#kinstler

I looked from one to another of these men with whom I had shared so much, and reminded myself I was not a mere woman intruding on men's prerogatives, but the chosen bearer of momentous truth. I straightened my back and lifted my chin, calling up all the dignity of my high office. "I know that my redeemer lives." I spoke in my best trained priestess's voice. "He has descended into Hell, and taken for himself the dread judgement seat. He has balanced the scales of the Annaki with the infinite weight of his love, and he has redeemed the Dark Goddess of death, and taken her as his bride. He has paid with his blood the ransom of every soul that is, or was or will be. He has abolished the boundaries between Heaven, Earth, and Hell, and made them One Kingdom, eternal." I paused, and waited, but no one spoke. "As for his message, it is this," I said: "he has fulfilled the Law." Hesitantly, Andrew, the brother of Peter, spoke, for Peter would not. "By the Law, I take it you mean the Law of Moses?" he asked. One must be careful how one uses words with the Magdalene, his tone implied, since the tradition she represents is tainted with paganism. I felt I no longer stood in the dappled sunlight of Joseph's dining hall. I seemed to have grown very tall, and looked down as from a great height. I was no longer Mari only, but the Mother of All Things, and I understood what Yeshua had meant with his patient insistence, "I and my Father are one." It was what Sita had taught the children with the parable of the salt. "Thou art the salt, not the water- thou art that One." I was, am that One. I stood once more on the cusp of time, but there was no past behind me, no future before, only this eternal moment, in which nothing that had been could ever be lost, and the long awaited fulfillment of hopes and dreams and sacrifices is realized and forever present. I looked at these faithful men who had loved and followed my husband, and my heart filled with a great tenderness. They will not understand now, I thought, but one day they shall, and so in timeless present, we are all redeemed, we are One. "Love is the Law," I said. "The Law is Love."