{"id":1313,"date":"2010-03-31T05:00:00","date_gmt":"2010-03-31T05:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/yimcatholic\/2010\/03\/from-%e2%80%9cmagdalen%e2%80%9d-a-few-words-for-wednesday\/"},"modified":"2017-01-24T19:05:00","modified_gmt":"2017-01-25T00:05:00","slug":"from-magdalen-a-few-words-for-wednesday","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/yimcatholic\/2010\/03\/from-magdalen-a-few-words-for-wednesday.html","title":{"rendered":"From \u201cMagdalen\u201d (A Few Words for Wednesday)"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

<\/a>I\u2019ve always had a soft spot in my heart for Mary Magdalene. Our two daughters are named Martha and Marian, and I privately hoped that we would have a third daughter, named Madeleine. It didn\u2019t happen. I love this image by Alexander Ivanov (1806\u20131858). And then I came across this poem, \u201cMagdalen.\u201d
<\/a>
I found it (a fragment really) in a book Frank sent me last week: Flowers of Heaven: One Thousand Years of Christian Verse <\/i>(Ignatius 2005). The mysterious thing is, I can\u2019t find the rest of the poem on line. But then the author is a mystery too: Dunstan Thompson (1918\u20131975), a native of New England, who moved to Old England and became a hero of the homosexual underground\u2014until he converted to Catholicism and renounced his old life. He even instructed his literary executor never to republish the poems of his early years.<\/p>\n

Thompson\u2019s story is told online by the Gay & Lesbian Review. <\/i>I am not a regular reader; it\u2019s just that this was the best account of Thompson\u2019s life I could find<\/a>, in fact the only account. If you look at the story through the other end of the telescope than that used by the writer, you might just see a male version of Mary Magdalene.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s a selection from \u201cMagdalen.\u201d If anyone finds the whole thing on line, please let me know:<\/p>\n

High in the noonday sky,
\u00a0\u00a0 His arms thrown open wide,
Love is about to die,
\u00a0\u00a0 With a thief on either side.<\/p>\n

One He has welcomed home,
\u00a0\u00a0 The other prefers to hate,
Like the Pharisees, who roam
\u00a0\u00a0 In packs and wait and wait.<\/p>\n

The soldiers there below,
\u00a0\u00a0 Bored and ashamed and blind,
Rattle the dice and throw
\u00a0\u00a0 Their lives away like rind.<\/p>\n

The mocking scholars toss
\u00a0\u00a0 Their beautiful white heads
Far off; but at the Cross
\u00a0\u00a0 Who reads?<\/p>\n

His mother, calm in pain,
\u00a0\u00a0 Adoring, and John,
The youngest friend, remain:
\u00a0\u00a0 Fair weather friendships gone.<\/p>\n

And one other. She,
\u00a0\u00a0 Whose sins have had their share
In blossoming that tree,
\u00a0\u00a0 Offers her sorrow there.<\/p>\n

Those tears are now for Him,
\u00a0\u00a0 Not for herself; she weeps
Outside her life; eyes swim
\u00a0\u00a0 Up from their own deeps.<\/p>\n

His gift of sacrifice
\u00a0\u00a0 Opens her rusted heart:
With Him she pays the price
\u00a0\u00a0 Of love, that suffering art.<\/p>\n

And so triumphant grief
\u00a0\u00a0 Makes her the fourth to stay:
Two innocents, a thief,
\u00a0\u00a0 And a whore, together pray.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve always had a soft spot in my heart for Mary Magdalene. Our two daughters are named Martha and Marian, and I privately hoped that we would have a third daughter, named Madeleine. It didn\u2019t happen. I love this image by Alexander Ivanov (1806\u20131858). And then I came across this poem, \u201cMagdalen.\u201dI found it (a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":143,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1313","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nFrom \u201cMagdalen\u201d (A Few Words for Wednesday)<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"I've always had a soft spot in my heart for Mary Magdalene. 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