making. I had been treating my creativity as a stranger and was not being welcoming to the Spirit moving in me. I was not offering inner hospitality to my own creativity. As I began to understand it as a movement of the Spirit, I began to open myself to it.
Now I love the idea of partnering with God, The Creator, in creative acts. Similar to the job of the scribe, sometimes my role is merely to share the message, whatever that might be, to express the idea, to create the art. I remember years ago discussing with my pastor at the time that I frequently had messages, stories, and explanations running through my mind, like a ticker tape at the bottom of a news broadcast. They felt like conversations but only in my mind. My pastor indicated that I reminded him of a writer he admired. It had never occurred to me to write these conversations down. It had never occurred to me that this might be how writers experience their ideas. It had never occurred to me that these ideas could be a movement of the Holy Spirit. Shortly after this revelation, I started a blog so that I had a place to share these conversations. I was surprised that other people were interested in what had been rolling around in my mind all these years. I was surprised that others experienced God in what I shared. Since then, I have been practicing hospitality to the flow of creativity moving in me, the Spirit moving in me. I am grateful for the opportunity this summer to practice this flow in the reflective papers I have been assigned in this course. I have also practiced this flow in my recent creative project of decorating my church for Vacation Bible School. I was intentional about not over analyzing or second-guessing my creative ideas. I just welcomed them and let them rise out of me. I am learning to trust this flow from the Spirit outside of my personal journal.
Permission
“Is it not the distinguishing characteristic of the human being that in the hot race of evolution he pauses for a moment to paint on the cave walls at Lascaux or Altamira those brown-and-red deer and bison which still fill us with amazed admiration and awe?” – Rollo May[8]
“We express our being by creating. Creativity is a necessary sequel to being.” – Rollo May[9]
“You do not need anybody’s permission to live a creative life.” – Elizabeth Gilbert [10]
Books like The Courage to Create[11], The Call to Create[12], The Right to Write[13], andThe Artist’s Way[14]are all trying to explain, defend, and create space for the artist’s journey, for the creative life. A daunting task…like parting the sea. How do we hold back the sea so people can live their creative lives, their diverse lives, their beautiful God-given lives? The more I try to list things that are creative, the more I realize how everything seems creative. It may be easier to try to list what isn’t creative rather than what is. It seems that we are a creative species, that we were actually created to create.
As I started to seek permission for my own creativity, I begin to recognize creativity in scripture starting with Genesis where God invites Adam into the creating process by asking him to name the animals. This invitation continues with God placing Adam in the garden to co-create vegetation and then again with Eve as she is given the ability to co-create humanity. In Exodus, artisans are filled with the Spirit and gathered to do work for the Lord.[15] Creativity resounds in the various forms of literature represented in the Bible: poetry, prayers, narratives, epistles, parables, etc. The four gospels are creative in their telling of Jesus’ life. Why would we ever consider that creativity and artistry is outside the work of the spirit? Why would we ever think that creativity would be something frowned upon by God?
Coming to terms with this, I want to help others be true to their creative selves, whether in art, in self-expression, or in faith. We are all still co-creating with God. We are all still discovering all of the options our abundant God has created. It can be a bit scary and it can feel out of control, but it is in God’s control. I am learning to trust God more. God is better at this than I am so I am trying to let go, listen, follow, and then join in. I am trying to work with the Spirit rather than against it. When I do, the magic happens. It is glorious. I accomplish things I never thought I could do. Even in something as small as using my creativity to decorate my church for Vacation Bible School, I put in this little bit and God blows it up into something amazing. Hundreds of children learn about Jesus. Youth learn how to be their own creative wonderful selves at church. Adults learn to let go and see what God can do when they release the reins a bit. It keeps giving and growing, as God’s witness to the ends of the Earth.
Vocation
”Our calling is deeply connected to our creativity…Vocation is a daily invitation to be fully who we are and to allow our lives to unfold in ways that are organic to this deepest identity.” – Christine Valters Paintner[16]
“As creatures with the capacity of consciousness and choice, we can cooperate with and contribute to the greater process of creation, or we can deny or refuse our vocation and faith to reach our won protentional.” – Linda Schierse Leonard[17]
“But if you do not express your own original ideas, if you do not listen to your own being, you will have betrayed yourself. Also, you will have betrayed our community in failing to make your contribution to the whole.” – Rollo May[18]
I feel called to live creatively. I am discovering that my vocation is not necessary some new job or career, but just living my life as truly as I can. What I mean by truly is aligning with the Spirit and with my true self the best I can, in everyday tasks as well as in relationships, new and old. I am finding vocation in my family life, in friendships, in my church community, and in the projects with which I am involved. I had been thinking that God’s call meant I would go a completely different direction and start some new life or new career. What I am realizing is that part of my call, of my vocation, is to live the life I already have as truly as I can. (Maybe I really mean “holy”, but that is a loaded word, so I will stick with “truly.”) True to God’s Word, true to God’s Spirit, true to who God created me to be, true to loving others, and true to caring for this world. I think that is the best I can do on this earth. If there is more to it, I will have to trust God to show me. For now, this is my focus, my call, and my life.
Final Thoughts
As a society, we tend to want everyone to be the same rather than honoring each other’s distinctive gifts. As the body of Christ, we are all unique with unique purposes that work together as one. As the Casting Crowns song declares:
“It is the rhythm of the dancers That gives the poets life It is the spirit of the poets That gives the soldiers strength to fight It is fire of the young ones It is the wisdom of the old It is the story of the poor man That’s needing to be told”[19]
I have been releasing my resistance, offering hospitality, and seeking permission to be creative in art, in self-expression, and in my spirituality. I am leaning more into creative projects, into establishing a daily creative practice, and into my call to spiritual formation. The more I open myself up to creativity the more I open myself up to God’s Holy Spirit. I have been focusing on the practice of showing up in creativity and in spirituality, showing up and being open to the movement of the Spirit within me. As I do, I feel closer to God and closer to who God created me to be, and I am experiencing the extreme joy of co-creating with my Creator.
~~~~~~~~~~
Notes
[1]Christine Valters Paintner, The Soul’s Slow Ripening: 12 Celtic Practices for Seeking the Sacred(Notre Dame: Sorin Books, 2018), 155. Kindle Edition.
[2]Julia Cameron, The Artist’s Way,(New York: Penguin Random House, 2016), 4. Kindle Edition.
[3]Christine Valters Paintner, The Artist’s Rule(Notre Dame: Sorin Books, 2011), 74. Kindle Edition.
I just finished my third year of Seminary. Most of the students who started with me just graduated and are moving on to their ministries. Since I have been attending part-time, I still have a few years to go. I haven’t shared much about my experience with my classes here mainly because it has been a real rollercoaster ride and I have just been holding on for dear life! Though it has been challenging, it has also been transformative and life-giving. I am not the same person I was when I started three years ago. I would like to be more intentional about sharing some of my Seminary experiences here so I’ll start with an essay I wrote on the Christian mission. This essay was for my course on Interfaith Studies, Comparative Theology, and Ministry where we learned about many of the world religions and how to best engage with others from different faiths.
The question for the essay was: “What are the features of ‘Christian mission’ in a multireligious society characterized by a widespread poverty and social inequality, animosity and violence between people due to various factors, and ecological deterioration?”
While I am sure there was an appropriate academic answer, I decided to go with a more personal, reflective response. Here is what I wrote:
Our Christian mission is to serve God’s people – not just Christians but all of God’s people – with love and humility rather than with arrogance and power. We are to listen to and lift up others and to trust that God is already working in their lives. We are to be the student when called and to be the teacher when called, and the only way we will know which one is called for at any given time is in relationship with one another.
Jesus tells His disciples in John 13:34-35, “I give you a new commandment, that you love one another. Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.” I am not sure that Jesus would recognize us as His disciples, as we have failed to love one another. We have not loved as Jesus commanded and the state of the world is evidence of this. The world does not appear well-loved.
So what does this love look like? For me personally, it looks like education and loving across lines. It looks like advocacy for the marginalized in my life, specifically the LGBTQIA+ community. It looks like holding open doors and inviting people I know and love into spaces where I am allowed but they are not. For me it looks like writing a blog, where I share my faith, my spiritual practices, and my struggles with the state of things. For me it looks like standing at the edges with those who don’t feel like they have a place at the center. For me it looks like donating time and resources to the organizations who are working tirelessly to make room at the table, to feed and educate the poor, to plant trees, to teach God’s word, and to share the benefits of spiritual practices. It looks like working with children and youth so they too can live into a Christian mission of love. It looks like cultivating friendships outside my faith to better understand others and their experience with what I call God’s life-giving Spirit. It looks like laying down my religious language so as to open lines of communication with the rest of God’s people. For me it looks like having hard conversations with people at my church, in my family, and in my friend groups about how Christianity and God’s word have been used as weapons against the least of these. It also looks like learning how to repent and apologize when I have been the one in the wrong using my faith as a way to judge or harm others. It looks like being willing to learn something new every day and being willing to wander into uncharted territory for the sake of love, relationship, and justice.
I certainly do not have all of the answers. I am grateful for educational and religious leaders who are willing to take a stand and teach those under their care how to better love people. I am grateful for brave voices from the margins who have risked everything to call attention to injustices and disparities. I am grateful for a savior who came for all of us and I pray that we can be better so that He will know us by our love, and as a result, all will know the love Jesus came to share.
My brain is drafting a conversation about ‘comfort zone.’ In Sunday School today we talked about calling and how sometimes it can be hard to follow a calling because we are not willing to go outside our comfort zone. At the time, the thought of being willing to find a new comfort zone came to mind. I think sometimes I get stuck in the thinking that my current circumstances are my only comfort zone. But once upon a time, whatever it is that makes up my current comfort zone was new. To even get where I am today, I had to leave a previous comfort zone. I was also thinking about how what if our comfort zone was not really about our external circumstances but about our relationship with God. What if God is our comfort zone? What if following Christ is our comfort zone? Being in God’s will is our comfort zone? I think about how at the end of every school year my daughter, Lindsay, wouldn’t want to leave her existing grade. She loved her teachers and her classmates and her schedule…it was her comfort zone. As a parent, I knew that soon the next grade would become her comfort zone just as it had the previous year. I think God is like the parent in that situation — knowing that whatever this next thing is, that it will become our new comfort zone. And that God will be in the midst of it all.
I don’t know if that paragraph eloquently explains exactly what I am thinking, but it hints at it. I think in a conversation it would make more sense because someone else would fill in the blanks for me. In community, we would be able to flush out the truths behind the words. God’s truths. In Sunday School today, Charlie brought up community and that many times we find our calling in community. I believe that is so true. That we ‘become’ in community. I think that is God’s design for us. I think that is why God gave us family and the church. So that we would live and grow in community and become God’s people together.
I am thinking, “Who is my community today?” Obviously, my immediate family, Rick, Lindsay and Rachel, and even my crazy dog Molly. And then my extended family is my community. My neighborhood is my community. My church is my community. My friends are my community. My seminary peeps are my community. My candidacy cohort is my community. Even the greater world is my community. Last week my friend, Shandon, invited to me try out a new small group practice. In this practice, you choose a discipline to lean into during the coming week like Worship, Scripture, Prayer, etc. The one that jumped out at me was Community. And then I join one of my communities for a Sunday morning discussion and we talk about community. Ok God, I am listening.
This week was hard for me regarding community as I am mourning the loss of one of my family members, one of my community members. That community is now rocked with grief at his absence and I am unable to be physically present with them. Actually, unable to be physically present with most of my community. It makes me treasure my immediate family all the more, my immediate community, the community I am grateful to be sequestered with. I have also been thinking about community in regards to school, my school and the girls’, as we wonder what community will look like in the fall. We have all decided to start school online for the first nine weeks, so school community will be a virtual community. I am so grateful for the technology that can keep us connected. I guess that is what most of the bible is, if not all of it. A ‘technology’ that keeps us connected. Much of scripture is letters that were written to separated communities. Paul wrote to churches when he could not be physically present. The scriptures were documented and passed on to future generations so that we may all be connected even though we are not physically together. I think about what I write and how that is used to connect me to a broader community and hopefully connect us all to God. Hopefully it is a conversation — that someone else will fill in the blanks of what I share so that we all might find the truths behind the words. God’s truths.
Mark 12:30 comes to mind:
“You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”
That is community.
Thank you Lord for loving us in and through community. Help us to share your love as we lean into the communities you have so lovingly provided for us. Help us honor and love as you do.
I am reading the book Gently Awakened by Sara Joseph about the intersection of faith and art/creativity, about giving it all to God and letting God work through your art. In the chapter titled “The Precision of Timing,” she talks about her dream of having an art studio. When she finally has one and is first setting it up, she is drawn to the story of Joseph in Genesis 41. She realizes that it was thirteen years from the time Joseph first has his God-given dreams to the time those dreams became a reality. She also realizes that it was thirteen years earlier that she first prayed about her art and handed it over to God.
I started thinking about where I was thirteen years ago. Thirteen years ago, I was not a Christian. Thirteen years ago, we had just enrolled Lindsay in preschool at First Grapevine UMC. She had not yet started class. I had not yet started bible study. We had been to one worship service. I had no idea that thirteen years later I would be in Seminary. That thirteen years later I would be having my Ministry Orientation for Elder Ordination. That thirteen years later I would be on the Strategic Team planning the future of our church. That thirteen years later I would be writing about God. That I would be sharing my faith…a faith I didn’t even have at the time.
I could never have dreamt a dream that big. I was craving more and God gave me more, and then some. Thank you, Lord.
Ephesians 3:20b ~ Abundantly far more than all we can ask or imagine
That time when your church invites you, along with other laypersons, to write a Lenten devotional for one day in April. And you procrastinate on picking which day. And you get Easter Sunday. No pressure! You can follow the link to see the post, or read the text below.
At first, I was intimidated by the idea of writing the devotional for Easter Sunday – the big day, the reason for it all. Then I read the assigned scripture from the Gospel of John (John 20:1-18).
Mary Magdalene comes to the tomb, and she finds the stone removed and the tomb empty. Other disciples come to investigate too. When they see but do not understand, they return to their homes. But Mary remains and weeps. I can only imagine the deep sadness and grief and hopelessness she must be feeling in this moment. Yet it is in the midst of this despair that she encounters the Risen Christ. Jesus speaks to her and of all the things he could say to her, he says, “Go to my brothers and sisters and tell them.”
Go and tell! Go and tell others that you have experienced the Risen Christ. Go right now. Don’t wait until you know everything or until you understand everything, go now. Go and tell while you are still breathless from the experience. Go and tell.
So, I will not worry that I may not have the right words or that I do not know everything or that I do not understand everything. I have experienced the Risen Christ and I will ‘Go and Tell.’
My Prayer:
Dear Loving and Faithful God –
Thank You for Your Son, Jesus Christ. Thank You for resurrection and new life in and through Him. Please give us the courage to ‘Go and tell’ every time we experience You in the world.
In Jesus’ powerful name I pray,
Alleluia! and Amen.
John 20:1-18 Common English Bible (CEB)
Early in the morning of the first day of the week, while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb. She ran to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said, “They have taken the Lord from the tomb, and we don’t know where they’ve put him.” Peter and the other disciple left to go to the tomb. They were running together, but the other disciple ran faster than Peter and was the first to arrive at the tomb. Bending down to take a look, he saw the linen cloths lying there, but he didn’t go in. Following him, Simon Peter entered the tomb and saw the linen cloths lying there. He also saw the face cloth that had been on Jesus’ head. It wasn’t with the other clothes but was folded up in its own place. Then the other disciple, the one who arrived at the tomb first, also went inside. He saw and believed. They didn’t yet understand the scripture that Jesus must rise from the dead. Then the disciples returned to the place where they were staying.
Mary stood outside near the tomb, crying. As she cried, she bent down to look into the tomb. She saw two angels dressed in white, seated where the body of Jesus had been, one at the head and one at the foot. The angels asked her, “Woman, why are you crying?”
She replied, “They have taken away my Lord, and I don’t know where they’ve put him.” As soon as she had said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing there, but she didn’t know it was Jesus.
Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you crying? Who are you looking for?”
Thinking he was the gardener, she replied, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have put him and I will get him.”
Jesus said to her, “Mary.”
She turned and said to him in Aramaic, “Rabbouni” (which means Teacher).
Jesus said to her, “Don’t hold on to me, for I haven’t yet gone up to my Father. Go to my brothers and sisters and tell them, ‘I’m going up to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’”
Mary Magdalene left and announced to the disciples, “I’ve seen the Lord.” Then she told them what he said to her.
finding my way 