Bless Your Heart: A Prayer with Mary Magdalene 

By Rev. Debra McKnight

Oh My God

Even Jesus can’t save us from the Patriarchy. 

Peter, bless your heart

why so dense, God is love and you are of sacred worth, 

you don’t need a sword or a prize that proclaims you the best,

you don’t even need the right answer, Jesus loves you anyway.

Oh Andrew, bless your heart 

growth is painful and wonderful 

essential and strange. 

Bless your heart, 

every Council that canceled 

questions and mystery, 

practice and doubt 

in favor of empire, absolutes and marble palaces of patriarchy. 

Bless your heart, Gregory,

it’s not so great when

you made Mary toooo sexy 

for people to listen.

Bless your heart,

clerics and clergymen, 

editors and scholars

for cutting the women down in size. 

playing with the volume, changing the names, 

gaming text and making new rules. 

Bless your sexist heart folxs, 

it literally doesn’t have to be this way.

Bless you who are tired and weary of humanities oldest sin, 

gender isn’t made to box folxs in and keep others out,

it isn’t made to value some and steal a neighbor’s worth

it isn’t made to tell you who you are.

Bless you who listen to the deep cuts,  

who read the whispers that shout between the lines. 

Bless you who search history, 

who find the stories of courage and the words that are medicine. 

Bless the search and the story,  

Bless the protectors who hid her words for us to find,

Bless the market and the found manuscripts,

Bless the translators and the publishers 

who never gave up despite one flood and two World Wars.

Bless Loving God, 

the Voice of Mary Magdalene 

that echos beyond every obstacles, 

that all may be whole. 

Grant us, loving God, her courage and heart.

May it be so,

Amen