Had Eve Come First and Jonah Been a Woman. Nancy Werking Poling

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СКАЧАТЬ has been God Most High, the one who stirs the heavens and earth, who destroys and rescues. Like others, my husband and I made sacrifices to her out of fear. Yet questions kept coming to me: If she was to be feared, why did her creation fill me with so much pleasure? The peaceful stream I took clear water from. The soft fox kit I held.

      It is as if it happened in another lifetime, that day long ago when she first came to me. I had just started to explore a shallow cave when I heard a voice: “We are alike, you know.” Instinctively I knew it was the voice of God Most High. “Who but an adventuresome God would have created contradiction?” she asked. “Henna and thistle, for example. The poisonous berry and sweet date. The booming shout of a man and the gentle song of a mother with her infant.”

      “I have often considered the rose and the thorn,” I said. “The playful cub that becomes a fierce lion. Why did you create animals so that they must eat each other to survive? Why did you create a world with the serene beauty of a meadow, yet also the storm and earthquake?” I had scores of questions.

      After we’d engaged in a lengthy discussion, God Most High told me, “You do not belong among people who have answers but no questions. I have a better place for you, a place where you can flourish, where your intelligence will serve you well.”

      My intelligence? No one else had ever said I was intelligent.

      “In that place I will make of your offspring a great nation, so that you will be a blessing to all.”

      A new land, a place where I could flourish, she promised. A place where I would not be considered a nuisance, a woman with too many questions. A new role: mother, grandmother, ancestor.

      As exciting as her invitation sounded, as much as I wanted to follow the path she had prepared for me, I could not easily separate myself from my people. Voices within said I should stay with them, try to be the woman my parents and husband wanted me to be: committed to kin, contented with the life I had. To embark on a journey would be leaving familiar customs and language. Memories, too, many of them pleasant.

      Leaving all to follow the God I knew mainly through tradition. What if after forsaking all security I ended up in a faraway land and did not flourish, did not become a blessing to all? But if I stayed my spirit would surely die. I decided to go.

      “Why do you want to go away,” my husband asked, “when everything you need is right here?”

      “It will be dangerous,” my mother and aunts said.

      Cousins tried to convince me that beyond my familiar homeland there was nothing better than what I already had. I heard whispers, barely within earshot, predicting that as soon as hardship came I’d be back. Only my oldest sister remained quiet.

      At night everyone’s warnings invaded my dreams. I was lost; strangers lifted their hands against me. Yet when morning dawned, though I had no more assurance than I’d had the night before, I would again trust God Most High’s promise to remain with me. To bless me.

      There were of course arguments with my husband. If the husband said stay, the wife should stay, he lectured. It was a woman’s duty to obey. I insisted that a woman must follow the call of God Most High. Finally, reluctantly, my husband agreed to accompany me. My favorite niece too, my middle sister’s oldest daughter, who had started to dream about her own future.

      We had no trouble deciding what to take, what to leave behind, for our possessions were few. Nearly everything we planned to carry was essential for survival: foodstuffs, utensils, medicinal herbs, several goats and sheep.

      The evening before we were to leave, my oldest sister drew me aside and handed me what I recognized as her favorite bracelet. “Take this with you,” she said, tears in her eyes, “so that a part of me ventures out too.”

      It had not occurred to me that she might also want to make the journey. Her foot had been crushed by a ewe when she’d been but a baby, and as the oldest daughter she was expected to care for our parents. I had assumed she was content to stay.

      As I put the bracelet on my arm, I recognized that my journey would be for her as well.

      Ah, I remember the day of departure as if it were yesterday. Of course I cried—from fear or relief or sorrow, I do not know—as our small caravan set out in the faint light of early morning. I led the way, on foot, my head held high, my gaze fixed on the distant horizon.

      Since God Most High had promised to bless me, I assumed our travels would be without hardship and danger. And indeed the journey was easy at first. Each new vista delighted me and inspired me to keep moving forward.

      But I discovered that while I sometimes journeyed in the protective shadow of God Most High, at other times she remained beyond my reach. Each time, upon her reappearance I built an altar, partly to honor and thank her for returning, partly to serve as a future meeting place for the two of us.

      Many nights I would throw a blanket over my shoulders and step out of the tent. The nights were cold and clear, with stars so brilliant I felt as if I could reach up and pluck some from the sky. Only my husband’s snores and the faint sounds of restless animals broke the stark mantel of silence. Seated upon a large rock or on the ground, I spoke with God Most High. Rather she spoke to me, reminding me over and over that I was intelligent and capable and lovely, for I still did not always believe her affirming words.

      Gradually, as I began to accept my worthiness, our encounters changed. God Most High asked what I had been thinking, laughed at my jokes, praised my ingenuity. I too listened as she spoke of loneliness, for many had forsaken my dear friend and turned to other gods. In those moments of honesty I discovered what a true companion I had gained. Not only one who accompanied me on the arduous journey, inspiring me to go forward and not be afraid, but one who understood me better than I understood myself.

      There were times too, when for hours the two of us argued, each defending a position, neither willing to acquiesce. Whether evil should be punished, for example. They were pleasurable too, the disagreements, for my friend valued a woman who spoke her mind, and I enjoyed the mental challenges.

      “How can I truly know you?” I asked one night.

      “Knowing me,” she said, “will take a lifetime.”

      I was disappointed, but as our caravan journeyed the following day, I considered her response. Ah, I finally saw: her nature was not a mystery to be solved; on the contrary it opened to questions without answers. Then to more questions. The quest to fathom her nature was for a mind that relished searching but was content not to find. A mind like mine, for I had no wish to build a prison of knowledge around her.

      To find the place where she belongs, where she will flourish, a woman sometimes has to change directions several times. Meanwhile, God Most High is attending to other business. More than once I found myself in rugged terrain, making slow and laborious progress.

      There was a period when many days passed without any sign of God Most High. One day our caravan would be battered by the harshness of the sun, the next by the ferocity of the wind.

      “I should have known better than to follow a woman,” my husband complained.

      I had assumed I could handle hardship. After all, I had planned well. Besides, God Most High had said I was an intelligent woman. But now the dry earth I trod became the parched soil of my soul, and I knew that nothing could grow there. It was unexpected, this sense of desolation. Scanning the landscape, I saw nothing that made me hopeful. I questioned the wisdom of having left security behind and began to doubt God СКАЧАТЬ