John 12:3 · World English Bible
Therefore Mary took a pound of ointment of pure nard, very precious, and anointed Jesus’s feet and wiped his feet with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the ointment.
When a mind recognizes love before it, it holds nothing back. The costly ointment is everything the self has valued and hoarded, now poured out at once because in the presence of the holy, keeping and measuring become impossible.
From the Christian Psychology reading below.
The same verse, read by one tradition.
CHRISTIAN PSYCHOLOGY
When a mind recognizes love before it, it holds nothing back. The costly ointment is everything the self has valued and hoarded, now poured out at once because in the presence of the holy, keeping and measuring become impossible. To anoint the feet and dry them with her own hair is to lay the whole of oneself, even one's pride, at the service of what is finally seen as worthy.
And the giving does not stay contained. The fragrance filling the house is what happens within the mind when love is honored without reserve, a sweetness that spreads through every thought and cannot be kept to one corner. What the mind pours out in devotion returns to it as an atmosphere of peace it did not have to manufacture.
Ointment of spikenard: all the mind has treasured and held back, poured out completely once love is recognized as worth everything Feet: the humblest point of meeting, where the devoted mind kneels and lays its whole self down Hair: the self's own pride and covering, given freely in service rather than guarded The house: the inner dwelling of the mind, wholly filled with the sweetness that follows a wholehearted giving
Christian Psychology lens
What am I keeping in reserve that was meant to be spent?
Rumi writes of the lover who spends everything and counts it gain, since holding back is the only real poverty. Love is not measured out, it is poured.
In the devotional path, what is offered matters less than whether anything is held back. A flower given wholly is worth more than a treasury given carefully.
The teaching says to meet the moment with your whole self, nothing reserved for later. Half-presence is its own kind of absence.
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Christian Psychology