The Story of Mary Maclane by Herself

Tim and I were very generously offered tickets to see The Story of Mary Maclane by Herself last weekend. (Warning - if you're planning to go see it, you might not want to read below.)

I've been dwelling on it for a few days. Here's a brief description:

More than one hundred years ago, The Story of Mary MacLane set America aflame. A shocking confessional from a 19-year old girl who refused to succumb to the corset-bound prudery of her age, Mary’s scandalous memoir broke all the rules – and sold over 100,000 copies.

In some ways, it's a character study: self-expression from a passionate, desperate, lonely, intense, self-absorbed, honest, raw and ground-breaking woman. She's been described as 100 years before her time, and the parallels between her personality and what is now common in our society were distinctly highlighted. She was incredibly scandalous in her time, but today her sexual exploits and self-indulgence aren't particularly shocking.

I found myself resonating with some aspects of her personality - at least myself before I started following Jesus. I think now the same longings and desires are there, they're just met differently (and far more happily than hers). Here's a few thoughts - in a series of posts, to keep them short-ish:

1) I was sad to hear her repeatedly dismiss Christians, and especially Christian women.* She felt they were uptight, boring, mundane things and completely different to her passionate, honest and self-aware genius.

I wish the Christian women in her day had expressed their faith differently - although I acknowledge that it was a different culture and I don't want to judge my sisters! I think Christians, and Christian women, often have this reputation - prudish, boring, etc. I'm fortunate to know lots of funny, passionate, joyful, insightful, deep, real Christian women - but I think there's a danger of conforming and hiding honest, real experiences of life under a facade of what is 'proper' and 'right'.  I don't want to pretend to have it all together when the whole point of my faith is that I don't and I need help.

I love it when Christians are expressively passionate, without being loopy. When there's a depth of honesty and rawness that is obviously genuine and reflects their actual experience. I think we need more of this, and we need to communicate that following Jesus doesn't involve losing our personalities and individuality.

I'm also aware that sometimes the reason I'm not completely open and honest about things is to protect others (myself too, but I'm not focussing on that now!). There are things I just need to shut up about because they're not my secrets to tell, or it wouldn't be loving/loyal to speak. I find that hard because my preference is to share. Mary Maclane admits quite freely that she doesn't think of anyone but herself, so she isn't constrained at all by the desire to not slander others.


* I'll speak about the things the actress said as though Mary Maclane said them - it's based on her writing, and for the sake of these thoughts I'll assume it's a faithful representation!