The Poetry of Friendship: Thinking The Mary Magdalene Celebration 2024

Mary Magdalene: Voice by Tanya Torres, Acrylic on Canvas, 10” x 10”, 2024.

The elements of the Mary Magdalene Celebration Ceremony are: Welcome, Opening Dance, Poetry Offerings, Singing the Songs and Lighting the Candles, and Community Dance. This is the structure that holds the creative act of celebrating Mary Magdalene, and what she means for those gathered that day, in that moment, in that space. It is an act of creativity, and it's details can change as our lives change.

This has been one of the most challenging years of my life. Not in a bad way, but in an intense way. I sold my house, reduced all my belongings to the minimum (not necessarily by choice!) and went to live in a temporary place where, not having the time or the space to expand, I have been gathering within.

The Magdalene has guided me in this journey to spend a lot of time with my eyes closed, looking within. Also, to go on long walks wherever any small idea takes me. Lacking space and missing the tools of my art practice, my expansion has moved inward, creating from the space inside my being and shaping the new life I want to have once this stage ends this month. I am settling in a new place with a new creative space full of light and color in a couple of weeks.

All the tightness and newness and smallness that have sustained me in the transition to a new home, and to realizing what has changed in me, will necessarily shape this year's celebration. So many hours dedicated to serving through my "day job" have left me a little bit empty of my creative self and at the same time with surprise and shock at how I am capable of learning and growing. It's been exhausting, sometimes satisfying, and often alarming. I miss my real life more than I can express while at the same time enjoying the journey within, the change, the reshaping of my being.

With these words I try to offer the reasons why this year the Mary Magdalene Celebration will be so small and so intimate that it will probably will not look anything like the past.

I imagine a circle of chairs in the black box theater where it will take place, and part of that circle is the altar with this year's image of Mary Magdalene and candles. Opposite the altar table is an opening, one or two less chairs that provide a passageway into the circle. This is where Corazon Tierra will enter the space and welcome the beauty, peace, love and joy, to be created by those present. A chair is saved for her to sit after her act.

As the dance culminates, a poet is touched and given the space for words. And poetry moves around the circle from person to person, those moved to share a poem, a thought, a set of words to offer the Magdalene.

As the last speaker ends, and silence makes way, a beautiful voice is heard. The singer begins. This year Raquel Z. Rivera cannot make it. May the Magdalene send us a new or old voice who delights and honors. I'm thinking of Sandra Garcia Rivera. Does she also think of us right now?

A drum or drums accompany the voice. O a guitar. Or any beautiful instrumental sound that complements and leads us in this journey. How beautiful would it be to have a harp in the space...

A small silence, a breath...

The sounds of the seventh song begin as the last candle glows bright. It envelops everyone and the dancers stand to show us the promise of community. Our girls dance. For the last two years, the best gift I have received and cultivated are two dance groups in the high school where I work. A group of Ecuadorian dance and a group that forms at the beginning of the summer led by the Matthew Westerby Dance Company. The young dancers learn their movements and compose a choreography to perform in early August. Last year's group were adopted by the Magdalene and led by Corazón in this last dance. And I hope that this year they will join us too.

This culmination of beauty invites us all to join in community. I recently heard an intriguing idea: that what we most need at this time, and what we no longer know how to cultivate and grow, is Friendship.

The Mary Magdalene Celebration, throughout the years, has been precisely that: a celebration and cultivation of love through friendship. Without the presence and talent of my most creative and beloved friends, it would not exist.

With one week from concept to revelation, I need to rely more than ever on these friendships. And as we emerge, whether beaten or rebuilt, into this new world we no longer recognize, we will gather and strengthen each other in the presence of the Magdalene that grows in our souls.

Join us on July 21 at 3pm in the Black Box Theater at El Barrio's Art Space, 219 E 99th Street, New York City.