Feast Day Reflections
The Word That Was First
Ahava and Blessings,
Today, my heart is full, overflowing with the vibration of yesterday’s sacred gathering, the Feast Day of Mary Magdalene, at St. Margaret’s Chapel in Avalon. It is difficult to express the energy we moved together… but I feel called to write and remember, not just for myself, but for all of us who were there, and for those who held us in spirit.
We chanted.
We listened.
We became one breath, one voice, one prayer.
And in that moment of devotion, as our voices rose in the Aramaic Magnificat, something ancient and eternal awakened in the space.
The Gospel of John opens with the timeless mystery:
“In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.”
In Aramaic:
B’reshith …
In the origin, there was the Voice, the Breath, the Sound.
This is a mystical truth known by prophets, mystics, mothers, and poets, sound is not an afterthought of creation. Sound is the womb of creation itself.
And so when we chant in Aramaic, the holy tongue spoken by Mary Magdalene, Yeshua, Mother Anna, and the early mystics, we are not merely remembering, we are re-membering the fabric of sacred time. We are stitching back together what was fragmented.
At St. Margaret’s Chapel, something profound happened when we chant together. The space becomes a womb-temple, and each voice became a carrier of Shekhinah. We became one living prayer, one sacred vibration.
In the echo of the stones,
in the candlelight reflecting from the ancient walls,
in the tears silently falling…
Mary Magdalene was present.
And so was her lineage.
And so were we.
Mary Magdalene is more than the First Witness.
She is the Embodied Word, the Shekhinah in Voice, the Womb of the Spoken Revelation.
To chant her name, to speak her words, to sing in her language, is to awaken her within us. On her Feast Day, we become her transmission through our sound.
To those who were with us, thank you.
To those who held us from afar, thank you.
To Mary Magdalene, Mother of the Embodied Word, thank you.
May we remember:
Creation begins with the Word.
Redemption begins with the Voice.
Embodiment begins with the Breath.
Let us never stop singing.
Let us never forget the power we hold when we gather in sound.
Shlom Lech Maryam.
For those of you who want to dive deeper into the Frame Drum and Voice, join me in this beautiful course of Sound and Rhythm. CLICK HERE
Ahava,
Ana Otero
