“You have your own brave story. Risking the anger and the ridicule of those around you, cloaked in their shallow respectability, you broke through their righteous ranks, slipping your silken veils past their long stiff robes, gate-crashing the patriarchal party, bearing, tight to your bosom, your rich and precious perfume. . .
They did not know who you were, only what you had done. It was enough to leave them aghast at your intrusion and your daring. But you were driven by something far deeper – a passion that poured right out from your belly and flowed into warm tears that fell upon the feet of Jesus. Your tears were your story, told for the first time to the man who looked upon you with compassion – illuminating your soul, and revealing all the longing breaking from within it.
With eyes that penetrated he knew who you were, and he loved you for yourself. . . The lovely smell of your perfume rose from the feet of Jesus, assailing with floral bouquet the outraged dignity of the dinner guests. Disapproving, brows furrowed, they mumbled about the poor and the wanton, inappropriate waste of expensive oil poured on the body of Jesus.
So you knelt, expectant of compassion, at the feet of the one who knew you and loved you for yourself and for your inner truth. Like the perfume you unstopped, it was for you a moment of release as all the crushed and wrapped up pain within you dissolved, all the insults and blows of the years you had borne, faded now – dispelling all despair forever in a moment of grace and honesty. Now you are free – your story told, your love revealed to all of us.
Our invitation is to look deeper than we do, to intuit and honor what so often lies beneath a surface of denial, anger and diminishment, grace pulsing to break through.”
From: Soul Sisters by Edwina Gateley
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