Table Practices: Ritual of Anointing
Would we have gotten to Anointing without Mary Magdalene…
This morning I was awakened by a deep ache to talk with her.
Thoughts and memories of her poured in. One chased the other.
I traced conversations, memories and longings. The kind that burn.
I followed her in my thoughts to places where she shopped. Where she would have lunch. The salon she frequented to trim her hair and connect with friends.
I offered to get her a massage or a pedicure more than once. She never accepted and never experienced either.
Her favorite fragrance was Pleasures… it was my pleasure to gift her with this over the years.
The sting of death. The lingering loss. The waves of grief. A distant cry from a far away land are reminders of how love presses in. Presses on.
I miss my sister…
I reached for the bottle of anointing oil next to my bed. In the dark I poured some into my hands. As I gently moved my hands together I felt the warmth from the friction. The scent of life lifted, arrived and awakened my being.
I stayed in this moment and soon felt presence… her presence, love’s presence… a holy presence inviting me to hold these thoughts, memories and emotions with tenderness and compassion for myself. To witness her. To witness me. To witness again, why the Magdalene poured her oil toward her beloved…
Her oil was an expression and act of a deeper longing.
A deeper commitment.
A deeper expansion.
A portal, a threshold beyond what could be named.
When the oil of anointing touches your fingers, drips through your hands, your entire body begins to align and attune to what is sacred. To what is holy.
During Table last night we broke open the ‘alabaster jar’ conversation and leaned into the ritual of anointing, some of the Biblical references for anointing, and it’s powerful presence in our own lives.
A fragrance formed our words.
Petals of insight passed between us.
An intimacy to remind us of what prompted Mary to pour her oil.
While there are only a few references in the King James Version of scripture, more modern texts like The Passion Translation highlight the word anointing a few hundred times. While oils would have been used to prepare or preserve things in Mary’s time we leaned with this question during Table…
We held the question, “Would we have gotten to anointing without Mary Magdalene…?” What if she too had been unnamed, left out of the (S)tory, would we have arrived to this act of pouring oil as a ritual of anointing…?
As I poured oil this morning to anoint myself, to anoint my sister prompting me from another realm, to anoint loss, grief, and distance, my answer is yes.
Yes… we would have gotten here.
Here meaning, the act and ritual of anointing as modeled by the Magdalene is as natural and essential to our spiritual essence as it was for her. To break open, to pour oil freely and extravagantly on ourselves, on our beloveds, on grief, loss, on trauma, on unanswered questions, on ‘good trouble’ is an act of holy presence that cannot be mistaken for anything else.
If you practice this ritual then you most likely resonate with my words today. If this is not yet a practice for you consider how it might bless you, warm your spirit, or connect you with someone. Maybe purchase rose oil or geranium oil or nard. Begin by pouring some into your own hands… and then offer it as a gift to yourself first and then to others.
If this practice is a ritual for you I would love to hear about your experience in the comment section below.
Love Expands the Table ~ Shelly
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Ritual doesn’t survive because it’s written down. It survives because someone loved enough to make it visible.
I love this sacred practice. Also wrote quite a bit about it last year. It was Yeshua who taught me, or reminded me, of how we all used to anoint one another long ago. Even before the public ministry began, we’d gather in small circles around the fire in the olive groves and pass around a bowl of oil, blessing and anointing each other. It was a way of naming the holy. As soon as I remembered this, I ordered a bottle of spikenard from Jerusalem. Yeshua said the earth still remembers… and now, anointing is part of my practice again. I use it in ceremonies and rituals, and the scent alone opens my heart to the Presence.
Thank you for writing this beautiful post!
Oh, also, what you wrote about Magdalene witnessing—this echoes the code of witness I wrote about in the series on the Magdalene Codes…