Meet Mary

Today we met an amazing woman.

Meet Mary. We had walked over to her combination General Store and Delicatessen in the middle of the quaint little town of Hygiene, Colorado, where we are living out back of the Hygiene UMC for a couple of days. Mary has attended the church a few times and says it is one of the loving-est churches she has ever found.

We were there for lunch and an ice cream cone.  Mary had walked outside to throw out some recycling. We said Hi and she came over to our table. An hour and more passed. What we received was more costly than pearls and more tasty than any dessert.  We found the love of Christ, and Mary Magdalene.

Mary bought the store four years ago when it was just a way station for farmers on tractors and driving  passer's by.  However Mary began to especially promote to the hundreds, of bicyclists who ride through the crossroads every day, some from as far away as Loveland, a 20 minute car ride to the north. She became a destination for riders and bike clubs from all over.  In fact, the ride is now called Mary's Loop between here and Longmont.

Mary provides lots of comfortable outside dining, even, as today, free space for groups to have their own picnics, whether she caters them or not. Today's group served up hot dogs and had way too many, but when Milo came over to offer us some we had to tell him we were already just too full of egg salad and buffalo (yes, buffalo) pot pie.


 PS:  The food was worth the visit, but Mary also offers a used book corner!  Yes, Mona was a happy camper, literally, today!

But Mary's store is barely the surface of Mary's life.  When her three children were all under the age of 10 she and her husband left Denver, bought a 65 foot sailboat and spent a year exploring the east coast of the US and the Caribbean.

I asked Mary how they learned to navigate and handle the boat.  She said her husband took a class in Denver in Astronomy to learn to read direction in the stars and the family learned the rest from past days on small sailboats and OTJ training.  In other words, the way we are learning to navigate and handle our 35 foot coach and it's 15 foot dinghy.

At other times Mary has owned an antique store, and been involved in each of the varied communities she has lived in.  Especially in Hygiene, which along with all of the communities of Colorado's Front Range in the flood plains of the Boulder and St. Vrais Creeks were devastated by last years torrential rains and the ensuing floods (see yesterdays post in our travel blog on Lyons, Co.).

But Mary had to leave Hygiene and her store the day after the floods came.  It was very hard for her to do so, but she was contracted with others to lead them on a tour leaving that day for Southern France and the home of the Cathars. The once vilified Christian religion of Central Asia which moved west through Europe with the 'Vandals' and settled hugely in Provence and northern Spain. Vilified? Crusaded against by the Roman Catholic Church was more accurate. Great walled cities and castles were destroyed by northern French armies in the name of the pope.  But why was Maryof Hygiene leading a tour of this area?  To help others seek out the extra-biblical historical locations of Mary of Magdala, Mary Magdalene, beloved female apostle and friend of Jesus as recorded in all four Gospels, and beyond.

Here, if you wish, read more about her from as non-biased a site as I can imagine.  The Smithsonian Institution:

http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/who-was-mary-magdalene-119565482/

You see, as we spoke to the Mary of Hygiene, Colorado, we learned that she is a devotee of the Mary of Magdala, and as I had personal visitations by the Holy Spirit at nine years old, and later in my twenties and since, so she has experienced the presence of Jesus and visions of Mary Magdalene in her past, and seeks more of their presence for herself and for others.

One can certainly argue that Mary's visions and perceptions of the Disciple Mary may be wrong. Just as they can and sometimes do of my faith and experience in Jesus. After all, Mary of M is not considered by the United Methodist Church as more than a disciple.  But the Roman and Eastern Church have named her a saint.  and Dan Brown, so our Mary says, got much of what he wrote of in the Da Vinci Code from books she and others like her consider truth.

An orthodox biblicist like myself probably should reject anything that cannot be fully supported by Scripture alone.  After all, I do believe the Holy Bible is the ground upon which all reason and faith must stand.  However I am the guy who named our new life journey QUO VADIS, (Where are you going?), from the extra biblical record of Peter meeting Jesus on the Appian Way as he was departing Rome to escape Nero's persecutions.  I liked the book and the movie too, so...

Mary told us she is following God's Word to her now and has her four year old store up for sale.  She does not know where Jesus will lead her, much as we have no deadlines, and no definite direction, till we feel the stirring of God to send us where we should go (which according to Mona will always include libraries and good ice cream).

Her vision seems to include counseling with women especially who have felt the oppression which Jesus fought so hard against in the stories of the Bible.  Sexist, economic, and personal degradation.  She does this now in a limited way through her teaching of what she understands of Mary of Magdala.

I cannot say what God's view of Mary's counseling is, just as no other can say I do not preach God's Word or counsel myself if I believe (know) that I do.  I can say that I am fascinated to have met my first disciple of Jesus and Mary Magdalene. And as the great Jewish teacher Gamaliel told Saul, who would become the Apostle Paul, "Don't be too quick to condemn Christians.  What if they are right?"

So Mona and I learned from Mary today, about Mary. And life.  And Mary learned a little about us. Seems like that's the way life should be.

-Pastor Ken