Thursday, March 29, 2012

Okay, before I do anything else, I just have to express my annoyance. Since I've run out of people I KNOW I want to include in this project, I did a Google search for "Women of the Bible." One woman on the list was listed as "menstruating woman." I recognized the story, at last, as the illness my religion teachers had always been cagey about, saying she had been weakened for the past ten years. We often don't get very clear diagnoses of Biblical illness, so I let it go. Apparently the illness was menstruating constantly, making her not only ill but ritually unclean for ten years.

Personally, I feel this would be an EXCELLENT thing to cover in middle school. You can normalize health periods, discuss the taboos that used to be and still are associated with menstruation, and immediately endear the poor woman of the story to every girl who's begun receiving regular visits from Aunt Flo. I'm just sayin'. I really feel we should be able to talk about menstruation as just a thing that happens more. It happens way too often to still be a taboo, is all.

Also: I've always felt it was really weird how she felt ashamed to touch him. I've seen it portrayed as her diving for his robe because she can't get His attention in Biblical animated stories which...was not endearing behavior from all-knowing Jesus, let me tell you. Her furtiveness makes worlds more sense this way, of course.

ANYway, perhaps I should just put it in the monologue, you say?

MENSTRUATING WOMAN

(I look forward to men reading the cast list of this play now)

At first doctors thought it was no problem. At first they came with great annoyance. I was relieved, but I should have been concerned, when some because interested and asked to see and examine me, asked me to try their methods. I missed what a bad sign it was - that doctors hoped to make a name from healing me. When they stopped coming, I did not miss the sign.

It had been so long since I had touched even members of my family. You cannot imagine what that was like - to live at home, sequestered and shut up from the world, and even among my own family too unclean to touch. Impure and unclean. When the doctors stopped coming, it felt like the walls were sealed shut. The world had no more use for me. The world would permit no more sight of me.

When I heard of Jesus, I had planned to send family to bring Him to me, but He came when I was not prepared, and I decided, at last, to take matters into my own hands. It had been so long since my family reached out as if to touch me. It used to be all hands outstretched but not quite meeting. Now they did not even thing to embrace me when I cried. So I would go myself. I tried to do what I could to keep from jostling others in the crowd. I scarcely wanted to provoke their anger but I felt propelled by my rage. Why could I not go to Him, even to be healed, myself? Why could I not go about my own business? If I was unclean, why could I not be permitted to clean myself? Why was I condemned to sit and wait and hope for someone else to save me?

I reached out and I caught his robe. I stopped, and I breathed. I knew it had been done. But then Jesus stopped, and He asked, "Who touched me?" I went cold. All those around Him were asking what He could possibly mean, thinking someone had knocked Him in the crowd, but I understood. Oh, how I understood, I who had been unclean so long. A holy prophet, and I had defiled Him in a public street. The selfishness came to me in a moment, followed quickly by horror. I was all but shaking when I told Him it had been me.

He looked at me, and He took my hand. It shocked me more than anything else in my life - and considering the number of miracle cures I had tried, that is saying something. "Daughter, your faith has made you well. Go in peace."

I had thought He stopped me because I had made Him unclean, but now I looked into His eyes and I knew that He had stopped to assure me that He had made me clean. That I had never been too unclean to be healed, as it had seemed for so long. His power had healed me, but what He said was, "Your faith has made you well."

Believing that I could be saved, that I was not too unclean to be worthy of healing, had led me to Him. Had made me well.