A few years ago, I knew I wanted to write something meaningful about Good Friday.  I have always taken issue with the name of the day. “What’s so good about a day when something so truly violent and terrible occurred? Surely this day was an example of the worst of what humanity can be?” And whereas I am well aware of what traditional teachings tell us – that it’s a “good” day because Jesus sacrificed himself for us – that didn’t work for me. But what could I say about Good Friday that I have not already said?  I wrote over 400 pages in The Expected One to make my point about Good Friday.  Was there anything left for me to say? 

I awoke on that Friday morning filled with trepidation, a sense of fear deep in the pit of my stomach.  It took a few minutes to realize the fear was not mine, it was not today’s fear, it was not of this time or this place or this person.  It was the fear and trepidation of almost 2000 years ago, of another time when it all went terribly wrong.  When the players were ill prepared for the plot twist that was thrown to them.  And in meditating more upon that concept, I knew what I wanted to write.

Since The Expected One was first released – in 2006, could it really be that long ago? – I have received countless messages in all formats about how that book and its re-telling of the Passion story has impacted my readers.  I often receive those messages at this time of year, and it is absolutely the greatest of Easter gifts.  Usually they are of the theme that The Expected One and its story of Jesus (“Easa”) and Magdalene brought the reader back to a version of Christianity she/he could embrace – usually after a long absence due to disillusionment with traditional religious dogma. I cherish those message, and all the others, above any other motivation I have to write.  They are my reason for being.

But back to the trepidation.  Within the thousands of letters, emails, messages that come from almost thirteen years in 50 languages and 100 countries, I have also received thousands from those who were moved by this version of the story because it came alive for them.  Many have told me that they feel like they were there in that place and time, others feel that they are connecting to the archetypes or have a deep soul connection to the events.  

The story of the last week of Jesus’ life is etched so indelibly upon our human psyche that many of us experience it in a deeply visceral way.  For some, it is intensely personal, a “I know I was there somehow” feeling; for others it is a powerful expression of their faith, the day that changed the world.

None of this is revelatory.  It’s not news that Good Friday is a powerful, emotional, energetically challenging day for many of us.  There are two billion people in the world on that day who are focused on the unjust and terrible death of one of humanity’s greatest teachers, at the very least.  That amount of energy alone would cause any empath to feel emotional, tired, challenged or worse on that day every year.  But I think it goes far deeper than that for so many of us.  I believe the events of Good Friday have scarred us for eternity.  The Crucifixion inflicted a deep wound within our humanity, carrying a daunting message that says “The good guys don’t always win.”  We aren’t entitled to our happy ending and are meant to suffer. Tragedy and sacrifice is our lot, and we must accept it.  Traditional religion insists that we welcome it and embrace it.

I believe that this deep spiritual wounding needs to be addressed.  Maybe, if we all recognize it and work on it together, it can even be healed.  I believe that it is meant to be healed, and perhaps that is controversial in traditional Christian circles. 

I call it “Crucifixion Consciousness.”

Many of us live in the shadow of fear and worry, secretly waiting for the other shoe to drop. I have seen this so many times with people on a spiritual path. No matter how optimistic, positive, spiritual, Present-in-the-Now we try to be, there is that voice in the back of our minds, whether we hear it literally or feel it intuitively, that says, “Even Jesus couldn’t win this one.  Just when we are about to create Heaven on Earth, it all goes very, very wrong.”  The events of Good Friday have programmed us to expect that we cannot succeed on our highest spiritual paths, and have programmed us to accept struggle, pain and even martyrdom as part of the package.

We have to address the basic belief systems of what the Crucifixion means, which is always controversial.  If you read my books and follow my work, you already know that I do not subscribe to a fundamental belief that Jesus “died for our sins” which is why it is “Good Friday.”  I do not believe in a patriarchal God that requires a blood sacrifice of his most beautiful creation to wash away our evil thoughts and deeds. My God is a God of love, a Creator and Creatrice who love their children as all good parents do. So I reject that it was a Good Friday. For me, it was one of the greatest tragedies in human history – and I think that is true for many, based on the responses to my books. 

Bob Marley addressed the question simply and beautifully, “How long will they kill our prophets while we stand aside and look?  Some say it’s just a part of it, we’ve got to fulfill the book.” Well, I don’t buy it and I don’t think Bob did either.  I don’t believe that we have to fulfill that book or any other.  I believe we have to break the cycle of fear.  We have to realize that the trepidation that fills us when we get close to making a real breakthrough in our lives comes from ancient woundings that are in our DNA, our ancestry, our souls or even the collective.  They are our challenges to overcome.  We must insist that there will be no more martyrs, that we will not let the darkness of fear encroach upon where the light shines brightest. We can and must allow ourselves to feel bliss without the shadow of fear.

The events of Easter Week hold not only archetypal characters, but also situational models that all of us can relate to in one way or another: The fear and anger of the apostles when Jesus is taken; Claudia Procula’s helplessness when her pleading falls on deaf, patriarchal ears; a mother’s torment over the son she cannot protect; a child’s confusion in the world of men and violence; a beloved partner’s utter devastation in a loss she could not prevent and did not see coming.  These are stories of shame, loss, terror, rage, unutterable heartbreak.  These are stories of human suffering, and they belong to all of us.  They are etched into our eternal consciousness. 

These wounds deepen if we continue to re-live them and allow them to bleed.  But they can become scars instead of wounds.  A scar is a mark that is never forgotten, that allows us to tell a story, but that bleeds no longer and no long hurts us. We can bear our scars proudly as marks of our overcoming. 

In April of 2018, I had the rare opportunity and privilege to spend the night in the most sacred site of Christendom, the Basilica of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem.  The great Basilica covers the sites of both the Crucifixion and the Resurrection. During opening hours, it is thronged with people, tens of thousands a day push through to see these holy places.  But every night, the Franciscan guardians keep a special list of fifteen people who they will allow to spend the night in the enormous basilica.  It’s called Nightwatch, and at 9 pm the chosen fifteen are locked in the Basilica, where they will stay until 5 am, when the doors are unlocked again at dawn.  I was blessed to be chosen for this list, along with two friends.  I am sure they would both say that they were impacted indelibly by the experience, as I was.

Nightwatch is a vigil.  We were instructed kindly but firmly that we were not allowed to sleep.  We had free roam of the basilica, access to all of the holiest places, as long as we conducted ourselves properly. No singing. Limited speaking. Stay out of the way of the cleaning and blessing rituals that happen through the night. Easy rules to abide in exchange for such a rare honor. 

The sites which are usually crowded with people, where pilgrims spend hours in line for a few brief seconds of seeing and touching these sites, were completely ours for the night.  There was something unreal about it, and at times I felt as if I were in a dream.  My experiences in the basilica were beyond all expectations, and are perhaps worthy of a full chapter, if not a complete book. I have so much to say about that night, and I spent several hours of it journaling.  But for the purposes of understanding Crucifixion Consciousness, I decided to focus my time there at the site of the Crucifixion, at the foot of the Cross, in the same place where Mary Magdalene had held her own vigil all those year ago. 

As pilgrims enter the Basilica, there is a turn to the right which leads to a staircase.  Walking up those stairs leads to the top of what was once the Hill of Golgotha, the site of the Crucifixion.  The site is enshrined, glass covering the stone. The largest stone is split; it is told that the earthquake mentioned in the Gospel of Matthew (27:51) created the fissure. A cut-out has been carefully enshrined in marble which allows pilgrims to reach in and touch the sacred stone.  There is a type of alcove space (see photo below) where pilgrims can kneel and touch the rock. I decided to settle in this place, and there I was able to sit and pray and meditate totally alone and undisturbed. I had it to myself for over an hour. I’m not sure how it happened, apparently everyone else in the basilica was finding other places that spoke to their souls. But no one came near me, or even up the stairs, while I sat in the place of the Cross. 

It was the greatest spiritual gift of my life.

My time at the Crucifixion site changed me in ways that I am still processing years later. Because Mary Magdalene has been my muse and my guide for almost thirty years, it was to her that I entreated in prayer and meditation. One of the most impactful moments for me came when I was given this message:

“Leave your fears at the foot of the cross.  The time of martyrs is over. Release your connection to fear and suffering and replace it with love and faith. Focus on Resurrection, and leave Crucifixion in the past. Only then will you heal.”

It has been said by those wiser than I that “Fear and faith cannot exist in the same place at the same time.”  Although I have tried to make this a mantra, fear has always been a strong component in my life. Many of us who have suffered tragic losses and unexpected trauma live in a place of waiting for it to happen again.  We can’t feel happy when things are going well because we “just know” that it will all come crashing down on us because it always does. Nothing gold can stay.  Even when we work through this with real purpose, it lives as a shadow in our consciousness, waiting to fall across us just as we are stepping into the light.

And Mary Magdalene, as ever, is the most perfected example of how to move through our fears and traumas.  She moved away from the horrors of the Crucifixion, embraced the power of Resurrection as its primary witness, and went forward into the world to share her message of love, compassion and faith.  She never stopped moving forward, and her message was always filled with wisdom and hope, and never fear or suffering.

My gift in the Basilica that night was allowing myself to feel this concept of replacing fear with faith through to the core of my being, a gift for which I thank the Magdalene.  I embraced it, I pledged it, and I have worked ever harder since that day to make it key in my daily practice.  The difference in my life over the last years has been extraordinary.  I continue to be highly imperfect and my battles with fear still exist, but I have made real strides in them and my life is better for it.  I am writing again at a highly productive level, which had all but left me after my husband Filip’s terrible death in 2012. 

In my book about prayer, The Source of Miracles, I tell a story about the “White Sack of Sorrows.”  It is a meditation in turning over your sorrows and worries to Jesus.  I receive a lot of letters from people who have had great success with this. Leaving your fears at the foot of the Cross is perhaps the next step in this meditational practice of working with Jesus as a teacher and master, and it does not even require anyone to be a practicing Christian. Here, the Cross is a symbol of an old paradigm of suffering-as-salvation.  In Christian terms, we have been focusing on Crucifixion when we should be focusing on Resurrection.  In non-Christian terms, we have been attached to fear and worry when we should be putting our energy into hope and forward movement.  The terrors of our past do not control us unless we allow them that power.  We can – we must – leave the fear behind, keep the learning and the lessons, and move forward with faith and love. 

In the Gnostic Gospels, and in The Book of Love, we are told that we must “Resurrect while in this body.”  I believe that is the message I received in the Basilica of the Holy Sepulcher: That Resurrection of our spirit, our joy, our bliss is available through the potent combination of love and faith – right here and right now, if we are brave enough to choose it.