How I Found the Most Elusive Power

The Acts of Paul and Thecla is scriptural evidence of the precedence of women’s spiritual authority in the earliest form of Christianity. And it contains Paul’s commission to Thecla, after she baptizes herself, which places Thecla in the same apostolic line as him. This, I know from my experience of writing about Mary’s gospel, will most likely piss a lot of people off. But then, we know that the truth always does.

I’m less concerned or motivated by the idea of Pope Francis one day taking Thecla’s scripture, or Mary’s gospel, seriously. I just care that the template of transformation in Thecla’s story of reclaiming a power that exists within us gets to as many as possible.

I just care that the girl who baptized herself finally gets her place in the sun.

As a feminist theologian, I want to bring Thecla’s story back from erasure. And to make clear that The Acts of Paul and Thecla was ordered to be destroyed in the 4th century not because it lacked authenticity, but precisely because it legitimized women’s spiritual authority.

Personally, Thecla’s story helped me recover a discrete power I’d lost touch with as a little girl. A power that contains the elusive capacity to choose for myself rather than to do what I think will make others feel happy, or not even necessarily happy, just more comfortable. I used to exert considerable effort and spend considerable amounts of time in the business of placating other people’s egos, as if I would be compensated somehow for it. As if it somehow made me safer. As if silencing and distancing myself from what I actually wanted, from what was actually true for me, this daily sacrifice accrued a form of sacred worth, like celestial Bitcoin, that then earned me this place among the coveted “good.”

As if good meant doing what we’re told, as if good meant submissive; as if good was something we need to perform and prove or earn. Rather than good being defined as the actual essence of what we are as human beings, which is one of the many empowering clarifications on the nature of humanity that the gospel of Mary gave back to me.

From a very young age, through the form of trauma that unfortunately statistics tell us one in four endure, as a survivor, and as the child of an alcoholic, I learned on a life-or-death scale to stop listening to that still quiet voice inside me. That voice that knows what I want, in each next moment, and with each next person I meet. There’s a voice that just knows who I am and what I need. But what’s so impactful about trauma is that it creates a distance from the body, from that voice within. So, I became adept at listening instead to what will please and placate. Thinking this will provide safety, putting others before that voice. And so, little by little through the years, I siphoned the power that voice contains over to others, until eventually, I forgot where the source of that power originated.

Thecla’s voice brought me back to my own. When I picked up her scripture again as the world stood still in 2020, I began to heal in a way I had never been able to before. I began to use that elusive power to make new choices in my life, to finally break old patterns, and to ultimately reclaim a fundamental sense of self-worth that has nothing to do with what I can produce or provide for anyone else. It’s an innate worth that lets me shut out the expectations of those around me and live with radical integrity. And this is why I think, “the women all cried out in a loud voice, as if from one mouth,” when Thecla baptized herself at the end of her story. Because, Thecla demonstrated, embodied a truth they already knew – the truth that when the powerless unite, anything becomes possible.

When we stop relying on systems of power outside of us, and return instead to the source of power within us in that calm still voice of love, we regain the capacity that should always remain ours, the capacity to choose what comes next for us.

And I think this is what invites the miraculous into our lives. Listening to what we desire most and having the courage, the heart, to act on it. The miracle of the roses, the cardamon, and nard, the miracle of the women in the crowd collectively remembering they have always had the power to save themselves and each other, only came after witnessing Thecla become the answer to her own prayer.

With only more love,
​M.