Sunday, March 4, 2012

Ruth 1

I think the thing I like best about what I wrote the past two days is the interplay between the way the two women see Naomi. We so rarely see ourselves in our best light. And, of course, we so rarely face our own flaws, but I think it's rarer for us to see our own beauty. The light of God that fills us at our best. My idea for today was to write something along the lines of the two women describing Ruth.

NAOMI

It is more bitter for me than for you, for the Lord's hand has turned against me!

RUTH

I could not bear it. I had born the rest, but I could not bear the thought of the God who loved her so turning His hand against her. I could not let it be true. So I clung to her. I had to show her, show her all the light that I still saw buried beneath her grief. I was a small thing, I knew, compared to the husband who shared her life and her bed for decades, a small thing to the sons she raised, a small thing to the homeland and the livelihood. I was a small thing to be the only solid thing left in her life, but I still loved her. She was still loved. Surely, she must see that if I still loved her, so did her God. She simply wailed too loud to hear the whispered reminders He daily spoke into her ear. The ones that had lit her up so beautifully. I was a small thing, I know, to be all that was left. I always even thought she preferred Orpah as a daughter-in-law, but I still loved her. And all I could hope is that I would be enough.

NAOMI

When my husband stood with me before God, he swore to love, honor, and cherish. He lived by his vows. We had a beautiful life together. When my son Mahlon was small, he used to come up to me whenever I sat by the fire and throw his arms around my neck and miss me and say, "You're the best mama in the world!" He seemed to mean it, even when we fought. When my son Kilion considered taking a Moabite wife, he told me that he feared I had ruined him for all women - who would he find to compare with me?

I had thought these vows, these protestations, these overblown compliments, were the sweetest words a woman could ever hear. It was only when I saw her at my feet that I knew that professions of love are never sure until they are spoken when you have nothing left to give. My husband and I made a bargain, a contract. And it was loving, but it was a fair exchange of duties. My little boy adored the woman who cared for him, who gave him all he needed for life. My young man wanted a place to flee to should his marriage become a disaster. But Ruth, what could Ruth possibly want of me now? Except my love.

(RUTH)

Where you go, I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there will I be buried. May the Lord deal with me, be it ever so severely, if even death separates you and me.

(NAOMI)

I sometimes worried for my sons and their Moabite women. I was a fool not to see, not to see how much she could love. How she burned with it, the fire of purpose within her. Ruth was a woman built to love, built to bear any weight, shoulder any cross, and fight any battle to love. She spent her life as if in search of an object worthy of the fierceness of her love, and I was surprised as she could never seem to understand to find that it was me. And through me, my God. I watched Ruth seek, in my son's arms, for an object worth the love she burned to bear, and end up with only ashes.

I knew that whatever came of it, I would not see the fire of that loved crushed even if it meant continuing on - even if it meant tethering myself to this life. Because it was a fearsome and beautiful thing to behold - the way that Ruth loved when at last she truly loved with all of her soul.