Happy New Year! We’re undertaking a moderate-scale home renovation project this and next week, so the next couple of posts will likely be shorter and wedged into the reno schedule. But there’s more to consider about Maryam! (That’s not just a convenient hipster portmanteau of Mary and Miriam, her actual name; it’s also how her name is spelled in the Quran, where an entire surah, or book, is named for her. Fun facts!) (If you're catching up: Mary 1, 2, 3, 4. It's a lot, I know, but I think it's pointing in the direction of the Table.)

A reflection in bullet points:

  • I remember first reading Peggy Orenstein’s (pre-Frozen) observation that Disney princesses are nearly always devoid of strong, loving female companions: no sisters, no (alive) mothers, no (human) women-friends. Even when Disney aggregated the princesses from separate movies, made the group of “Disney princesses” a thing, they were always pictured looking away from one another, never at one another. Never really together. (Disney has since rectified this—but at the time it was chillingly true.)
  • Similarly: very few Bible stories pass the Bechdel test. Named women characters are usually (1) fighting with other women over a man and/or (2) completely alone until God shows up. So we get the sense that, like Snow White, Esther is a Singular, Remarkable Woman; and Rahab is a Singular, Remarkable Woman; and Deborah is a Singular, Remarkable Woman; etc. (The one exception popping to mind is the dyad of Ruth and her mother-in-law, which is beautiful but also…a real high bar.)
  • It can be hard to remember that (1) each one of these named women has a squad of unnamed women and (2) together, over the arc of the sacred texts, they form a FORMIDABLE-ASS SQUAD.
  • Recently, during a delightful Christmas white-elephant book exchange, I had the distinct pleasure of watching a male friend unwrap a copy of Anita Diamant’s The Red Tent, a fictionalization of the biblical story of Dinah, whose titular setting is the tent where women traditionally had to (got to) spend their menstrual periods together, away from EVERYONE ELSE. The gentle, earnest woman who’d brought The Red Tent to the party happened to be sitting next to its recipient and explained to him—quietly and at length—its significance. She’s too polite to have yelled, as I might, “IT’S ABOUT HOW WOMEN DEEPLY NEED TO BE TOGETHER IN COMMISERATING AND WISDOM-SHARING GROUPS AWAY AWAY AWAY FROM ALL OF YOU UNGRATEFUL BARBARIANS.”
  • Mary, in most of our stories, is another of those Singular Remarkable Women—usually pictured in a halo of light, surrounded not by the midwives who must’ve helped her give birth, but by between one and eight men, a baby, and assorted farm animals. Just. Like. Cinderella.
  • But.
  • The book of Luke situates Mary among Elizabeth, Yael, Judith, Sarah, and Hannah. The book of Matthew sets her in the company of Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba. They are there, together, in the Red Tent, at the Table, deeply knowing and remixing the ancient stories and psalms; supporting one another behind the scenes of these deeply patriarchal stories; picking up their swords and snack bags and getting shit done.
  • They are among the women of Summons, welcoming us into the struggle, the revolution, the comprehensive overhaul.

OK, speaking of “summons,” gotta go. Does it help in any way to think of Mary as part of a group, not singular? Thoughts?

xo