A brief detour into the mind of a crying woman.
how crazy is too crazy when it comes to god?
Mars in Leo: Transits are funny things in astrology. They’re some of the most popular concepts to discuss, because they’re some of the simplest. “What are the stars doing?” is an easier question to ask than “Which bound and aspectual ray of the Aries Ingress chart is being symbolically activated by circumambulations at the moment?” The second question is probably more significant in understanding what’s happening, but if I’m asked the first question I can say “Mars is mad and so is Venus and so is Jupiter, so it’s a mess”. Much easier.
Those present for astrology’s start would’ve been interested in transits, no doubt, because they can be witnessed. Assuming low light pollution, if you go outside you can see still Saturn’s dull presence distracting from the bright light of Venus, just as they could. It makes sense to interpret this as a dimming of Venus with Saturn’s traits of responsibility, consequences, and depression. But, because life is wildly complicated and astrologers were philosophers and scientists who wanted to add nuance where they could, they eventually developed layers of tools and caveats to help dig more deeply into the stories being told in the sky.
Looking only at transits is a bit like caring about what the weather is on a given day without considering where it’s taking place. A ten degree day in Austin, Texas has a significantly different impact on the people who live there than a ten degree day in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Is it cold in both places? Sure. But the people in Minneapolis are better equipped for it than the Texans. Depending on a given person’s chart, on the chart of the year for a place, and on long cycles of planets interacting with each other, a given transit might catch you completely unprepared like a monsoon or it might feel like a light rain when you’ve got a great raincoat and quality umbrella.
All this to say, on Monday Mars is moving out of his fall in Cancer and into Leo where he doesn’t have any special dignity but also isn’t particularly unhappy. As someone with Mars in Leo natally, I’m pleased about this, really. I know his intense, dry heat can be a challenge, but I feel pretty equipped to ride it out, certainly better than I do to have him steaming up my Cancer Fourth House.
Where are Cancer and Leo in your chart? Where’s your natal Mars? How prepared do you think you are for this shift? Mars is almost never a welcome visiter, but he’s always visiting somewhere, so you might as well see what you can do with it!
Next week I am planning to share some thoughts on evangelism and conversion, two ideas that didn’t feature very heavily in my own spiritual formation as a kid and have only really existed in the more secular spaces of politics and personal development in my adult life. I didn’t pay attention to Evangelicals or ever feel the pressure to put in time on a mission of conversion growing up, but I find it to be a very… curious (?) pastime.
More on that later, but if you have any recommendations for memoirs or essays or blogs or even thoughts from your own brain about this topic, shoot me an email or leave a comment. I’d love to hear about it.
A brief detour into the mind of a crying woman.
Margery Kempe was the author of the first autobiography written English, but she could not read or write and she had absolutely no interest in learning to do so. The primary motivation that drove her dictate the story of her life to a young monk was that she believed Christians of the future would benefit from her experiences and, possibly, they’d like it as evidence of her saintliness, her miracles, and her connection with God. It would make it easier for us to canonize her, essentially.
She hasn’t been canonized yet, ironically largely because the Church doesn’t see her own recounting of her miracles and life to be reliable evidence. They want an independent historian to prove it and that hasn’t happened. Additionally, she’s still a somewhat controversial figure, an eccentric woman who’s best known for crying loudly and uncontrollably for years on end as she traveled the world, getting bullied by her companions who were embarrassed and annoyed by her, and being thrown in jail repeatedly by men who thought her hysteria resulted from communion with Satan rather than from “the feelings” she received directly from God.
It’s a pretty fitting fate for Margery, really. In the book, she says over and over in different words some version of the following: “So this creature [how she typically refers to herself] thought it was a joyful thing to be rebuked for God’s love; and it was a great solace and comfort to her when she was chided and taunted for the love of Jesus, for rebuking sin, for speaking of virtue, for talking about scripture which she had learned through sermons and by talking with clerics.” She believes that when her neighbors, husband, fellow travelers, or priests yell and threaten her, beg her to stop shaking and wailing, denounce her claims of speaking with God, they are giving her the gift of a taste of the torture that Jesus felt in his crucifixion. If she is one day made a saint, she could be the patron saint of getting what you asked for and not really liking it all that much.
I don’t mean to rag on her though, she’s fascinating and not of her time and even though the book is a trial to get through at points (you can only read about Margery being thrown in jail, narrowly saved by God, kicked out of town, and then thrown into jail the next town over so many times before it feels like you’re actually suffering like Jesus in his crucifixion) it’s a worthwhile and overall exciting read. At points, it doesn’t compute that it comes from an illiterate woman of the upper middle class in 1400s England. It feels like a radical contemplative writer of today.
In the introduction by B.A. Windeatt in the Penguin Classics edition, he explains that Margery was born with some local clout, the daughter of a sometimes mayor and businessman. She marries John Kempe when she’s around twenty and begins having children. After at least fourteen of them, she begins to experience tension within her spiritual life that sends her tumbling down her rocky path as a holy woman.
In a series of years that are hard to keep in order, she tries to start a few businesses (among them a brewery and a mill house) that appear to be cursed to fail each time. She devotes herself to God, but then almost throws it all away to have a night of passionate sex with a handsome man who ultimately humiliates her and says he never really wanted her anyway. Eventually, she realizes that these have been tests, lessons that are meant to lead her back to God wholly and completely. She commits, wearing only course white clothing, giving away much of her belongings, forgoing meat, and telling her husband she will no longer have sex with him. He doesn’t like this, but, eventually with the help of a persuasive God who is also a savvy negotiator, Margery gets her husband on board. This sets the stage for her to begin a series of pilgrimages to the Holy Land, to continental Europe, and possibly to other places obscured by the admittedly unclear story in the book.
She’s a singular kind of spiritual devotee, but she’s also not, as the other characters of her life find out time and time again. Where many find her to be absurd and loud and simply too much, she is helped by a base of supporters, lay members of the church as well as priests, brothers and sisters, and the occasional bishop. Even as the events unfold, they draw connections between her and St. Bridget of Sweden who was also known to cry uncontrollably from time to time. As much as she does her best to put herself in the worst possible position (do I need to mention again the countless times she was thrown in prison for… being really annoying?), she does emerge free and safe to continue her unique form of worship. At a certain point, the idea that she might be anointed by God does seem to make sense.
The Value of Contemplation
A frequent theme in the book is Margery’s belief in the importance of contemplative prayer. This is similar but not identical to the form of contemplative prayer most often practiced now, something that looks a lot more like meditation. While this is important to Margery, to leave silent space for God to speak within, she also performs a kind of contemplative prayer that involves her imagination. She pretends to be present for Jesus’s death and resurrection, for his birth, and for the moment the angel announces to Mary that she will be pregnant. In these moments, she imagines what she would have done had she been there. She weeps for Mary and Jesus, wails at their losses and suffering, wishes she could save them. Any mention of the passion triggers her so deeply that she screams and convulses in emotional distress.
While she does occasionally engage in more traditional forms of charity and “good works,” it’s not the focus of her life. When you consider what Jesus told her, this makes sense.
“Fasting, daughter, is good for young beginners, and discreet penance, especially what their confessor gives them or enjoins them to do. And to say many prayers is good for those who can do no better, yet it is not perfect. But it is a good way towards perfection. For I tell you, daughter, those who are great fasters and great doers of penance want it to be considered the best life; and those who give very generous alms would like that considered the best life. And I have told you, daughter, that thinking, weeping, and high contemplation is the best life on earth. You shall have more merit in heaven for one year of thinking in your mind than for a hundred years of praying with your mouth; and yet you will not believe me, for you will say many prayers whether I wish it or not. And yet, daughter, I will not be displeased with you whether you think, say or speak, for I am always pleased with you.” - The Book of Margery Kempe, Chapter 36, emphasis my own
This reminds me of the idea that the holiest person in church is the one sitting quietly in the last pew. Ironically, her inability to be anything but loud and dramatic at church was part of what made the world hate Margery, but here we see that as much as Jesus doesn’t mind her speaking out and praying and “performing,” it’s not what is most significant in her practice. She is special because she cares, because she attends to the ideas of what her God asks of her.
Choosing to Listen
There are several obvious interpretations of her story. It’s possible that Margery has a kind of psychosis, or a personality disorder, or something that would receive a clear diagnosis in 2025. It’s possible she was making it all up and performing a crafted persona that allowed her to abandon the fourteen children she’d had to bear, the husband she’d lost the stomach for, and travel the world. It’s possible she was simply acting on intuition or deep beliefs that would have held no weight coming from a woman in 1400 had she not cloaked them in the shroud of Jesus Christ. And, maybe, who knows, she was just listening well enough to hear a divine voice. Maybe she was relating the message of the God.
I’m inclined to believe it’s some mixture of the above. It’s clear she was doing things that, combined with a little creativity, an active imagination, and an atypical mind, could lead her to react to her lot in life with the very real belief she was speaking with God. Whether that voice originated entirely outside herself is less interesting to me. I’m more interested in her singular passion to live as she believed she should.
Did I mention she was often thrown in jail? One of these times she was confronted by the Mayor of Leicester who accused her of being a heretic and said if she didn’t shut up he’d put her in prison. She responded, “I am as ready, sir, to go to prison for God’s love, as you are ready to go to church.” He sent her to prison.
There’s something charming, inspiring even, about this single minded dedication. We can’t transfer her behavior or the spirit of her passion to 2025 directly, her circumstances were so different. But I think it’s valuable for anyone, spiritual or not, Christian or not, to consider how often we are contemplating what we care about the most. I don’t mean acting, lashing out, worrying. I mean imagining, considering, and making space for our values to speak to us.
Margery Kempe wept at the prospect that Jesus’s sacrifice might have been made in vain. She feared that her family, her country, her world would fall onto the wrong side of judgment day, so she kept a direct line open to God, waiting and listening for instructions. Whatever he asked her to do in support of the utopia she dreamed of, she did. She was constantly waiting for instructions.
Who is on the other end of your direct line? If you aspire to a just world, an equitable world, a healthy world, a free world, an anarchistic, utopian world, are you giving yourself time and space to hear the message? Are you familiar with that voice (call it God, instinct, your conscience, Reason)? Are you familiar enough with that voice to know when you should act on what it says?
I don’t know if Margery Kempe is worth admiring, but she’s definitely worth considering. I’ll have more to say about her as the year goes on. I’m just now finishing the book and beginning to digest her bizarre, spectacular, loud life.
Have you read The Book of Margery Kempe? What did you think about it? Are there any other “eccentric mystics” that excite or confuse you? Let me know, I’d love to hear about it!
Some things to read:
I enjoyed this advice blog from Haley Nahman, a fresher take on the “what’s my purpose, why do I hate my job??” question that kind of felt like the theme of my twenties. Weirdly, I was already kind of landing on lots of these ideas in the past year and generally feeling that anxiety much less. Saturn Return is a powerful thing!
Public universities in Florida are leading the charge to *checks notes* deport their own students! I can’t imagine that it’s an isolated dynamic only being explored in Florida. If nothing else, this will be a pilot program that the administration will send to other Southern states until schools nationwide have the appetite for it. I imagine it’ll be sooner than we expect.
This is an extremely dated piece by Jhumpa Lahiri that I recently re-shared with a friend. When I first came across it, I think I was in a place with language learning as well as learning more generally where I really needed to hear someone brilliant and creative acknowledge how long things can take. Pursuit is as good as achievement, as they say.
Always a lot of credit goes to the people who have been my teachers, both directly and through their freely shared knowledge, and so many books.