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The Virgin and Her dearest companion, Green Tara, are in the spring garden deadheading early daffodils. Lady Immortals have a thing about busyness. They exude vitality. When the Feminine Divine gather it’s to do something — hunting albino stags by moonlight or dance marathons in the sacred groves or rearranging stars to update the constellations. Goddesses love to cook up cauldrons of bubbling fish stew and experiment with regional varieties. Lately a fish-head curry is the Virgin’s favorite, the recipe given by Tara, who at this moment is visiting from Her distant sky realm of floating Buddhas.
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Today Tara and the Virgin perform an easy task. The spent blooms don’t have to be clipped but simply snap off at the base of thick, juicy stems. The Ladies bend down, break a stalk, sweep it into a basket, and move on in a graceful, ritualized motion. Garden waste will be given to minor angels for whatever is done with it. Immortals do not concern Themselves with such matters.
Tara, gliding on lotus blossom sandals, sees the Virgin’s devotion to this chore as oddly futile. In Tara’s firmament beauty is static. Flowers, clouds, and gemstones vibrate with constant perfection. But the Virgin adores seasons, is dedicated to cycles of emergence and decay, and the Virgin is Her friend.
“Beloved One, You are needed,” says Tara, compassion humming through her voice. She points to a small flock of Saints yoo-hooing from beyond the flower beds.
Our Virgin Mother is weary of compassion. She groans and turns away. “Oh, not now, please.”
“They mean well,” says Tara. “Their heart chakras are spinning like spiders.”
“Don’t They always mean well?” says the Virgin. “Everyone means so very well in Heaven. It gets on My very last nerve.”
Tara’s lips curve into Her beatific smile. “And yet You never tire of Me.”
“You, My pet chameleon, are a refreshing change.”
Tara flushes so She is allover gold, the dazzling color of Her Joy Body. Wheels turn in the golden palms of her hands and beam out light.
“Heaven’s Holiness,” laments the Virgin, “is tiresome — all dualism all the time. This versus that: light/dark, good/evil, saints/sinners. Lots of thesis and antithesis without much synthesis. Disputes over definitions. Bickering over dogma. Someone must be right. Some other one will be wrong. Feelings get hurt. Then everyone runs to Me for a judgment. Personally, I’d like to do more bliss and less judgment.”
Tara laughs Her full-belly Buddha laugh. “No — You don’t. You just think You do.”
“I know. I know. The fault lies in all that thinking.”
The clamor at the garden’s edge increases. “Mother of Gods! Your attention, please!” cry righteous voices. Tara and the Virgin do not look.
“Busy, busy monkey-mind,” Tara murmurs, Her voice sweet chimes, “from which arises suffering mind.” Her color modulates until She gleams the lustrous white of a hundred harvest moons. She lays one cool palm on the Virgin’s forehead. “Let go, Dearest Jewel of Heaven. Let go.”
The Virgin splutters, “Easy for You to say.” However, Her Holy Countenance softens under the Buddha’s hand. “What am I to do with My damnable Lord Jesus in His New Age? He means well, as You tell Me. But the quarrels that have started! The rows! Heaven’s quiet under Lord Judas’ management. Intense and dark, perhaps at moments a tad frightening, but blessedly free of Jesu’s noisy drama. Tara, what am I to do?”
“Beloved One, thus have I heard: Life’s a bitch and then you die.”
The Virgin snorts. “Ha! That little gem is not from one of Your Precious Buddha stories. That reeks of Our Judas.”
“Indeed.” Tara’s face is merry, back to default green. “The First Noble Truth*, as paraphrased by Your witty son.”
“An unkind wit. Sexist. Rude. Oh, but I do miss Him. Thorny, ungrateful fellow. He makes Me laugh against My will.” The Virgin gently turns Her face, removes it from Tara’s caress. She pulls a black hand-mirror out of Her sleeve. “There’s Our darling Jude! Do you see Him?”
The Goddesses huddle over the mirror. Its dark surface opens as night clouds do when they part and reveal through lacy gaps a secret sky bright with moon. So the Ladies see glimpses — not of sky but of Lord Judas inside the earth — His shoulder, His hair, His forehead, and then His face. The Ladies smile and wave. The distant Lord scowls at his Mother, but gives a wave of His Holy Hand to Tara. He likes Her best of His Mother’s friends.
Miffed, the Virgin flips the mirror, tucks it back into Her sleeve. “Jude resists My cycling Ages. I tell Him: Mortals die. It fills them with despair. I tell Him: Our task is to model death and regeneration.”
“Why not let Your mortals recycle their souls?” Tara says with childlike zeal, as if such a scheme has never before been suggested. “It makes mortals less gloomy. Everyone appreciates having another go at it.”
“Jude wants that very thing. I tell Him: Think of the infrastructure We’d have to build, the bureaucracy We’d need. Souls don’t reincarnate themselves. Somebody’s got to pluck them out of the grave, sort them, store them. Make assessments and submit appraisals. There’s matching each soul to a new womb. It’s an industry We’re talking about.”
Tara nods in sympathy. “True. Our Dharma-kind are vastly more ancient than Your Bookish sort. Our reclamation system grows organically. Through Eons. Across beginningless time. But I might find some useful templates in the archives. If You think it helpful.”
The Virgin lapses into a polite silence. It’s true that Tara is older, but these Primal myths She claims, stories about being a space Princess in an alternate universe — well, obviously religious propaganda. You don’t say as much to a friend. You let friends have Their little fantasies.
After a discreet pause, the Virgin plows ahead with Her own story. “So I tell Jude, ‘Tough titty. You got born to the wrong Mother. Go live with Aunt Tara.’ Which, of course, He then tells Me He’ll be happy to do because He hates Me and didn’t ask to be born.” The Virgin is laughing now, remembering Jude’s earnest, furious little boy face. Somewhere in that secret annex of the past, Her small second son still loops through His fruitless battles. “Jude is My rascal. Jesu is My suck-up.”
Tara resumes the deadheading ritual. “Wisdom,” She says in Her serene way, “is the Mother of Enlightenment.”
The Virgin is used to these non-sequiturs. “My unenlightened Jude admires You so. Up in the sky, You and all Your buddy Buddhas on cloud thrones, beaming down compassion like … like … like —”
“Like sunshine,” Tara suggests, and at Her words, sunshine issues from the pores of Her Precious Skin. Immortals don’t have pores as such so it’s a metaphor. In any case, She is now Yellow Tara, a most auspicious emanation.
“Like sunshine,” echoes the Virgin, thoughtful. “Yes, sunshine is raw energy. So You generate energy? Oh! Those turning chakras of Yours. They must be a sort of turbine to electrify the soul, as the waterwheel powers the mill-stone. My Vixen is managing a grist mill these days.”
“Thus have I heard: energy is neither created nor destroyed.” Tara crackles as Her electric self, a dusky, powdery, indigo blue that overlays black. Out of Her dark lips spill the Eight Great Laughters, bubbling and irrepressible.
Amid sublime hilarity, Tara observes, “Your Saints grow disruptive.”
She observes correctly. Here comes St. Ursula, grown impatient, charging across the garden in all her ursine glory, broad and big-boned, fearsome and shaggy, a glorious child-martyr who never lets anyone forget it.