Re-reimagining Mary Magdalene
In 2018, I completed my first Mary Magdalene piece based on a theory I had stumbled across that Mary of Magdala was a nickname, like Peter the Rock. She was Mary the Tower, not Mary from Magdala. However, academics are not agreed on this. Not that it mattered because I took the idea and ran with it. (This is how stories happen.) Here is a video going through each of the women in her tower. (2:44 one) Each of the women in the first Mary Magdalene tower are: Prisca (an early apostle with Peter), Hildegarde of Bingen (medieval abbess, painter, writer, doctor, guide to leaders), Elizabeth I (guided England into the middle way between Catholicism and Protestantism), Anne Hutchinson (dared to teach about Christian faith, was booted out of the settlement and survived), Florence Li Tim Oi (first woman to be ordained a priest in 1944). And then 2020 happened. And I took a look at this painting that sits in my altar space and thought, in light of the injustices against people of color that ...