Friday, March 23, 2012

So I'm wishing I hadn't finished Mary Magdalene yesterday. I think that I hit what I want from her story, but I'm running dry on ideas for today's entry. I knew I should have tried to get this done before The Hunger Games movie tonight, but I ended up opting for nap because of my early morning nightmare-wake-up-call.

Part of the problem is that I'm not sure how many more women of the Bible will fit into Catherine of Siena's story.

But now suddenly I have a thought on Miriam, so I'll worry about a place for it later.

MIRIAM

Those days were so crazy, and it was catching. So much blood. It would drive anyone crazy. Babies. The one thing certain to inflame any heart. They came for our babies. I wasn't much more than a baby myself, and my mother was careful. We kept our doors shut when others cried for help, our windows were drawn against the sight of red painting the streets, staining the doorframes of households.

Nothing stopped the smell. And the cries. Women wailing, and our baby answered by crying. Joining them or protesting them, but the baby my mother was going mad trying to hide would cry in the night, cry in the day, and soon the wails because to quiet. Everyone was going mad, but no longer raving mad. A settled, quiet, slow-killing madness. No more noise. No more hysterics to hide Moses's cries.

I thought my mother had gone mad. Making a basket when there was a baby to be hidden at home. I thought my mother had gone mad, lining it with pitch. I thought my mother had finally gone mad, bringing our baby to the river. I ran after her, but she had already placed him in the basket and set him into the current of the river by the time I reached her. I was screaming, she told me later. She had to put her hand in my mouth to quiet me, and I bit right through her hand, screaming.

I fought out after her into the water, but she held me. I pushed her over in the mud, and I sprang up, light on my feet. I followed along the bank, trying to see if I could find the baby. Moses must be so scared.

It was a long watch, a long follow, and the basket never came anywhere near the shore where I could wade out to get it. As I walked pieces of what my mother had spoken furiously in my ear as I screamed came back to me. Trust in God? Where was God, she said later I had screamed. Where was God when Pharoah came for our babies?

But then, the Pharoah's daughter was wading in the river, and she had a handmaiden fetch the basket, and I watched her and I realized: she has no idea the world has gone mad. Her world has not been full of blood and horror. If she knows of the edict, it will only mean that there are wetnurses readily available.

I approached her, and it was the hardest thing I have ever done. I don't think I could have done it if I weren't mad, mad as the world itself. But she said yes, and a few days later we had our baby back in the house openly, with the windows thrown open. And the world...it only seemed madder still, to be honest.

Trust in God, my mother had said. And she had. And He had saved our baby. Our Moses. Saved him forever.

That's how it always felt to me, the truly brave times that I spoke. Like that same unsettled madness. Like it was to be in that time - where you stopped quite caring as much that you might be beaten or whipped or even be killed. Death was random and everywhere. It all began to feel like a blur, less than real. Somehow, in such a moment, God reached down and showed me what to do. I wonder if He is always shouting instructions at us, and usually we are too distracted to hear.

That's how it always felt to me, when I spoke for God and His people. Like the rest of the world becoming something of a blur, not quite so real - as it had been that day, because we could not bear it otherwise. There was a quiet, like a numb disbelief and then a prayer answered anyway. And suddenly I knew what I had to do, saw it so clearly, and the greater miracle: I had the courage to do it.

The world went away, and it all became still, and grace appeared in the least likely form imaginable. That's how it always felt, when God intervened.