Friday, March 2, 2012

Ruth 1

Call Me Mara

First of all, I know I missed yesterday. I was feeling extremely poorly. At least Wednesday was a long entry.

I did read the first chapter of Ruth, yesterday, and I realized that my current leader for final title of at least the Old Testament portion of this play "Naomi and Her Daughters" is a little embarrassing if you know the story. How when Naomi returned home, broken in just about every way she possible could have been, she told everyone not to call her Naomi or "my sweet" but to call her Mara or "because the Almighty has made my life very bitter."

So perhaps the first half of the story is to bring Mara back to Naomi - the story of how shame gets repurposed into devotion and faith, a la Hannah and her lack of children, Delilah and her betrayals, Esther coming home. Then the New Testament is more of Joanna's - how to speak and realize you are free of all the things that oppressed you. That, like Elizabeth, you are strong enough to bear your ills. That you are still loved.

Perhaps Naomi and Ruth's stories, collectively, encompass all of the others. Naomi from Elizabeth could learn that she has the strength to go on, Ruth from Joanna about taking control of her own life, both of them from Delilah's realization about faith under adversity and allowing the concerns of this world to crowd us out.

Also, about the bittersweet - which is just too good a trope to resist.

I have a feeling I'll be on this chapter for awhile, so:

NAOMI

Call me Mara. For it means bitter. Once my life was sweet, so they called me Naomi. She is some strange, foreign creature to me now, that girl who left with her husband and her sons. Who left this land in its famine for the Moabites. Who shared her faith there. Who built her love there. Who saw two families being grown within her own. My sweet, God called her. Everyone called her. Sweet and innocent, too innocent to face starvation and deprivation. Saved for the sweet and pleasant things of life.

Then all at once, everything turned sour. Three deaths, so fast I sometimes forgot the order in which they fell. And they were right, that I was not strong enough for deprivation. Orpah and Ruth were the only thing that kept me from falling into darkness. The bitter starved me out worse than the famine would have done - the brine of grief choking every morsel of food.

I had many good reasons for returning, but I was fleeing. Fleeing the land of bitterness for the sweetness of my youth. For Naomi, to find her. That sweet, charming child of a woman, whom God called "my sweet," and protected. Whom all called "my sweet."

I was halfway there before I realized what I could not ask of my daughters-in-law. Who still called me their sweet. I was taking their sweet. I was tying them to my bitterness. And that Ruth would not go, that she would not let go...I took a new name, so that she and they and all would call me by my proper name. I am not that darling, precious, dainty child who fled famine and then death. I am not Naomi. Call me Mara.

[With a bit of cleaning up, that could make a very nice opening monologue for the Ruth/Naomi story.]