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.

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 

Start at Jasmine's newest discoveries

 © 2022 by karina.  All rights reserved.  Please ask for permission and/or link to this blog post.

Jasmine's Serve

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, or click the hyperlinks within the text for the selections referred to.  

Saturday, June 30, 2012.  Glendale Racquet Club, Colorado Springs, CO.

             “Tim and I have made a decision.” Jasmine is bouncing a ball onto the court she’s walking onto with her racquet.  She and her partner Mindy are switching court sides with their friends and opponents, Kristin and Gabbie.  It’s Jasmine’s serve. 

Mindy smiles.  She knows Jasmine’s news, but their opponents, Kristin and Gabbie, are waiting in anticipation.  Could she be pregnant?  Moving?  Splitting up?

At the baseline, Jasmine adds that she and Tim have been to seven marriage counseling sessions.  She positions herself behind the baseline, bounces the ball three times, says, “We’re getting a divorce,” bounces the ball one more time, announces the score 5 to 4, tosses up the ball, and serves a fast spin to Kristin’s backhand.  Kristin can’t reach it with any part of her racquet.  An ace.

            “What?!” Kristin shouts.  “You can’t say that and then serve one of those!”  Mindy chuckles, Gabbie smiles, and Kristin groans.  “Can she re-serve that point, Mindy?” 

            “You could have returned that serve, Kristin?” Mindy catches the ball Gabbie has just tossed back to her.

“Too good.”  Gabbie shakes her head.  “Your point.”

            “All right.”  Kristin relents.  “A round of daiquiris on me, Jasmine, if you give us the full scoop at The Alley.”

            Perhaps having thrown off her opponents, Jasmine serves a love game, winning the set 6-4.  Kristin has no complaints, just curiosity.

 The Alley, Glendale’s sports bar

             The friends find seats at their favorite table at the back of the sports bar.  Kristin orders a round of drinks and turns to Jasmine.  “A divorce?  Are you sure?  How do you feel?”

            “Relief, mostly.” The sweat on Jasmine’s face after playing tennis seems to reflect her relief after the uphill battle of her marriage.

            Kristin enjoys breaking rules in the religion that raised her but knows that’s not Jasmine’s habit.  “Are there any more surprises? Kristin asks, “even like you and Davie getting together?”

            “I haven’t seen him since February.” Jasmine reminds her friends that Davie is a youth pastor, still married, has been ordered out of their mixed doubles group by Quail Canyon Church, and she’s been ordered out of Quail Canyon altogether for the kiss they shared.  “I’d say that adds up to . . . probably not?”  Jasmine looks at each of her friends, hoping any of them might challenge her “probably not” reply.  No.  They each offer an ever-so-slight nod, more with their eyes than with their head.

            “How do you feel about being single?” Gabbie asks.

            “If I think about it too much, I’m terrified.”  Jasmine’s voice is now lower, slower, somber.  But when she doesn’t think about it, she feels peace.  Her chest isn’t tight and her breathing comes easier.  “My body is responding to my relief.”

            “I get it.”  Kristin replies quietly.

            Jasmine can see in Kristin’s eyes she really does understand, possibly in a way Jasmine has never really understood.  In a way, Kristin had “divorced” herself from her parents, rebelling against them when she refused their plans to continue homeschooling her in middle school.  Kristin was so young.  She must have been terrified.  How did she muster the courage?

Gabbie leans into the table and asks Jasmine what she and Tim learned from marriage counseling.

“That we are two different souls on two different paths who cannot forge a ‘truly new new.’”

That’s their marriage counselor’s term for couples with no glaring issues, hurts, or mistakes.  He says it’s unusual, but has seen it before, and has created for a goal for such couples: to forge a “truly new new.”

“Cool.” Gabbie nods.  “I like that.”

“Me too,” Jasmine nods with Gabbie.  “Not Tim.”

“Tim the Rock didn’t want a ‘truly new new’”? Mindy smiles.

“I, the rolling ball, love it, and he, the rock, hates it.”  Jasmine chuckles.  She reminds her friends that she was drawn to Tim’s rock-like nature and his archer qualities.  Jasmine’s friends all know that Tim’s training to her in archery has given her an edge in tennis.  She’s told the story often of how he wooed her with archery, standing behind her so close their entire bodies touched, as he trained her to position every part of her body to aim for perfect precision, a skill she has transferred to her own sport of tennis.

“That straight-shooting archer can hit a bulls-eye on anything.  As long as you don’t make it too complicated for him,” Jasmine chuckles, “like trying to create a ‘truly new new’.”

            “But he stuck with your marriage counselor?” Gabbie asks.

            “Yes, because I liked him so much.”  Jasmine honors Tim’s willingness to accept a counselor she likes, even if he had to consider creating something new.

            “It was my mom who really wanted us to get a new counselor, though.  A Christian one.” Jasmine tells her friends her mom reminded her of what Jesus said about divorce.  Jasmine smiles and moves in closer to her friends to tell them how she replied. “’To the male religious leaders in the first century, Mom?  You really think that’s what he’d say to me?”  Jasmine shakes her head as she recalls the conversation and relays her mom’s reply that Jesus’ words were “timeless.”

            “I said, ‘Some of Jesus’ words were timeless.  Some of his words were cultural.”  Leaning on her right arm on the table, Jasmine tells her friends what she said Jesus did say that was timeless.  “No one can put new wine into old wine skins.”

Mindy is sitting fully back into her chair with her arms are folded in front of her chest.  She smiles at Jasmine with a single soft nod.  Jasmine can tell her singer-actress friend is imitating Simon Cowell, with his classic look of “Well done.  I didn’t think you could pull it off, but you did.”  Still mimicking Simon Cowell, Mindy moves forward into the table, rests her crossed arms onto the table, and looks straight at Jasmine.  “Is it actually ‘new wine’ if you’re returning to the person you’ve been all along?”

“The true me,” Jasmine nods.  “She’s hard to find beneath all the layers of what other people say I should be and what I should think.”

“Have you found her?” Kristin asks.

“I haven’t known her since I was in the fifth grade.”  Jasmine shakes her head.  “I let my family, my church, and my community define who I am, and I married into that definition of me. That’s who I call ‘old wine.  With each layer I peel off, I find another.  It’s just as Alice says of her Wonderland: ‘curious and curiouser’ this rabbit hole is.”

Mindy nods, soft, quiet nods, all Mindy.  No more Simon Cowell.

            “A rabbit’s hole is windy and unpredictable,” Jasmine continues.  That’s a game an archer won’t play.

“The rock archer probably doesn’t play divorce either,” Gabbie says.  “What made him decide he wants divorce too?”

            “He heard my heresies.”

            “Heresies?” Mindy scrunches her eyes.

            “That’s what he calls them.”  Jasmine tells her friends she decided to be no-holds-bar open with him and told him what she was learning about Eve, women, the church, what she’s found the Bible to actually say, and about God, even the sinister way God is portrayed in the Bible.  “I told him in fifth grade I wanted to know why Noah let God drown the world, and that I gave Joshua got an ‘F’ forcommitting genocide.

            “How did he take it?” Mindy asks with sensitivity.  Simon Cowell has left the room.

            “He asked me who I am.  Said he doesn’t know anymore.” Jasmine takes a sip of her daiquiri.  “I asked him if he loves the new me.” 

“He took on Rhett Butler’s voice and said, ‘Frankly, my dear, no.’” Tim shook his head, closed the door, and went for a walk.

A week later, Jasmine confessed to Tim that her questions were deep, and to be married, she needs a man who loves her for asking them and no matter what she finds.  “Then I told Tim I know of one, Davie, and that I’ve fallen in love with him.”

            Jasmine takes a long sip of her drink.  “Tim was hurt and cynical.  He said Davie would never come back and I need to get over him.  I said even still, he’s sparked something in me that isn’t going away.”

            The friends sit silent.  “He went to shoot some arrows and was gone at the archery field all day.  They close it at sundown, and he didn’t make it home until one in the morning.”

            Tim might be stubborn, but he’s a good guy.  Everyone likes him.  Kristin says quietly, “This must be hard for him.”

            Jasmine nods, feeling grief.  She wants him to be okay, and she wants to be okay too.  Could there be an easier way?

To be with Tim, Jasmine has to stop caring about what’s deepest in her heart.  Tim thinks he is supposed to be deepest in her heart, but he isn’t.  Even Davie isn’t.  She longs for Davie, but there are passions within her that run deeper than both men.

“Remember my obsession with that curse to Eve, ‘you will long for your man’?” Jasmine looks Mindy, who nods.  “And I thought the curse is the woman thinking she needs a man to be complete?” (Explained more in her journal here.) Mindy nods again. 

“I know the key now: know myself and live it.”

“That’s profound,” Kristin nods, “but I understand.  We’re incomplete when we try to be someone else.”

“We need to quit trying to please everyone else, like me listening to my mom who wants me married by 30.”  Mindy muses.  “I wonder if my mom doesn’t feel complete herself and has never realized that a woman can be complete without a man.”

“Harmonizing our inner masculine and feminine,” Gabbie nods, reminding her friends of what she’s said about the harmony of the individual human’s inner masculine part with the inner feminine part.  “Our problem is everyone else keeps telling us who they think we’re supposed to be, so we can’t merge these two parts of ourselves.”

            “If I can do that,” Jasmine muses, “Can I know myself and live it?”  

           "You sure can," Gabbie nods.  "Read Women who Run with the Wolves.  You are running, Girl!  With the wolves.  Keep on running, and don't turn back."

           Jasmine opens into a triumphant smile.  She hasn't heard of the book Gabbie just mentioned, but she she'll check it, and she knows her friends understand.  She can think at odds with them, discover whatever she does, and they will always be with her.  She might still long for Davie, but, with or without him, she know herself, live as herself, and be complete.

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

Continue to Liberating Eve

Start at Jasmine's recent discoveries

Follow Davie's story: here 1st, here 2nd and here 3rd 

The Quest not Taken

     Dear Readers,

While I am actively updating Jasmine’s Discoveries,  complete with links to the selections already written pertaining to the discoveries Jasmine has already made, I, her author, wish to share some of the factors relevant to her quest into Eve, and the overall story of Adam and Eve, which she will not be discovering, even though I, her author, believe them.  For example, I, Jasmine’s author, believe the “Adam” figure and the “Eve” figure represent Jung’s “animus,” the unconscious masculine, and the “anima,” the unconscious feminine, within every human being.

Jasmine, however, is not going there, due to her method of investigation.  Jasmine is choosing to investigate the person of Eve and of the overall story at the beginning of Genesis in the manner she was taught as an Evangelical Christian.  By reading the story in the way she was taught to read the Bible, Jasmine makes some very astonishing discoveries.  For example, the most sinister character in the story of what Evangelicals term “The Fall” is God Himself.  This character, called by the masculine/feminine/plural name Elohim in the original Hebrew, forbids Adam and Eve from learning (knowledge) what Elohim sees as wrong (evil), severely punishes them when they learn what Elohim sees as evil, and then in a later tradition, many millennia later, calls upon them to learn the very same thing that Elohim had previously forbidden! (Heb 5:14)

As absurd as this sinister Elohim interpretation may sound, it follows the literal method of interpretation Evangelicals are taught to read the Bible, and part of my purpose as Jasmine’s author, is to expose some of the troublesome tenants of Evangelical Christianity by using its own tool: a literal interpretation of the Bible.

For now, permit me, Jasmine’s author, to separate myself from her by sharing what is not part of her quest, but is critical to my own understanding of the Adam and Eve story.  Here begins a future selection in Just like Eve that will introduce Jasmine’s discoveries . . . 

Jasmine’s Journal: “What is ‘The Fall’?”

        Raised in Evangelical Christianity, Jasmine was unaware of the many traditions all over the globe that tell a similar story of a time when humans were at one with a divine force and then separated from this divine force.  Nor did she realize that while these traditions grieve this separation, only her own tradition so severely places the blame for this separation upon humans.

        Nor was Jasmine familiar with the extensive myths, also in almost every spiritual tradition, of serpent or dragon imagery, a force that many traditions demonstrate as powerful, dangerous, awe-some, and -- if faced properly, with bravery and purity – a route toward a spiritual state akin to the Christian concept of “salvation.”                                                           

        Nor even was Jasmine aware of the origin of her tradition’s interpretation of the story it calls “The Fall,” from Augustine, based on skimpy scriptural evidence, limited logic, and his own sexual hang-ups.  According to Augustine’s obscure logic, Adam and Eve were responsible for ushering into Humanity the concept come to be known as “Original Sin.”  (For just how sexually messed up and, more importantly, illogical Augustine was in his development of his concept of “Original Sin,” see chapters 5 and 6 of Stephen Greenblatt’s The Rise and Fall of Adam and Eve.)

Nor did Jasmine consider that this concept of “Original Sin” conveniently led the Catholic Church to scare its congregants with a terrifying image of an afterlife, from which they could save themselves should they generously donate their earnings to the Church.

Nor was she aware of the psychological interpretation of Adam and Eve as the unconscious masculine and the unconscious feminine, Jung’s animus and anima, that reside within each human.  (While either the animus or the anima are likely to predominate, I, the author, see both residing in each one of us.)

Nor was Jasmine aware that centuries prior to Augustine, the Jewish scholar and philosopher Philo had already presented an interpretation remarkably similar to Jung’s, and that Philo’s interpretation remains to this day in many contemporary Jewish traditions.

No, Jasmine was uninformed about all of these interpretations and contexts.  However, her tradition had taught her to carefully read the Bible, and to read it closely, regularly, and literally.

Finally, Jasmine was disturbed.  No, she was was mad, inflamed.  A quick, uninvestigated assumption that she had tempted the church youth pastor had cast her from church.  This assumption had, in fact, unbiblically cast her out, based on the omitted second half of 2 Tim 2:22, calling not for separation, but connection, as long as one is working to keep lust away, which both she and Davie had promised to do.

Jasmine had been violated.  Jasmine was mad.  Jasmine had also heard a mysterious inner voice prompting her to find out who Eve is and to overturn “centuries of misunderstanding.”  Jasmine’s quest had led to some astonishing discoveries, for which she was now ready to record into her journal . . .

 See Jasmine’s Discoveries, now updated

 © 2020 by karina.  Please use with permission or a link to this blog post

Reposting Introducing "Just like Eve"

Originally posted in April, 2020.  Reposting.

Breaking from its traditional non-fiction format, whispers of mystery is currently following Karina’s fictional novel, Just like Eve. Karina began the themes explored here in 2008, in a non-fiction book she titled The Feminine Mystery, alluding to Betty Frieden’s 1963 classic, The Feminine Mystique, which explores what Frieden calls “the problem that has no name” -- a problem Karina believes is Eve’s second curse to desire her (earthly) man, not sexually, but as a completion to her.  As she kept discovering more and more, she realized her discoveries were too controversial for non-fiction, and decided to clothe her message in fiction. For years, she tried many storylines and faced much writer’s block. In late 2017, she birthed Just like Eve, mixing the main storyline with a backdrop she could write about with her own sport of tennis.

Storyline: Heroine Jasmine, 31, is judged several times in life for being "just like Eve," first in 5th grade for asking off-limits questions, like why Noah let God drown the world. Now she's judged again with the same "just like Eve" line. She and 30 year old Davie are both married to others, are USTA mixed doubles partners, attend the same church for which Davie is the youth pastor, fall for one another, briefly act upon it, and seek accountability from the church leadership. It backfires. The church can't handle it. Jasmine is kicked out of church, thought to be a temptress. But was she? And what about Eve? And what might Eve really stand for? Jasmine is on a quest . . .

Among her discoveries for humans in general are these: (a) Eve risked her life for something that could potentially build her character and was later encouraged (Heb. 5:14); (b) this choice opened her eyes, but brought her suffering; hence the Tree from which she ate could be called "The Tree of Duality" -- it brought suffering, but a move forward; and  (c) this duality brought the Illusion of Separation.  To transcend this Illusion of Separation is the true Human Quest.

Among her discoveries for women are these: (a) the word translated into English as "helper" in Gen 2:18 is the Hebrew word ezer, and a more accurate translation of ezer is Lifesaver; the patriarchal translators did not wish to call woman a "lifesaver" for the man; (b) Eve was cursed not only for childbearing, but also to "desire her man" (Gen 3:16); that's a desire literally for her earthly man, not for sex, but for the man himself to complete her; and (c) most chilling of all, Eve was also cursed to "be ruled by him" (Gen 3:16); yes, how many pastors admit a curse to Eve is that her man would "rule over" her?  And Jasmine kept making discoveries

Click to start Just like Eve at the beginning

© 2020 by karina.  All rights reserved.  Please use with permission or a citation that links to this blog.