We lifted our faces up for a mist spa this morning after our two mile run. My friend, with blond hair and joyful face, could easily be compared to the beautiful yellow leaves still clinging to the dark limbs. She has shown since I've known her. A spirit of love and joy make her radiant. Her music, piano and voice, extend her vision and soul to others; it extends her source, Christ, to dimmer places. She is blessed while blessing.
And so, nonfiction knocks against the fiction. This morning, I've just finished the book, "The Red Tent". In fragments, I recognize good things from this fiction about women, women who bless, women whose stories have found voice, women who try to discover purpose, or companions.
I feel this after reading the book:
* all the women stories in the Bible that have been forgotten, unread, unscribed are amazing in imagination, perhaps in reality. Why don't we know more? As Joseph said in this book, "The name of Dinah is forgotten in the house of Jacob." Yes, the rule of the patriarch. Yet, the water of the woman cannot be ebbed, and feelings continue without stark storylines. The same markings of a woman's life: girlhood, menstruation, sex, the leaving of a mother, childbearing and rearing, obligatory duties, old age ~~ continue on with similar stories and courage. Dinah is not forgotten amongst the women of her Canaanite tribe ... a story is passed on; a child is named out of reverence.
** I want to know more about the religions of the women outside of the Judeaic upbringing passed down from Isaac to Jacob. The women brought their own into the marriages. Some of them are old myths accounted for in 'The DaVinci Code' or in a Joseph Campbell rendering. What did the earliest religions look like? I'm still intrigued in all of this and need to do more reading. I love my religion, yet I'm curious as to other attempts at understanding. It feels important to me.
I don't have time right now to continue with these thoughts, but, please read the book if you have a chance. It's excellent.
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