The Law Written on the Heart: The Amygdala Remembered

Do you see the Cross as wood and nails?

Or do you see what I see — the Magdalene’s heart and her heartfelt letters that turn bitter wine sweet?

The prophet Jeremiah speaks a word of hope that echoes through the ages:

“But this is the covenant which I will make with the house of Israel after those days,” declares the LORD, “I will put My law within them, and on their heart I will write it.” —Jeremiah 31:33

For generations, this promise has been heard as the end of doubt and the end of dependence on teachers, priests, prophets, or even on the Bible. As if after Jesus came into the world there would be no need for instruction or reading the Bible, because one’s very own heart would reveal the Law.

But what does this mean? Does this mean people’s hearts — or does this mean Jesus the Woman is the Heart, the Love of Jesus, that people need to have and to hold deep in their own heart?

To answer this, the Hebrew scriptures give us a veiled key. The word Megillah — the “scroll” — is feminine in Hebrew. Five books are called Megillot: Ruth, Esther, Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, and Lamentations. These feminine scrolls reveal the veiled wisdom of God through a woman’s voice, a woman’s loss, a woman’s longings, and a woman’s courage.

In the Megillah of Ruth, surely it is the Magdalene’s broken heart that beats in Naomi’s. Naomi returns widowed from Moab and laments like a hen (Luke 13:34):

“Do not call me Naomi (sweet and beautiful). Call me Mara (bitter), for the Almighty (El Shaddai) has dealt very bitterly with me.” — Ruth 1:20

The prophets saw in such laments the need for a new covenant, one strong enough to compel the nations to abandon idolatry and return to the living God. The name El Shaddai, as Marc-Alain Ouaknin explains is the Woman’s breast. The breast does not act alone. The Heart provides for the breast, and the Heart lodged within the breast is regulated by the amygdala.

Our amygdala is a small part of the brain, but it has a megillah of a job. The amygdala governs memory and emotion by connecting them with the larger reasoning part of the brain.

This Mara is no passing shadow. She returns to Israel in the Garden of the Tombs at the Resurrection. She is Mary. She is the Magdalene, the Amygdala — the living memory of God’s covenant, where bitterness turns to beautiful blessing, where the restored memory of Israel heals the world.

The very organ in the brain that governs memory and emotion, the amygdala, bears the name Mara. It is here the law is written.

And yet Mary is not alone. She is bound by a covenant to her sister — Martha who also returns to life as promised with the coming of Jesus the Forerunner as his “Almighty housewife. For it is El Shaddai — the Lady of the house of Anna, of Grace, of John — who tends the oikumene, the household of God.

The tension between Martha and Mary resolves when Martha’s Lord reminds Martha that she is indeed Martha, the Lady of the House and that her Sister Mary has chosen the part given to her.

Thus it is because of Mary’s choosing that the womb of God’s covenant tramples down death by death, bestowing life to those in the tombs.

This is no empty claim. For this bestowed is provided for by the Almighty who works with the Gardener, the Husbandman of Creation — the Father, the Black Rock sequestered in the rich dark soil of the Earth. (John 15:1)

Pay Attention: This is the Covenanted Heart of the Gospel: trampling down death by death, bestowing life to those in the tombs. For the Father and his Heart came to earth as human beings reconciled to each other and to Jesus, the New Adam and the New Eve.

Some called this Father Simon, others Joseph — the earthly Father of Jesus, who was engaged to the Mother of Jesus, called the Virgin, the Pure, the Clean, by some and by others the Gate called Beautiful.

It was at the Gate called Beautiful, where Simon called Peter stood with John and first summoned the crippled man saying:

“Look at us.” —Acts 3:4

Jesus is the Gate, the Heart that guides reborn humanity into the Church, where the reborn learn to walk the talk, and where the Almighty housewife and her husband her Lord, bless them with hospitality.

Here at the Gate called Beautiful, the fourfold harmony of the Gospel is revealed with the Name of Jesus of the Branch — the Amygdala, the Hebrew Netzer, interpreted as of Nazareth. (Isaiah 11.1; Jeremiah 1:11)

Together, Mary the Heart, Martha the Breast, Peter the Rock, and the Johannine Rabbi the heralding voice, embody the covenant household of God.

The Heart remembers, the Breast sustains, the Rock protects, and the Voice of Testimony heralds the way. (John 3:28-29: Hebrews 6:19-20)

And yet, how easily people forget and are led astray. Jesus the man called John the Forerunner said of the Magdalene:

“Wherever the gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her.” —Mark 14:9

When her role as the Heart is conquered and possessed by demons, the Church loses its way and people backslide — mistaking worldly thinking and power for service, forgetting the importance of forgiveness — silencing the very heart and voice that testifies to the memory of the covenant.

Pay Attention: Repent. Heed the Rooster’s call and know that the Greek Rooster is Alektōr.

Now get on the Mark as in Mark 15:21 and lift up your Cross, the Branch called the Amygdala, the heartbeat and memory of the Gospel—the Light of the World. (John 8:12)

Penitent Peter shows the way to redemption. He gives the Lame Man the name that opens the Gate called Beautiful. And that Gate is the very Heart Jeremiah heralds and lifts up as the prophetic promise of God:

“I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their heart.”— Jeremiah 31:33.

This is the mystery: the prophets saw the True Cross as more than wood and nails — a living letter of God written on the Magdalene’s heart. This Heart is the Magdalene’s heart — clean, pure, and steadfast, clinging always to her Lord, the earthly Father of Jesus.