Winter Solstice 2022

            The longest night of the year.  The least daylight.  And this day does feel bitter cold.  In my town, temperatures are forecast to reach down to -5˚F.  Our freezing temperatures are matched across the country, with freezing and blizzard conditions coast-to-coast. 

            Today is also the day for my Winter Solstice message, now the third in an annual tradition.  I had begun journaling and brainstorming ideas for this message in November, mostly the lessons I had been learning while paralyzed from doing not much at all, braced in both arms from a six-foot fall in August that broke both of my wrists and injured my right hand.  My message, with more specifics and less metaphor, was to mimic my poem, Quietest before the Dawn, posted on November 30.  On the day I posted it, I really felt that I was arriving at the “dawn,” and feeling its hope. 

            Two days later – yes, only two days – a significant calamity hit, one that impacts many, and me especially.  I thought the dawn was here, but it is not.  Winter is here.  So is Hibernation.  I began the year in hibernation (see post here), and I end the year in hibernation.  Thank goodness I’ve been learning the beauty of hibernation.

            It seems that we collectively may also be in a season of hibernation, begun in March of 2020 to “stay at home” and now in nationwide snow, ice, freezing temperatures, and winter storms.  I reflect back on my first Winter Solstice message of 2020, when I cited the Prophet Daniel envisioning a future time of people running to and fro and knowledge increasing.  Daniel was so overwhelmed by this vision, he laid dormant on the floor for three days.  Over these past few years, I have been learning much about the need to slow down, to cease running to and fro, to stay at home, to rest, to hibernate, and to take one day at a time. 

            At this moment, when I am feeling the cold and the dark, I lack the words of hope in my Quietest post, or my Hibernation post, or my Winter Solstice 2020 message, but we humans also need to learn to allow ourselves to enter into the darkness and to be honest that we feel it, and that it is hard.  Could it be that I keep entering the darkness because I try so hard to hide that darkness exists and that it is hard?  If so, I admit today I feel the darkness, and it is hard. 

            In much gratitude, however, I have been glimpsing mysteries of humanity and have grown in ways that are precious and priceless and can never be taken from me, “treasures in heaven where neither moth nor rust can destroy.”  Perhaps in January, I will begin a Hibernation or Winter or Quiet series that shares some of what I have experienced and some of what I’ve learned.           

            For now, whether you are feeling the warmth of the holiday or the cold of winter, I send my own warmth and love to you for this long night, this holiday season, and this coming year, and bless you to soak in Panadonix's amazing rendition from their Christmas CD of The Sound of Silence.

See also:

Quietest before the Dawn

Hibernation

Winter Solstice 2020

Winter Solstice 2021

Quietest before the Dawn

It's darkest before the dawn

we’ve heard
and know
but don’t
or forget
 
Do we hear?
Do we know?
It’s also quietest before the dawn
 
You no longer hear the crickets
or the owls
or the bats
nor yet the birds
 
The only creatures you might hear
but might not
because they are moving
careful, cautious, silent
are the fishermen
 
You see not
You hear not
You feel
your heart pounding
your spine tingling
 
The fishermen too?
Do they feel
their hearts pounding?
their spines tingling?
 
My uncle was a sailor
sometimes a fisherman
a reluctant one
resisting the early rise
Sometimes, though,
he dredged himself up
from the warmth of his bed,
because, he said,
there’s nothing like a sunrise
 
The fishermen know
They remember
Just before the sunrise
comes the stillness before the dawn,
a chilling
fearful
yet magical
moment
when all of Creation is
Quietest before the Dawn

Davie's Return, Part 2 (Conclusion to "Just like Eve")

 Dear readers, this is it, the final selection of "Just like Eve!"  If you are joining us now, you could start at the beginning, begin with Jasmine’s most recent discoveries or with Jasmine’s serve.   For Davie’s processing, see his conversations with his mentor here, here, and here. For Jasmine’s, see especially her later insights here and here.

Storyline: "Just like Eve" follows the forbidden love story and the spiritual quest of married heroine Jasmine, ordered out of her church for a kiss with the youth pastor, Davie, also married.  Jasmine and Davie both contend with their unfitting marriages, their forbidden love, the rules of the church, and the conventions of marriage and divorce.  Meanwhile, for the kiss, Jasmine is accused again of being “just like Eve,” a phrase she heard at eleven for asking why Noah let God drown the world.  

She's prompted to investigate the figure of Eve from its original Hebrew text and discovers not only that Eve is seeking wisdom (to be admired), but also that the Hebrew word for serpent is linguistically tied to the word for messiah, and that the Hebrew word ezer, translated as “helper” for the woman, is closer to “life-saver,” a play on words for Eve (havah) which means “life-giver."  She first notes even the plain text in English presents Eve as cursed not only with child-birth, but also to “desire her man” who "will rule over her.”  Unwittingly, Jasmine turns Augustine’s interpretation of Eve, still widely accepted today, on its head, liberating Eve, herself, and women from "centuries of misunderstanding."

 

September 27, 2012, Glendale Racquet Club, Colorado Springs, CO

Davie’s Return, Part 1 conclusion:

Kristina is now on Jasmine’s side of the net, muttering, “Speak of the devil.”  How is Kristina standing here?  Didn’t I just see her on the other side of the net, about to flip her racquet?  Jasmine had not realized how deep in thought she had been.  “Oh, sorry, I guess I shouldn’t say ‘devil,’” Kristina chuckled.

BD, in a voice bold, deep, and victorious, snaps Jasmine out of her trance.  "It looks like we no longer have a perfect eight!"

Jasmine sees her partner glancing over to the corner of the furthest away back court, raising his arm high with a thumbs up.

A surprise is leaning against the wall, with one foot crossed over the other leg, the casual stance of a figure who belongs right where he is.

Davie.

 

And now, for the final conclusion of Just like Eve, Davie’s Return, Part 2: 

Davie is four tennis courts away, but to Jasmine, he feels so close.  They haven’t seen each other in seven months.  After their kiss, the church elders sent her out of church and told him, their youth pastor, to quit their tennis group’s Mixed Doubles Night.

Davie returns BD's thumbs up, pushes himself away from the wall, and turns his head to Jasmine.  Her heart, flushing, feels like it’s doubling in size.  With a slow pace, Davie begins to walk toward her; she matches his pace and meets him between the second and third courts.  They stand together silent, breathing in rhythmic synchronicity.  With a warm smile, he hugs her.  It seems she is right where she belongs.

In a quiet voice, Jasmine breaks their silence.  “They finally let you go.”

“I finally quit.”  Davie’s voice is also quiet, but with conviction.  “Three weeks ago.”

The same time as her divorce?

BD pats Davie on the shoulder.  “It’s been a long time, Bro.  Partner with her.”  Stepping back, he says he’ll sit the first four games out.

“Let’s skip the racquet flip,” Kristina says, offering the serve to Davie and Jasmine.  Davie shakes his head, says he hasn’t played in a while and asks them to serve.  Despite his absence, Davie holds his serve, as do all the players.  They’re tied up 2-2, but with nine players, it’s time to rotate BD in.

“Where has Davie been?” Stephen asks once the players have all gathered with BD at the bench for a water break.  He turns to Davie.  “And what are you doing now?”

“Where I’ve been is complicated,” Davie replies, but now he’s teaching high school PE and Health. The school is taking a chance on him, because he doesn’t have a teaching certificate.  They wanted someone more qualified, but no one came forth.  He was called in at the end of August and given a substitute until he was ready.  “I started Monday.”

“That’s a big change.” Jasmine’s smile indicates her pride.

Davie shifts his weight from his right foot to his left.  He has an even bigger change to reveal, but needs to build up to it.  “I’ve been learning a lot about myself,” he says, bowing his head, and whispering into Jasmine’s ear, “since our kiss.” 

Jasmine blushes, but the other players don’t see the whisper or the blush.  They’re calling out to Jaime, a tenth player walking onto the court, who BD invites to partner with him.  Davie smiles and suggests to Jasmine they play singles.  As they walk onto a new court, Davie tells Jasmine he wanted so much to be “good” that, without realizing it, he let his family and then Pam make his life decisions.  “Until all the pieces of my life started to fall apart.”  Davie looks up to Jasmine, one of those pieces, and then bounces two balls to her.  “You serve first.”

She plays a powerful game, takes him to two deuces, but still loses her serve and doesn’t mind.  How appropriate on the day of his return, his return breaks her serve.  He’s returned, and he's left his job, what might come next?

At their water break, Davie pulls a sheet from his pocket and holds it up.  “My resignation letter.”  He opens it and begins reading. “Jesus said spirituality is simple.  Love God and your neighbor as yourself.  That’s it.  But we pastors complicate it with rules and doctrines just like the religious leaders Jesus condemned.”

“You’re the pastor people need,” Jasmine says quietly.  “And you’re leaving.”

Davie casts his eyes down with sadness, then returns to his letter.  “But maybe what Jesus said is not that simple.  How ‘simple’ is it to love ‘God’ when you don't know who ‘God’ is?  And how can we love our neighbor before we’ve learned to love ourselves?  And can we love ourselves before we know ourselves?”

“Most people don’t ask those questions.”

Davie replies that’s something he really admires about Jasmine.  She does.  He’s starting to, and said so in the letter, quoting a phrase he’s heard, “You can't know who you are until you find out who you are not.” 

“I’m starting to learn who I am not,” he reads.  “I am not a pastor.  I am the son of a pastor, who wanted me to carry on his occupation, one that involves preaching doctrines I don’t believe.”

 “What don’t you believe?”

With a smile, Davie says he almost put that in but refrained.  He doesn’t believe in Original Sin, in a God who kills, in hell, nor, looking up at Jasmine, he adds, “You’ll like this one, a ‘Rapture’ or people ‘Left Behind.’”

Jasmine laughs, recalling their jokes of bumper stickers on Noah’s Ark, satires on those like “If the Rapture comes tonight, where will you go?” or “In case of Rapture, this car will be de-manned.”  They could be mad, but instead they take to humor.  Davie quotes one of their satires: “If the Flood comes tonight, will you float or drown?”  Jasmine holds her tummy, laughing as she did that night. 

Davie chuckles with her, then returns to the end of his letter. “I could also list my grievances for injustices, but they no longer matter.  They led me to what does matter.  I don't know who I am and I need to find out.”

“That’s big.  I’m also starting to find out for myself,” Jasmine replies.  “Grievances?”

“You.  Kicking you out of church for our kiss.  I kissed you, and they kicked you out.  ‘What Would Jesus Really Do?’ Not that.”

Jasmine blushes.  Davie stuck up for her, even quit his job.  Attired in the wonder woman shirt and skirt from their friends, it seems she’s wearing the wonder she feels.  He places a ball into Jasmine’s palm, while touching the top of her hand beneath.  “Time to play.”

This time, Jasmine holds her serve, perhaps because he lets her or perhaps because she doesn’t care whether she wins or loses.  After seven months apart from Davie and now divorced -- barely, but divorced -- she most wants to hear more from him.  Davie must feel it too, as he lingers with her at their next water break.

“I finally had to make my own choices,” Davie tells Jasmine, shifting into his bigger change.  Not only did he let his parents decide his career for him, he also let Pam decide for him who he would date.  In college, he wanted to date Pam’s friend Jenny, but since Pam was pursuing him, he found it easier to date Pam than ask Jenny out. 

Shaking his head at his laziness, he admits he might have been hiding behind his rational exterior, not yet aware of what he really felt or longed for in a wife.  He looks upward.  “Did you know that Greek has multiple words for the English word ‘love.’” 

Jasmine nods.  Her eyes are inquisitive over his change of subject.  Davie says he finds it ironic the New Testament was written in Greek, but its many words for the concepts of love all get translated into a single word in English.  “Greek has a word for unconditional love like a parent for a child.”

“Agape,” Jasmine smiles.

“Right.” Davie beams, unsurprised she’s aware of these Greek words.  “And one for friendship.”

“Phileo.”

            “And one for affection.”

“Eros.”

Davie nods, smiling. “You can will yourself to agape or phileo love anyone.  But you can’t will yourself into or out of eros.”

The church wouldn’t like this perspective, Jasmine thinks.  Too inconvenient. But true. 

“Affection comes to you,” Davie continues.  “You don’t ask for it.  You can’t will it to come, and you can’t will it to leave.”

Even more inconvenient.  Jasmine chuckles to herself that Davie thinks at odds too.  Maybe that’s what “thinking at odds” really is: thinking what’s inconvenient, but true.  Or at least valid.  People don’t like what’s inconvenient, but if they can’t offer a defense, they’ll either ignore you or mock you.

Jasmine asks if he’s shared any of this with the church leaders.  He has, but they confuse affection with lust because sexual desire is usually intertwined with it.  “But lust is fleeting,” he adds.  “If affection stands the test of time, you can’t call it lust.”

Jasmine coaches her quick-pumping heart to slow down.  Their bond has withstood the test of time. “Lust is superficial,” she says.  “Affection is real.”  His eyes on her suggest he agrees, but for the church to believe it would be a tall order.

“I willed myself to love Pam unconditionally and in friendship.”  Davie pauses.  “But I can’t will myself to love her in affection.”

This conversation is getting heavier, Jasmine thinks and asks whether Davie would like to head to The Alley, Glendale’s sports bar, early.  He smiles, nods, and calls out to the other players to meet later at The Alley, where he and Jasmine are now heading.  They walk up the stairs in silence, find a booth, and thank the server for the water she brings them.  Jasmine takes a sip and asks how Pam feels. 

Davie takes a deep breath.  He finally mustered the courage to tell his wife how he had let her lead him into marriage, despite what his heart had most longed for, and to hear this was very hard on her.  She feels all three of the Greek forms of love for the man she thought she married.

“Thought she married?” Jasmine wants to be sure she heard that right.

She did.  In marriage counseling, Pam came to discover the Davie she wanted was the one he was pretending to be, but not who he really is.   Davie pauses.  “She also doesn't want to be married to a man whose heart is with someone else.”

Jasmine’s heart flutters.  Davie adds he can’t go backward and change his previous choices, but he can go forward now, especially before he has children.  “It’s time now to make my own choices.”

“You need to choose for yourself,” Jasmine replies, connecting their stories, “and I need to think for myself.”  She reminds him she was mocked for “thinking at odds,” so she started letting her family, and then Tim, think for her.  Mimicking Davie’s statement, she says “It’s time now to think on my own again.”

“You don’t think like the church,” Davie smiles.  “That’s one reason why I love you.”

Jasmine’s heart stops.

“Jazzie, BD hinted to me that you and Tim may be splitting up.  I don’t want to interfere with your marriage or wherever you are in your process, but if you ever become available—”

Jasmine lifts up her left hand.  Her ring finger is bare.

Davie lifts his too.  His fingers are also bare.  He takes her left hand into his, clasps it, and gives Jasmine’s hand a gentle squeeze.  Jasmine’s heart flushes hot.

Jasmine shares her own discoveries of her husband Tim like a rock, while she is more likea ball rolling down the hill further away from him.  Their marriage counselor had encouraged them to create a “truly new new,” but she came to realize Tim was an authentic rock, a good one, and she could never come into her own true self with him. 

“With Tim, I’m stuck.  With you, I thrive.”

            “With you, I thrive too,” Davie smiles.  “You’re willing to ask hard questions, to get mad at God when He’s not fair, and keep pressing until you find the answers.  You will put your life on the line to reach for that forbidden fruit: the knowledge of God.”

Davie grins, “You’re just like Eve.”

No one could have paid her a finer complement.

Return to Davie's Return, Part 1

Return to Jasmine's most recent discoveries

Follow Davie's story, starting here 

© 2022 by Karina.  All rights reserved.  Please use with permission and/or a link to this blog post.

Davie's Return, Part 1

Dear readers, welcome to the conclusion of Just like Eve (the first of the two-part conclusion).  If you are joining this series now, you can read an overview, or start at the beginning, or at Jasmine's recent discoveries with her friends, or if you'd like to read the story from Davie's point of view, you can start with the first of Davie's three selections and follow the links for Davie's portions from there.

September 27, 2012, Glendale Racquet Club, Colorado Springs, CO 

"Jazzy in that new skirt, Jazzie!" Gabbie winks at Jasmine, as she enters the yoga room at Glendale Racquet Club where the friends warm up before their mixed doubles tennis.

"Jazzier than I felt last week," Jasmine winks back with a chuckle to Gabbie and Kristina, the two masterminds of the previous week’s surprise.  Not only are these friends Jasmine and Mindy’s favorite opponents for women’s doubles, but they also play Mixed Doubles Night, where they are now.  Gabbie and Kristina had been rooting Jasmine on to independence.  Today, she is three weeks single.  That’s her term.  Others call her divorced.

After playing mixed doubles last week, the friends made their way, as usual, up the stairs to Glendale's sports bar, The Alley.  Located above the office and the restrooms, the Alley provides booths to the left, tables in the center, the bar with its barstools to the right, and three large screen TVs.  When Jasmine entered The Alley, she found the center tables pulled together into the full, long one set up for the Mixed Doubles Night players, as usual, but the table was not set as usual.  At the center were a bouquet of tulips and gold balloons floating above of the flowers, along with a single balloon in black.  Staring at them, especially the black one, Jasmine wondered what the special occasion was. 

Seeing Jasmine’s confusion, Kristina put her hand on Jasmine’s arm.  “Gold for power and black because it’s also okay to be sad.”

Gold for power?  Whose power?  Jasmine wondered whether any of their favored tennis players was known for the color of gold, and if a tennis tournament was happening that she wasn’t aware of.  Or could the many gold balloons represent hope for a win and a single black one represent acceptance over a loss?

Looking for clues, Jasmine glanced over to the big screen TVs set to ESPN, but they were showing two lively commentators in big earphones and quick cuts to baseball replays.  Jasmine whispered to Mindy, who chuckled and announced to everyone that Jasmine wanted to know if the balloons were for a tennis tournament.  Did Mindy have to blurt that out? 

"No Girl!" Gabbie grinned, "This is your divorce party!"

Divorce party? Do people do that?   Other than her tennis friends, everyone has responded to Jasmine’s news with either sympathy or judgment, all supposing she must be grieved over a “failed” marriage.  Jasmine doesn’t see it that way.  She learned much from her marriage, still cares about Tim, and knows she made the right choice.  Still, her emotions run through a mixture of grief from the past and joy for the future.  Her grief is less for what people think -- the loss of Tim -- and more for the years she let her family and then her husband draw her away from what matters most: her own compassionate and intuitive nature that thinks at odds. 

As Kristina handed Jasmine a gift bag, also in gold, Jasmine looked inquisitively over to her best friend Mindy.

"I'll be surprised as you,” Mindy chuckled, shaking her head. “I just got you a card."

Jasmine pulled out a gold headband crown with a red star, a red sleeveless athletic shirt, a navy blue tennis skirt, and tennis ball band for her waist, in gold.  How did they find a ball band in gold?  Smiling in pride, Kristina lifted a piece of the gold ribbon she sewed on to the ball band.  "See, all you'll need to do is take a seam ripper to the ribbon, and you've got a new tennis band."

With a hearty nod, Jasmine promised she would, and lifted the clothes up.  “Wonder Woman?”

“Wonder Woman with a real shirt, a real skirt, and not a bathing suit,” Gabbie winked.

“And no stars on the skirt!” Kristina laughed.

“Or gold cups for your boobs!” Gabbie exclaimed, adding that they were keeping Jasmine in the 21^st century: classy, not a sex object.

Still, with the crown and ball band in gold, Jasmine felt sheepish.  She'll have to pass that booth of racquetball guys, while wearing a crown and a ball band in the conspicuous color of gold? Her friends say gold represents her power, but Jasmine has spent years in hiding.  Mocked for thinking at odds, she’s learned silence and modesty.  Was she ready to emerge as a Wonder Woman in gold?

Seeing her friend’s hesitation, Mindy shared with Jasmine what she most admires about her.  “You are a woman filled with wonder.  Now spin yourself into Wonder Woman!”  Mindy is blessed with a mouth so full she still has her wisdom teeth.  How could Jasmine resist a smile that fills her best friend’s whole face?  Or a gift so clever?  Taking a deep breath, Jasmine coached herself into power. You can do this, Jasmine.  Step into your power.  Do as Lynda Carter: transform yourself from ordinary to powerful. Spin yourself into Wonder Woman!

While walking down the stairs to the restroom to dawn her new attire, Jasmine also reflected on her friends’ sensitivity.   Since her family and most of her other friends thought she should have only one emotion – grief -- she had wondered whether her tennis friends would also think she should have only one emotion -- joy.  But these friends had included a black balloon, told her it was okay to be sad, and still helped her celebrate.  They not only let her think at odds, they also let her feel at odds.

 

Now, a week later, Jasmine is grateful to be wearing the new tennis skirt, athletic shirt, ball band in its proper color of black, and nothing in gold.  She’s proud of her new power, but she also likes another truth of Wonder Woman: the ability to step back into normal life as a normal woman.  All superheroes are like that.  Most of the time, they blend into ordinary life, appearing as no one special, and Jasmine realizes they probably like it that way.  She does too.

Jasmine finishes stretching and joins the others now milling in a circle at the center of the yoga room.  Steve glances at his watch, casts his eyes around the circle, counting the players, and announces, “It's perfectly seven and we have a perfect eight” – so perfectly Steve, in his steel-rimmed glasses, who spends his days crunching numbers as an accountant.  Then he adds, “even a perfect four mixed doubles teams.”

BD extends his arm toward Jasmine, palm up, offering himself as her partner.  He had never been so chivalrous before.  Jasmine is honored, but curious.  They’ve been regularly partnering together at Mixed Doubles Night for seven months, ever since youth pastor Davie was told by his church to quit coming after his kiss with Jasmine.  BD is Davie’s best friend, in spite of and probably because of, BD’s differences from everyone else Davie had grown up with.  The oldest son of a pastor of a white, conservative, evangelical church, Davie had been groomed into the pastorate himself and the culture that accompanies it.  Tennis had been Davie’s escape, the one place where he could hit hard his strokes and slam dunk his overheads.  In time, with BD’s help, he even learned how to curse, swear, and spit.  BD, African American, is a baseball player first, tennis player second, and it was at his first sport where he had learned how to spit really good.  But now, enjoying himself so much at Mixed Doubles Night, he sometimes teases that he might make tennis his primary sport, if everyone else learns how to spit and they buy him enough beers.

The week after Davie’s departure, BD told Jasmine about Davie’s request that BD step in as Jasmine’s new mixed doubles partner.  He said he had promised Davie he would, if she also agreed to it, and added his reply over the church’s order that Davie quit coming: "You church people are cracked up!"  Jasmine was charmed by BD’s "cracked up" assessment, appreciated Davie’s attempt to look out for her, and took in her new mixed doubles partner gladly.

“You’re still Wonder Woman,” BD said to Jasmine as she accepted his palm.  “You serve first.”  BD usually served first, and usually at Jasmine’s request.  If their Mixed Doubles group had been competitive, BD would always serve first.  The server has the advantage, and that’s why players flip their racquets before play to decide on the serve.  Your goal is to “hold” your serve and “break” your opponent’s.  In competitive mixed doubles, the female needs to be a wonder woman because the opponents are working hard to keep the ball away from her partner that she has her work cut out for her.  In a tight set, the first server in doubles will serve twice, and the second server once.  If the physically stronger male partner serves first, he can more easily put those opponents on defense and hold his two serves.  But Glendale’s Mixed Doubles Night is casual and doesn’t carry this competitive edge.  All players serve first sometimes, including Jasmine, but she’s modest and usually gives the first serve to her partner.  Tonight, BD insists, and she agrees.

But first, the two of them, and their opponents, Steve and Kristina, need to meet at the net to flip their racquets.  As they are walking toward the net, Jasmine wishes it was Davie by her side, feels her heart flush hot for him, and reflects on the journal she wrote on forbidden love.  Has she reached "acceptance?"  If she has, "acceptance" looks quite different than what she had anticipated.  It’s not about "getting over" a forbidden love -- she will always love Davie -- it’s about embracing the love within herself.  Now that Davie has shown her how loveable she is and how much she can delight in thinking at odds, Jasmine has found a joy and a love within herself even in Davie’s absence.  She still longs for him, still loves him and always will, but she has landed upon an “acceptance” that feels unlike anything she had expected.

Like her attire from ordinary to wonder woman, Jasmine’s longing has also been transformed. She no longer longs as an ordinary woman who needs, but as a woman of wonder who surrenders.  Through the test of forbidden love, where love cannot control, where love must release every day, Jasmine has discovered a love without attachment, a love capable of letting go, a love that surrenders, filled with wonder.

It's a love like that poster at Gabbie’s apartment, the one that shows a strong horse in deep brown with a mane blowing in the wind, galloping through a field on a bright blue day, that says, “If you love something, let it go. If it comes back, it is yours.”  The type of love depicted in that poster is considered by many to be the hardest type of love.  But, Jasmine muses, isn't there a love that is even harder? What if the something you love you never had to begin with?  What if you have to release every day what you never had but could?  Don’t people say, “It's better to love and lose than to never love at all”?  In that case, wouldn’t the love that releases something it could have but doesn’t be an even harder form of love?

Gazing ahead, as if in a trance, Jasmine confirms to herself that she has learned the hardest type of love, and it is this love that has brought her into the deepest type, the love within herself.

 

Kristina is now standing next to Jasmine on Jasmine’s side of the net, muttering, “Speak of the devil.”  How is Kristina standing here?  Didn’t I just see her on the other side of the net, about to flip her racquet?  Jasmine had not realized how deep in thought she had been.  “Oh, sorry, I guess I shouldn’t say ‘devil,’” Kristina chuckled.

BD, in a voice bold, deep, and victorious, fully breaks Jasmine’s trance.  "It looks like we no longer have a perfect eight!"

Jasmine sees her partner glancing over to the corner of the furthest away back court, raising his arm high with a thumbs up.

A surprise is leaning against the wall, with one foot crossed over the other leg, the casual stance of a figure who belongs right where he is.

Davie.

© 2022 by Karina.  All rights reserved.  Please use only with permission and/or a link to this blog.

Continue to Davie's Return, Part 2

Start at the beginning: Why did Noah let God drown the World? 

Start at Jasmine's most recent discoveries

Start the story from Davie's point of view

Jasmine's Journal: Liberating Eve

Dear friends and readers, the concluding selections to Just like Eve are now back.  If you are new to this series, you can get an overview here, or start at the beginning, or start at the recent set of selections between Jasmine and her friends for her most recent discoveries. 

Colorado Springs, CO, August 5, 2012

“The wise or knowing nature” of the “healthy woman” is to speak and act on one’s behalf, to be aware, alert, to draw on the innate feminine powers of intuition and sensing, to come into one’s cycles, to find what one belongs to, to rise with dignity, to retain as much consciousness as possible.”

(Clarissa Pinkola Estés, Women who Run with the Wolves, p. 10)

"To retain as much consciousness as possible.  Jasmine records the final phrase a second time into her journal, after quoting Estés’ classic, recommended to her by Gabbie.

“To retain consciousness or gain it back?” Jasmine writes into her journal.  “Didn’t I have consciousness and then lost it?  When I was chided for ‘thinking at odds’?”  Jasmine lifts her pencil and wonders whether “retaining consciousness” means triumphing over conditioning. 

Perhaps a very few brave or lucky children never lose it.  But Jasmine wasn’t among them.  Over the years of her adolescence, chided for thinking at odds, or seeing eyes roll over for her questions and insights, or scolded for being just like Eve, little by little Jasmine permitted herself to be conditioned into silence. At first, it wasn't silence but delayed speaking, carefully considering her words and delaying her insights.  She still saw heads shaking and shoulders shrugging and eyes rolling, and she trained herself into silence. In time the silence of her mouth also grew into silence of her mind. She coached herself to quit thinking at odds.

In college, away from her family, Jasmine began to think at odds again, and sometimes, she made the error of speaking her thinking.  Remarkably, among some of her college friends, that was okay.  She could speak her mind. But perhaps their encouragement gave her too much confidence and she forgot, and spoke her mind again at home or at church, and this time, the chiding turned to scolding. She's a young adult. Shouldn't she know better by now what she can and cannot say?

So Jasmine rebuked herself, vowing to think at evens, yet unsure how she could learn such a trick.  Then she met Tim, the archer, who was very good at thinking at evens, and he liked her too, and his body felt delicious as he stood right behind her, touching his whole body to hers, teaching her to position every limb and every part of her body for perfect aim.  With him, she could shoot that arrow straight into the bullseye.  With him, perhaps she could also think at evens.

And now the very quality that drew her in is sending her away. Tim may have succeeded for a time to help Jasmine think at evens, but such an target, that he didn't even know he’d been given, and nor did she for that matter, carried with it a deadly side effect: the loss of Jasmine's own wise and compassionate consciousness. 

Then Davie came along -- after Jasmine had already married Tim, and after Davie had already married Pam.  But Davie helped Jasmine recover her own consciousness, her thinking at odds that he loved.  As Davie’s celebrated her thinking, Jasmine could see the loss of her consciousness began with her inquisitive and compassionate spirit.  She had wished to know why Noah let God drown the world: a question of compassion, for which she had been scorned, called “just like Eve.”

She and the church, Jasmine has come to realize, have differed on their fundamental value system.  The church values obedience at all costs to the authority it believes in, while Jasmine has valued compassion and has questioned the value of obedience without it.  Of the church, however, she remains perplexed.  If the churches truly believe in “obedience,” would they not wish to obey their master?  Jesus?  “Wasn’t it Jesus who said, ‘Ask, seek, and knock’? And didn’t the writer of Hebrews call for us to discern between good and evil? 

“Isn’t Elohim, who forbids such knowledge, inconsistent with them?”  Jasmine has already learned the character called ‘God’ is Elohim in Hebrew, with its feminine root, “power” and its masculine plural to translate, essentially, to feminine and masculine “powers.”  Once again thinking at odds, Jasmine makes a radical break from her tradition and reads this figure as a simple character in a simple story whose name is Elohim. 

Their own church, terrified by the attraction between Jasmine and Davie (Pastor David), sent Jasmine out of church and ordered Davie to quit attending their Mixed Doubles group.  Now that Jasmine is out of church, she figures they think however they do; they can think Elohim is “God” and stay blind to the inconsistency of this character with the one Jesus calls “Father,” who encourages questions and compassion.

For Davie Jasmine longs every day.  Her divorce with Tim is almost final. She prays Davie returns to their tennis group.  But even if he does not, and even if he stays with Pam, Davie has given Jasmine a priceless gift: he has given her the key that opens the door to redeem her consciousness.  And now Clarissa Pinkola Estes is walking with Jasmine through that door, confirming to her that she has found the right place, and that many have gone before her.

Through myths and legends, Estés relays the stories of the feminine version of the hero’s journey, and Jasmine decides to read Eve’s story the way Estés reads the stories she relates.  The myth most like Eve’s is called “Bluebeard,” after the groom who woos the youngest of three sisters.  Soon after they wed, he departs for a trip, hands her a set of keys, and tells her she can use all but one, which, of course, is the one she most wishes to use.  When her sisters come to visit, they make that their mission: find the door that uses this key. When they finally succeed, they find a room full of corpses: Bluebeard’s ex-wives.  With the help of her two sisters and their three brothers, the young bride’s next task is to escape before he kills her too, and she succeeds.

“’Bluebeard forbids the young woman to use the one key that would bring her to consciousness’ (Estés, p. 47).  Isn’t that what Elohim did?” Jasmine asks into her journal.  “Forbid Adam and Eve not only from knowledge, but also from something Eve perceived would come that is far more valuable?  Wisdom? When I read the story of Eve in its plain text, its message is clear, but disturbing.  But only if we think the figure who forbids is ‘God.’” 

Jasmine smiles at Estés’ analysis of Bluebeard, who looks very much like Elohim, both of whom forbid consciousness: “If she attempts to obey Bluebeard’s command not to use the key, she chooses death for her spirit.  By choosing to open the door to the ghastly secret room, she chooses life (p. 47).”

“She chooses life.”  Another final phrase gets written twice into Jasmine’s journal, first from the quote and second from herself.  “Is life also not what Eve chose?  Elohim said eating of knowledge would bring death, but wouldn’t both choices bring death?  Either extermination or non-life in blindness, lacking in wisdom?”

Jasmine sets down her pencil, reflecting that not only compassion, but also wisdom, are values far higher for her than mere obedience.  She beats to a deeper drum.  She, too, wants wisdom.  So she asks questions.  Starting to feel vindicated, Jasmine adds into her journal what Estés says about questions: “Asking the proper question is the central act of transformation—in fairy tales, in analysis, and in individuation.  The key question causes germination of consciousness. . . . Questions are the keys that cause the secret doors of the psyche to swing open” (48).

            “For Eve, the question was prompted by the serpent, who told Eve she would not die for eating the fruit,” Jasmine writes into her journal.  “He suggests Eve does can choose life.  It will come at a cost: her ‘eyes will be opened’ to her vulnerable nakedness and to evil and to suffering.  But she will also gain a real, authentic life with wisdom.”

            Who is this serpent in Hebrew? Jasmine wonders.  She’s already learned the Hebrew word translated as “God” is Elohim, and the word translated as “helper” in Gen 2:18 is ezer, better translated as “life saver,” and the word for Eve is Havah, or “life-giver,” making Eve’s name and title a play on words that has been lost in translation.

To understand the serpent in Hebrew, Jasmine knows she must turn to Jewish resources, and from the Jewish mystics, she makes an astonishing discovery: the serpent, nachash in Hebrew, shares an energetic affinity with messiah, mashiach in Hebrew, in their system of gematria. In Hebrew, every letter is also a number.  Scholars add up the letters of a word to form a number, and words of the same number share an energetic affinity.  Nachash (Nun, 50 + Chet, 8 + Shin 300 = 358) and mashiach (Mem 40 + Shin 300 + Yod 10 + Chet 8 = 358) add up to the sa energy of 358.

“The serpent carries the energy of the messiah?” writes Jasmine, stunned.  If any biblical figure is more demonized than any other, it would be this serpent.  But Jewish mystics connect this figure with messiah.  Thinking very at odds, Jasmine continues journaling: “Like a liberator? I suppose so. He liberated her from the non-life of blindness into an authentic life, one with both pleasure and pain, with joy and suffering. For better or for worse, the serpent-messiah offered Eve a full, authentic life.”

Jasmine wonders why this remarkable clue into the serpent as a messiah figure is not well known.  Then again, she remembers even the second two curses to Eve, written clearly in English, without errors of translation, are also not well known. 

Perhaps later Jasmine will also connect this nechash to the saving force Moses calls upon for the Israelites in exile from Egypt, or to the one Jesus tells Nicodemus must be lifted up to enter the kingdom, or even to modern medicine’s familiar image of the caduceus with two snakes wrapped around a pole, representing the kundalini energy that heals the body and opens the mind.  But today, Jasmine is early in her discoveries.

It will also be time before she learns that her quest, like that of Eve, is that of the sages of all time, like the Norse god Odin, who sacrificed his eye for all-seeing wisdom.  Nor does she know that many who have gone before her have been persecuted.  Those in power, perhaps not consciously realizing it, are threatened when people start thinking for themselves.  They might lose their positions of privilege and authority.  Hence, many of the texts that liberate into consciousness have been lost, buried and burned, most infamously in 48 BCE from the fire of the library in Alexandria.  Meanwhile, many of those retained, either written or oral, have been carefully repackaged to undermine liberation and embolden the authorities of the world.   But the mysteries can be unburied, as Jasmine has done.  Many scholars have interpreted the story of Adam and Eve in many ways, almost all of which are far more rational than Augustine’s, villanizing Eve, that still permeates Jasmine’s tradition.  

But Jasmine need not examine those, for her journey has been for those like her: raised into the paradigm of her religious tradition and its reverence for the Bible and methods of reading it: literally, but consistent, and with a study of the words and meanings in the original text.  Hers is a simple quest: to see the ways this story interpreted as she's been taught is not only internally inconsistent and harmful to wisdom, but even relies on the mistranslations of its principle characters and concepts from its original Hebrew text.  In essence, the evangelical interpretation of the story of Adam and Eve violates the very rules the same tradition teaches to read the Bible.

Into her journal entry, Jasmine concludes, “The church leaders might have intended an insult when they called me ‘just like Eve,’ but now I see a woman who bravely risks her life for something more valuable: wisdom.  Her ‘eyes were opened,’ and, therefore, she suffered.  Truth is painful, and so is wisdom.  We don't see without a cost, but it is worth the cost to suffer and live.  Perhaps Eve still should have done as Abraham: challenge Elohim for a better deal.  But if her only two choices were existence in blindness or wisdom with open eyes and suffering, Eve made the better choice, and I find her vindicated.”

Jasmine closes her journal, deeming herself also vindicated.  No longer insulted by centuries of misunderstanding, Jasmine is grateful to be just like Eve, to think at odds, to be a ball rolling down a hill, and to beat to a deeper drum.  Tim, her family, and her church can join a marching band together and drum in obedient conformity, while she strums to her own rhythm.  A sly smile comes across her face, one that can be seen only by others who also beat to their own drum.

Continue to Davie's Return, Part 1 

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