Mirari: The Way of the Marys

What would it be like to move on from the past to the present and beyond? What would it be like to create as the God Heart (feminine) as well as the God Head (masculine)? What new wonders would come to be if we were to create with the thought of Love rather than the love of thought? These are the questions asked in Mirari: The Way of the Marys. Mirari begins in this way:

"You seek a description of a new way, a new time, as if it is a future that is already written. It is a future waiting to be birthed. An imminent birth that you are feeling with all your mothering instincts and concern for the new babe, the jewel of humanity and Heaven."

In Mirari, Mari Perron, who received A Course of Love twenty years ago, enters an intimate exchange with Mary of Nazareth. This dialogue gives life to "the way of Mary," briefly introduced in her earlier work. In this new book, Perron departs from its classic style and surprises us with her own vulnerability.

Here, the two women follow A Course of Love's call for "creation of the new" with the labor of the birth and the "Mother laws of care and nurture-given to all." Together, they demonstrate the radical energy that arises from within each one's sacred heart, and how, from our union in relationship, we know that the time is here to give birth to a new age.

Mary of Nazareth was not unfamiliar with this call or the grief that accompanied it. Her life, as well as the life of Jesus, announced an unwelcome breach in the old order. So too is it with A Course of Love and the new Way of the Marys. Mari Perron shares her personal experience of receiving A Course of Love and feeling unseen or as a mere vessel for its "learned wisdom." Her call to devotion and to the "unlearning" that is key to a new way of knowing, was heard by few. Mary and Mari assure us that it is from a feminine way of knowing-deeper than thought, and impossible to "learn"-that The New will arise.

As both women share their deepest grief, they gather readers close, nudging each of us to recognize and share our grief. This courageous act is prerequisite to healing our own and the collective feminine wound. Healing opens the way to unifying the feminine and masculine within, and the birth of an age that will end all such divisions. They invite us to rise up and join in the blossoming of the New Advent. We claim our time of Mirari: the wonder of coming to know the unknown that is our inheritance. In this radical new feminine way, we welcome receptive revelation that does not take us away from life or the personal milieu in which it occurs. Instead, it joins them fully.

Mari Perron knows that it is time for the feminine voice of God and of women to be recognized as a power that has always been-but been denied. Mari's aspiration to be a writer was overcome by her call to be a spiritual pioneer. Increasingly, she is a champion of the ways, often discounted, in which women come to know. Her work is alive with soul and depth and longing and a vision that will mid-wife the birth of The New.

We begin with a word both new and ancient. We begin with a return to the way of the Word made flesh. This will be the time of wonder-or Mirari.

Here, in our time of bringing the miracle to mystery . . . we offer Mirari as the way of the divine feminine . . .

This is not the masculine energy of going out to conquer the world. This is the birth of the new world.

Mari Perron, who grew up in a working-class family in St. Paul, Minnesota, knew from early childhood that she wanted to be a writer. But at seventeen she fell in love with her guitar playing boyfriend, got pregnant and married. By twenty-three she was the single parent of three. The vulnerabilities and struggles of that time continue to inform her writing and her compassion.

As a returning adult student, she majored in English at the University of Minnesota and won the notable Jean Keller-Bouvier Award for literary accomplishment. She also became an employ at the college, remarried, and from that stability began to write again. Her first novel, a mystery for which she gained an agent, was completed in this time. Perron's first published books arose out of the surprising strength of spiritual consolation and witness that occurred with her co-workers and friends, Mary Love and Julieanne Carver. The three share their stories in The Grace Trilogy. Mari was first introduced to receiving and writing in loving relationship with human and divine Holy Ones in this way.

A practicing Catholic, she felt deeply about her faith and had no particular interest in other approaches to spirituality before this time. However, when she purchased A Course in Miracles after reading an article about it the Religion column of the St. Paul Pioneer Press newspaper, she fell in love with Jesus in a new way, and eventually was asked to receive a "new" course in miracles. This "new course" became A Course of Love, the first volume of which was published in 2001 by New World Library. In 2014 the three-volume work was republished as A Course of Love Combined Volume (Take Heart Publications) and now reaches a world-wide audience. In between, Perron had her first mystical experience, written of in Creation of the New, and also published The Given Self.

Mirari: The Way of the Marys, is a continuation of A Course of Love, and like A Course of Love to be eventually comprised of three volumes. Perron hopes, in this new work, to begin the unification of the feminine and masculine, and also to elevate regard for "those who stay"-to acknowledge the grace of women (mainly) and those men who care for children, grandchildren, and ailing parents-to a height often reserved only for those (men particularly) who take themselves away from common life experience to create their spiritual philosophy and writings.