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.
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