Translating for Daniel: Part 1 of "Translation Overload" sneak preview

Dear Readers, as promised in my last blog post, the following selection begins my own parallel story of Jasmine, the fictional heroine of the book I’m blogging, “Just like Eve.”  When I finish Jasmine’s story, I hope to write my own – without blogging it – for future publication.  This selection and the following ones will be an intermission from “Just like Eve” and will provide a sneak preview of my own story.  I also hope, eventually, to significantly develop and revise “Just like Eve” and self-publish it as an e-book. 

And now for the first part of what will probably be a four part introduction to my future memoire:

February, 2005

            Sunday morning began like any other: rushing to get our two toddlers, 15 months and 3 years, ready for church and into their nursery and preschool rooms and breathlessly making it in time for the second half of the worship songs.  Settling into my seat, I reminded myself to follow the New Year’s promise I had made two months earlier.  Our pastor had challenged us, in place of a typical New Year’s resolution, to pray for a character gift.  I took him up on it, already knowing the one I needed, from 1 Peter: a quiet and gentle spirit.  Maybe that could get me off Prozac.  My children were sometimes a delight and other times overwhelming.  My older child, frequently throwing himself into rages, threw me into them too, and I was terrified I would one day lose it and hurt him.  Upon hearing my story, my doctor determined me to have Postpartum Depression and prescribed the drug of the day.  It helped, but I hated it.  Please, God, get me off this drug.

A long-time member of our church, Tom, retired, 70s, was invited up to the podium.  He introduced himself as part of a multi-church short-term mission team headed to Venezuela.  My ears perked up.  I had gone on house-building short-term missions to Mexico, and I had kept hearing of other mission opportunities, mostly in Asia and Africa, but I had been yearning for one to the country where I had lived at the very young age of one to four: Brazil.  As a bordering country, Venezuela was close.  My interest was sparked.

“The church is growing Venezuela,” he said.  Missionaries from our denomination had recently trained a few young, new pastors who were leading four new churches the missionaries had planted.  To assist the fledgling churches, four teams would head to the new churches for three weeks in May.  Could I make myself free in May?  The pastor of each church would lead each team to meet with families who had requested prayer; after prayer, the teams would invite the families to come to church.  I preferred to meet physical needs, like food and housing.  My interest was waning.

Tom invited any of us interested in the trip to talk with him after the service.  Then he added one important special request: a fourth translator.  With four churches, four translators were needed.  Only three were on board.  My interest was reignited. 

Translator?  Could I do that?  I had studied Spanish for five years and had studied abroad in Oaxaca, Mexico, enough to achieve some proficiency -- a decade earlier.   Could I be up to the task now?  

It’s you.  An unfamiliar voice from outside of me, yet inside of me, and seemingly so intimately close, whispered.  What is that? You’re the fourth translator.  Who is that?  

The voice spoke with a confidence I lacked, but I mustered the courage to find Tom after church.  I said my Spanish was rusty, but I’d take two weeks to consider it. 

Could we afford the trip?  In May?  I’d have to take spring quarter off from my new position teaching at the university on the non-tenure track (NTT).  But spring is the quarter with the fewest classes, and I was the newest NTT instructor.  I didn’t yet know if I would be offered a spring quarter contract.  My husband and I trusted the money could work out.  I was more worried about the Spanish. 

My two weeks was up.  Still hesitant, I found Tom.  Had a fourth translator been found?  “No.  Can you come?” he pleaded.  “Please, we need you.” 

I bought a bunch of children’s books in Spanish, mostly fairy tales and others I knew well, so they’d be easy to follow, and I read them aloud during bedtime story time to my children.  They didn’t care in the least bit that I was reading to them in Spanish, were as engrossed in the stories as always, seemed to follow them just as well, and I wondered whether they had even noticed that I had switched languages. 

Just as that soft little whisper encouraging me to be the fourth translator was a sneak preview of more to come, so were the memories returning of my earliest childhood in São Paulo, Brazil.  While reading to my children, who were the same ages I was while living there, I remembered sitting on my own mom’s lap at our little kitchen table in São Paulo, while she was reading Monica stories to me in Portuguese.  Monica was Brazil’s Charlie Brown, though a girl and very precocious, the favorite cartoon among Brazilian children of the 1970s.  She’s much more like today’s Dora: intelligent, sweet, and curious, but she gets herself into more trouble, and, miraculously, she always gets herself out.  I was also remembering one of the Monica stories when she and her friends built a rocket.  I soaked in the memory, not yet knowing it was the first of what would become many of my toddlerhood. 

But I also grieved it, sometimes fighting back tears while reading to my children.  I had lost Portuguese.  When I was six, Portuguese was no longer lovingly spoken in my home, and I lost it.  Hence, my own decision to read to my children in Spanish was bolstered, and this language, at least was returning, slowly, but coming.  Nevertheless, I felt entirely unprepared to be the sole translator for the church I would be sent to. 

* * * * *

 I had nothing to worry about.  I was translating for Daniel.  At 32, my age, he was young to be pastoring a church, but so were they all of these new churches.  I also soon learned he was engaged to be married.  I could follow him as easily as my kids could follow our bedtime stories.  I didn’t need to understand Daniel’s Spanish because I understood him.  Watching his expressions, his movements, his mouth form the words, and his eyes, everything that came from him landed into me crystal clear, whether I was on official duty, or we two were alone walking between appointments, or connecting with other teammates during off-times. 

            Some of these were fun banter, like the afternoon while our team was at the home of one of our hosts, waiting for a meal to be served, and a few of us – Daniel, me, and the 20-something Venezuelan male team-members – were hanging out in an open area outside the dining room.  The young team-members, wanting to learn some English, were pointing to various things around.  They started by pointing to some of the objects around us: the water jug, the carpet, the cat.  Then they began asking for some descriptions.  One pointed to my hair and asked, “Rubia?”  My hair is strawberry blond, but I made the translation easy and replied, “Red.”  Another pointed to some of the older team-members who were standing away and engaged in another conversation, and asked, “Viejo?”   I chuckled. “Old.”  Another pointed to himself and asked, “Guapo?”  This time, I laughed, and replied with a complementary tone of appreciation for his physique.  “Haaandsome!  Gooood lookin’!”  Then another pointed to Daniel, tall and thin, and asked, “Flaco?”  Daniel turned to him with a shocked face and smiled a teasing rebuke, waving his index finger back-and-forth in a clear cross-cultural gesture of “No, you don’t!”  He turned back to me and pointed to me.  “No, Karina!”   Then he pointed again to the young teammate in another teasing reproach.  The young men were laughing.  I was giggling.  Daniel commanded our attention. ”¡Karina!”  He pointed to me with a strong command in his voice.  “¡Soy tu pastor!  ¡No!”  I giggled and turned to the young man.  “Lo siento, no puedo.”  I’m sorry, I can’t.  I motioned, palm up, toward Daniel.  “Es mi pastor.”  He’s my pastor.  I looked back to them again.  “El me manda silencio.  Lo siento.”  He orders me silence.  I’m sorry.  I clasped my fingers together and spoke very apologetically.  

Daniel took on a triumphant smile.  “Gracias, Karina.”  I nodded, came up close to his ear, and whispered into it.  “No problema, Skinny.”  He threw up his head, chuckling.  Then he turned to me with a wink.  “¡Recuerdas!  Silencio.  Soy tu pastor.”  Remember!  Silence.  I am your pastor.  I giggled, stopped myself, got serious, put myself into attention, and saluted him.  “¡Si, Señor!”  Smiling, he nodded, then bowed his head in solemn gratitude.  Then he looked back up at me with a warm smile. 

* * * * *

             On other occasions, like after I shared a description of my home in São Paulo or when he showed me a neighborhood dump, we spoke no words and communicated just through our eyes.  Our familiarity was magical.  Did I know him?  

I also felt this with a few of my other Venezuelan hosts, particularly with the head elder, Samuel, a new grandfather.  It was to his home that we went for our first lunch.  The meal was simple but ushered in what I would soon call my cascada de recuerdos: waterfall of memories.  I began with what I usually do: the salad, this one a simple one of carrots, cucumbers, tomatoes, and a little onion, lightly seasoned and without dressing, as none was needed.  The special entrée was a small portion of savory chicken.  But something unexpected happened when I took a bite of the black beans.  Tears rolled down my face.  My North American partners were embarrassed.  These tears were unexpected to us all, me especially.  The black beans tasted very familiar, but with a taste I didn’t even know was so familiar.  I learned later the South American way of cooking black beans:  they are soaked overnight, cook for many hours before they are served, and are seasoned with onion, garlic, salt, finely cut bacon, and a little vegetable oil.  At the time, I didn’t know what made them so distinct, just that I had known this taste, had loved this taste, but had not experienced it for a very long time. 

In the coming days, more familiar tastes arrived, along with the familiar sounds on the streets, the sights in the neighborhoods, and the interiors of people’s homes.  Memories from my early childhood poured like a giant waterfall, my cascada de recuerdos, and kept building, filling up my mind with my very early childhood into a remarkably colorful and vibrant picture, one that explained my life and the struggles I faced in kindergarten and first-grade with a culture shock unknown to my parents and teachers.  These will be shared in the future memoire, but some of them are already blogged in my first story of Venezuela and Brazil, especially in Part 2. 

My North American team-mates held a mixture of curiosity and embarrassment over my memories; my Venezuelan team-mates were charmed; Samuel showed special interest; Daniel was especially drawn in.  I kept sharing them with him.  Too many. 

He excused himself when I wanted to share yet another one.  Later, we sat down to lunch, directly across from one another.  I admitted under my breath, while looking down at my un-eaten plate of food, that I was sad he didn’t come to see what I wished to share.  He put his hand on mine, then tapped it, and gently said, “Karina,” then he made sure he made eye contact with me.  “Lo siento.”  I’m sorry.  His eyes said the rest.  I like you too much.

Click here to read Part 2: Understanding from Samuel

Embarking on the Hero's Journey while Married

           Alas! To be human!  We find ourselves in a constant battle between our need for security, our longing for freedom, and the authenticity of our hearts and souls.  These run surface to deep with security demanding our immediate attention, then into our longing for freedom, and eventually, if we're blessed, into our deepest, most evasive layer: our most authentic selves, what I will call our “heart-soul identities.”  Beyond this already challenging set of forces, we further complicate our battle with our shadow self (our pride, surface-level desires, ignorance, and so forth), which do provide additional clues to our heart-soul identities, but these are clues and not answers.  To discover our heart-soul identities beneath these pressures is no easy feat.  It is what mythologist Joseph Campbell has famously called the "Hero's Journey."

           Meanwhile, we’re also called to be responsible, and not only for ourselves, but also for those around us, some of whom may still plead for security.  This becomes especially tricky in marriage.   We marry for many reasons, usually in our youth, and before we’ve transcended into a place where we can embark on the journey into our heart-soul identities.  Our deeper longings rise up later, and when they do, our need for security starts to fade, while the journey takes center stage.  By divine mercy, this process often happens with synchronicity: both partners around the same time are blessed with the chance to grow together into the new people they’re discovering themselves to be. 

          But what if this synchronicity does not happen for both partners?  What if we begin it while others still wish for us to keep them secure?  Or, even trickier, what if they will be really hurt if we long for freedom?  Not wishing to hurt the people we love, we are faced with a true quandary.  Do we follow our authentic self and embark into the journey's murky depths?   Or do we provide the security they are crying for?  Do we show them that we don’t wish to hurt them by sacrificing our deeper calling?

            No single answer can solve this quandary, and it is this one that Jasmine and Davie are each facing in the book I’m blogging Just like Eve.  I made my job as their author easier by making both of their marriages childless.  Should they choose to follow their deepest selves, leave their marriages, and potentially, though not necessarily, come together, they will not be revoking any responsibilities to any children that neither of them has.  They may, however, be revoking their responsibility to their spouses, to the vow they’ve been conditioned to believe God wants them to keep, and to their own wish to avoid hurting their spouses.  As their author, I had also made a promise to myself from the beginning to keep all four spouses well-intentioned.  There was to be no easy out for either Jasmine or Davie.

            These two also face yet another complexity: the distinction between their surface-level desire for one another (often called “lust”) and their genuine soul-bond at the root of their heart-soul identities.  The church can see only what it would call their lust, and it can’t see their soul-bond as part of something much deeper.  The Hero’s Journey each of them is beginning (for Jasmine to be free to “think at odds” and for Davie to be free to follow his own dreams) are supported by one another, but not by their spouses.  Therefore, their relationship is tied into their authenticity, but their marriages are not, something their families and church communities are very unlikely to understand.  Both Jasmine and Davie must discover it for themselves and search for a path toward it that still honors their spouses.  What a task I have given to myself as an author!

 

And little did I know I might walk into some of this myself.  My own marriage is coming to an end, officially in March.  Naturally, my own life story at this critical moment complicates my work of completing Jasmine’s story.  It seems fitting then, to follow the suggestion of my writer friends, who have been asking for a spin-off into my own story.  Next month, I’ll do so for the portion from my own life that is not recent, but goes far back, and is the only autobiographical parallel that was planned: the “no-contact” order.

 

I will be quiet about any recent parallels, except what I will now share in this single paragraph. After a lengthy time of soul searching and marriage counseling, my husband and I made a mutual decision to shift from marriage to friendship in keeping with mentor Ethan’s perspective on a “successfully completed marriage.”  Of this, I can express only a piece of my own part of the decision.  Similar to the quandary facing both Jasmine and Davie, to support and celebrate who my husband is and how he is wired, I had to stifle an important part of who I am and how I am wired, including the mystic within me.  Just as Jasmine says her husband Tim is like a rock and she is more like a ball rolling further and further away, I am also a rolling ball.  My husband is far more politically progressive than Jasmine’s husband Tim, and mine is less like a rock than he is a branch on a tree, able to sway in the wind, but still needing to be firmly fixed to the tree, which for him remains tied to the evangelical tradition that we were both married into.  Now separated from him and almost divorced, I am now finally finding myself free to identify myself as a mystic.  I no longer need to straddle, as expressed in 2013 in The Evangelical and the Mystic.  The mystic's journey dives into waters that for a traditional evangelical, at least within the context of marriage, are too complex, too "heretical," ("other thinking") -- which, like "liberal" ("open-minded") should be a good thing?  I will always love the man I married as my soul-brother, a bond you can read about in the same story that introduces the pastor for the autobiographical premise to Just like Eve.

 

This is all I will say about anything recent.  Next month, I’ll start sharing the story of my connection with the pastor behind the no-contact order that I received for the same reason Jasmine received hers: a mutual attraction with a pastor and a request for accountability.  This order is the premise of the storyline for “Just like Eve,” and it’s one I’ve imagined could have two responses from critics.  Some will shrug it off, as I received quite a few apathetic responses: of course I had been cast out.  Why should I expect different?  (Uhhh, what the Bible says . . . ?)  Others will cry out against the premise as “unrealistic.”  They might say no church would ever order a woman out of church for a mutual attraction with one of its pastors, let alone if both she and the pastor, individually and privately, took the very steps the church teaches its adherents to take: to request support and prayer from the church leaders.  They’ll claim it couldn’t happen.  I beg to differ.  It happened to me.  I’ve heard I’m not the only one.  In my case, it wasn’t the pastor’s church, which dearly loved me, who gave the order, but the leader of the church team of my ministry.  And I didn’t even get a kiss out of the deal.  (Dang!)

 

In fact, any of the instances in “Just like Eve” of church patriarchy that are most likely to make readers cringe (the no-contact order, the prayer, and Dr. Dobson’s reply to Jasmine's inquiry) are all autobiographical and nearly verbatim to the messages I received from their counterparts (including the actual Dr. James Dobson).  My own leaders meant no harm, but their fear prevented them from a response in keeping with biblical principles and within the spirit of humanity.

 

You’ve already met the pastor from my own parallel story, and if not, you can do so now, while also discovering my soul-brother bond with the man I married and why I married a soul-brother rather than a soul-mate, and ready yourself for my own parallel story to the premise, coming here in March . . .  

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

Update, a few days later: I began drafting the story a few weeks ago, but to really tell it, I need to relive the memories.  I'm reading through my old journals . . . breathing through my old journals.  I may or may not have a piece of this story ready by March.  We'll see.  As all of us have been learning through this pandemic, we can't expect or plan for anything, can we?  

Autobiographical links:

The pastor for the autobiographical parallel and soul-brother husband

The Evangelical and the Mystic

Just like Eve links:

Introduction to Just like Eve

The no-contact order

Jasmine like a ball rolling away from Tim the rock (& her inquiry to Dr. Dobson)

Ethan on successfully completed marriages

Davie kissing Jasmine

The elder’s “prayer” over Jasmine

Hibernation

Dear readers, in case you are following the book I'm blogging, Just like Eve, I am close to completion, have hoped to post a selection for it at least every other month (alternating with another post on off months), and this month would be the month for the next selection.  However, when I began writing the book in late 2017, I was not expecting I might walk into portions my own fiction.  Through much loss and change, I find myself paralyzed, mute.  Perhaps I am in a season of hibernation.  At the beginning of this month, an astonishing downfall of snow collapsed upon my region.  I can't call it a "snowstorm," for it was too quiet, too gentle, too beautiful.  But when we all woke up, we found ourselves buried.  I reflected on the metaphor of it for me, and here's what came . . . 

The creatures of fur follow the signs of Nature

We creatures of skin run to and fro

no matter Her works of beauty or terror

 

Snow coming, forecasters warn

The furs, ready, hibernate

The skins, deaf, go about their day

 

All afternoon, snow surprises

dumping,

dumping,

softly,

quietly,

deceptively

 

The day still young

the sky turns dark

Snowflakes stream,

glistening the blackening sky

in lights of white

haloed in orange

 

Any who slow themselves

who sit

who watch

fuse with the flakes in stillness

 

5 am, calls go out

Schools are closed

Businesses are closed

Roads are blocked

All are snowed in

 

What if calls come the night before?

Or before quitting time the day before?

When the creatures of fur,

with no forecasters,

are already nestled in hibernation?

 

“Take My yoke upon you,”

says the master,

“For My load is light, and My burden is easy.”

Racing about, we wonder how

 

Could we hear the wisdom of the furs

who follow the signs of Nature

and work when it is time to work

play when it is time to play

rest when it is time to rest

and who know there is a season for outings

and a season for hibernation?

 

I of skin,

used to the race,

am paralyzed, mute

Could I learn from the furs?

Could I learn

of a time to speak,

a time be silent,

a time to walk,

a time to rest,

and a season to hibernate?

Winter Solstice 2021: What a Year

 

          Oh 2021!  What a year.  😳 Have any of us made it through these past two years without some battle scars?  May we have mercy on one another, as each of us is not in “PTSD,” but “DTSD,” During Traumatic Stress Disorder.  

           In my own life this year, I faced two very great losses and changes: my teaching career, much sooner than anticipated, from which I was thankfully able to retire, and a separation from my husband.

            Was COVID involved?  As an accelerator and exacerbator, it was, and I wrote a poem, “Live Together 24/7” that started like this: 

Live together 24/7

But don’t go anywhere 

Don’t do anything 

 Move your office into your bedroom

            Yes, we did move my office and my classroom into our bedroom.  The kids had their rooms while doing school online; my husband had our little office which he had already been using; and my building was considered “COVID condemned” and we were ordered in an email typed in all caps to stay out of our offices and go there only to pick up or drop stuff off.  Since the stories of both my career and my marriage are complex, I’ll just let my office and classroom in our bedroom serve as an apt metaphor for the challenges faced in both of them.  These challenges were dove-tailing and happening all at once.  What a year.  However, I found myself like the child in the “Footprints” poem carried by a heavenly force from Above.  

        What else have I learned?  Well, I’ve compiled a list, and you’ll see it closes with “Let yourself mess up with numbers 1-9!”

Lessons from 2021

1.   Let yourself have mercy on yourself, and on everyone else.  We are all fighting DTSD – During Traumatic Stress Disorder.  Let’s applaud ourselves for making it through not only 2020, but also 2021, and give mercy to ourselves and to everyone else too.

2.   Let yourself feel whatever you feel.  Maybe what you feel is inconvenient.  Maybe it messes with your morality.  Maybe it could even bring pain to someone you love.  Sit with your feelings.  Listen to them.  Try to avoid acting upon them or speaking about them until you can minimize any harm they could cause, and if you mess up on that too, forgive yourself.  But don’t bury your feelings – no matter how inconvenient, “immoral” you think they are, and no matter the temporary pain.

3.   Let yourself be quiet.  Rest from the struggles and quiet yourself.  In time and with much patience, you will hear.  And once you begin to hear, let yourself trust.

4.   Let yourself release whatever is not you – those layers of conditioning sent into you by everyone else over many years and their expectations of you.  Release what is not you so you can begin to discover what really is you.

5.   Let yourself learn from the obstacles of your life.  Obstacles are there for a reason, and they carry a lesson in them.  What does the Spirit wish to teach you from your trials?

6.   Let nothing be forced – even your marriage or your career.  Follow the Flow of Life, and let the Spirit guide you.  You might discover the Spirit flowing into unfamiliar territory, but try not to force the flow, and if it flows into a new place, trust it.

7.   Let yourself have the courage to choose what others might not understand, once you’ve given yourself the space to watch where the Flow is heading.  

8.   Let yourself find new grass.  Sometimes, the grass is greener on the other side.  But you might not see the flowers blooming over there yet.  You might have to lie down on that grass and breathe a while and let yourself heal.

9.   Let yourself be the new authentic self you are discovering yourself to be.  Not everyone will like the new you, and many won’t know how to relate to the new you.  Let that be okay.

10.  Let yourself mess up on numbers 1-9!  We’re learning.  We can’t get all of this right while we’re learning.  We all have a learning curve.  Let that be okay too.

Winter Solstice 2020 

A Head-shaking Lot of Change

 Black Bear Diner, Colorado Springs, June 23, 2012

         “Ethan, remember when you asked me, ‘What will you do?’”  Ethan remembers well from his first lunch with David in March.  The elders of the church where Ethan’s former intern has been serving as a youth pastor had kicked David’s mixed doubles partner out of church for a kiss she and David, both married, shared.  Ethan also learned from his second lunch with David that the elders were not budging on their decision.  All Ethan knows now comes from David’s quick phone call that he has “a head-shaking lot of change” in his life. 

“My mind, at the time you asked, was building a case for the elders to bring her back,” David continues.  “I didn’t know the answer to your question would be that I would quit my job, separate from my wife, and find ways to start pursuing my own dreams.” 

“That is ‘a head-shaking lot of change.’”  Ethan smiles.  He’s cupping his right cheek with his thumb and index, middle, and ring fingers and speaks with calm objectivity.  This is why David trusts the former pastor.  If Ethan is ever agitated by anything David says that is out of the church’s box, he never shows it. 

            “How do you like teaching, Ethan?” 

            “I love it.  Why do you ask?” 

            “Cheyenne Mountain High School is looking for a Health and PE teacher.  Preferably one who can become their new tennis coach.” 

            “And you want to leave the ministry.”  Ethan replies in a neutral voice. 

“Truthfully, I want to return to my childhood dream of teaching and coaching.”  David confides that out of laziness, he gave up on his own dreams and has been living everyone else’s -- his parents’, his church’s, and now his wife Pam’s.  Thankfully, he kept his own dream on the back-burner and minored in Health Sciences and took some Education courses.  Cheyenne Mountain’s principal told him they’d let him earn his teaching certificate over the next few summers. 

“You need to pursue this, David.”  Ethan admits that he had never seen that spark in David’s eyes during David’s internship, and he shares his own satisfaction of his move from pastoring to teaching Hebrew at college.  “Sometimes university politics are vicious, but church rules can be worse.” 

David’s face pales and he looks down at his plate with eyes of sorrow.  He hadn’t realized how far out of keeping Quail Canyon Community Church is with his own values, until Jasmine had approached the church leadership for prayer and accountability after their kiss.  Instead of providing it, they sent Jasmine out of church and told David to quit mixed doubles.  “I’m not going to critique Quail Canyon, but their way isn’t mine anymore--” David’s voice trails off, “--or maybe ever was . . . ?” 

            “You’re finding what you most treasure.  Keep listening to your heart.” 

            “Thank you, Ethan.  Most people, especially in the church, are trying to force me to live what they treasure, or just believe in.”

“That’s because most people live lives of conformity.  They may appear like individuals on the outside.  They dress themselves unique, dye their hair unique, make jokes that sound unique, and put on an exterior of individuality, but they live a life that conforms to whatever group they find themselves in, and Christians are no different.” 

“Conformity.”  David pierces his eyebrows together in concentration.  “Obedience.”  He speaks the word “obedience” almost like a question, with his eyebrows still pierced together.  “It’s interesting that you say that, Ethan, because I’ve spent a lot of time pondering the church’s obsession with obedience as a moral imperative, when sometimes they are asking us to obey the wrong thing.”  

Ethan gives a soft nod while David continues. “I wonder if ‘obedience’ is another word for ‘conformity.’” 

“It can be.  Not always of course.  But conformity, and even too much obedience, can be dangerous.  Hostages have been known to take on not on the mannerisms, but even the crimes of their captors.  Holocaust survivor Viktor Frankl described that sort of thing among some of the prisoners who were given guard duties in his book Man’s Search for Meaning.   They are an extreme example, of course, but conformity in much more mundane ways is the norm, and it’s been ingrained into us since childhood.  To overcome it, we have to ‘become like little children’ again.” 

David replies that a return to childhood sounds refreshing.  By the time he was a teenager, he had wanted so much to be “good” that he had forced himself into ministry, forced himself into the tradition that had been handed to him, and then forced himself to love the woman who was pursuing him because that was “easier” than to risk rejection with the woman he really wanted. David shakes his head in regret.  He can’t go backwards and change his choice in college; nor can he change his choice to marry Pam; but he can go forward before children enter the scene. 

Ethan tries to catch David’s eyes from his bowed head to reassure him he can move forward into whichever direction he is led.  “God did not design marriage to be a trap.” 

David lifts his head and returns Ethan’s gaze.  Go on.  “Marriage is a tangible, external symbol of an internal mystery, the union of the masculine and the feminine within each individual.  Since our external life mirrors our internal self, generally when two partners work on their marriage, they also each grow on the inside too.  Has this been true for you?” 

            David affirms that it has and that it has also helped him rediscover who he really is.  He adds that he and his wife have been seeing a Christian marriage counselor.  “He’s intent on saving our marriage, but not on listening to us.” 

            “Example?” 

“Both Pam and I have been dissatisfied in our marriage, and our counselor insists our dissatisfaction must be about pride or selfishness.  But we’ve been working through that and have both been learning how to love each other better.  But I’ve learned that the heart of my dissatisfaction is about truth: the truth of who I am, of who I love, of what led me into my marriage, of who I was then, and of who I am now.” 

            “A spiritual therapist, Maria Chandler said, ‘The more you wake up to who you are, the more unbearable it becomes to be who you are not.’” 

            David fixes his eyes on Ethan and color returns to his face.  “I needed to hear that.”  He takes a deep breath.  “Pam has told our counselor she married the man I was pretending to be, and she’s even tried to change that man I was pretending to be. I’m neither one.  She also admits the man we are learning I am is not the one she would choose to marry.” 

            Ethan nods with understanding.  “No fault divorce is true for some couples.” 

            A deep exhale runs through David’s body.  Finally, someone from the church, his senior pastor mentor no less, has admitted the legitimacy of his marital trials as no fault by either him nor his wife. 

            “The unified man,” Ethan muses.  “The one Paul called ‘the new man.’  The tradition that raised us both, David, is missing the gems of wisdom by interpreting as literal history stories that were designed to reveal the mysteries of the soul.” 

            “Like what?” 

            “Like the union of the opposites within.  These are first shown in the creation of Adam: from the dust -- the earth part -- and the breath of God -- the spirit part.” 

            “That sounds like the two opposing selves Paul talked about in Romans when he says he does what he doesn’t want to do and doesn’t do what he does want to do.  Maybe the earth part of his is in conflict with the spirit part of him?” 

            “Yes.  This is why I enjoyed mentoring you, David.  You’re quick, and you’re not stuck in what you were taught in seminary.  What a tragedy that Augustine missed this very important creation of our opposing parts within and claimed instead that men were born into ‘Original Sin.’”  Ethan pauses, puzzled.  “His hypothesis has been followed for millennia, yet the Bible presents us as humans in duality, just like Adam was.” 

            Ethan’s explanation resonates with David.  He shakes his head, remembering his seminary training with its paltry two scriptures attempting to support “Original Sin.”  He marvels that he had been pulled into a career that pressured him to teach concepts that made little sense to him. 

            “We see the metaphor of our two opposing selves again and again,” Ethan continues.  “Cain and Abel.  The twins Jacob and Esau.  Isaac and Ishmael.  Joseph and his brothers.  The notion of these competing selves continued in the early Christian church, but the strongest instances of it were in texts removed by the Council of Nicaea.  Did you know, David, that a highly credible gospel that was not included in the canonical Bible records Jesus to have said this . . . ?” 

            "When you make the two one, and when you make the inside like the outside and the outside like the inside, and the above like the below, and when you make the male and the female one and the same, so that the male not be male nor the female; and when you fashion eyes in the place of an eye, and a hand in place of a hand, and a foot in place of a foot, and a likeness in place of a likeness; then will you enter the kingdom."           

            David shakes his head.  “That statement is a little weird.  Where does it come from?” 

            “The Gospel of Thomas, Saying 22.”    

            “If most of that gospel sounds like that, I can see why they chose not to put it in.” 

            “Yes, the Gospel of Thomas is a list of riddles, sort of like Zen kaons.  They are not for the masses, so the Council of Nicaea probably decided to avoid confusing their parishioners.” 

            “It confuses me too.  What does it mean to you?” 

“I see it saying the Kingdom is about merging the two sides within ourselves into one.  The earth part and the spirit part, the external and the internal, the upper and the lower, and the masculine and the feminine.  This, to me, is the deeper meaning of ‘marriage’: marrying the two parts of ourselves within.”  

Ethan pauses, looks at his former intern, and adds that it also suggests this: “There is a feminine side within you who dreams, and a masculine side within you who acts.  If you suffocate the dreamer from dreaming, the actor can’t act.” 

“Then I’d better start acting on my dreams.”  David gazes out the window.  “That might be easier said than done.” 

“Most certainly,” Ethan affirms.  “But worth it.”

© 2021 by Karina.  All rights reserved.  Please use with permission and/or a link to this blog.

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Jasmine's Journal: Our Completion Within

Dear readers, if you are new to “Just like Eve,” the fictional book I began in 2017, click here for an overview.

June 4, 2012, Jasmine’s home in Colorado Springs, CO

      Tim’s not at ease with my questions, Jasmine writes into her journal.  

Last night, I admitted that I gave Joshua an “F” for committing genocide, and Tim looked at me with eyes that said, “Who are you?  Do I know you?”  I’m not sure he really does.  I haven’t let him know me because I was too busy trying to find “completion” with him.  But something struck me today: I am complete when I am me!

          Jasmine pulls up her pencil and pauses over her revelation.  She makes a vow, prays it, and records it into her journal: 

No more faking the true me.  Help me, Spirit, become complete by being my true self.

          She pauses again and reflects on the difference between how she feels about Davie and how she feels about the man she married, Tim.  Since she has been musing over the concept that perhaps the second curse to Eve – “you will desire your man” – was a curse because the woman feels that she needs to be “completed” by the man, Jasmine now considers something new: 

It’s neither Tim nor Davie who completes me.  Davie helps me be complete, but only because he lets me be me.  Actually, it’s me completing myself by finding myself.

          Jasmine lifts her pencil up to her mouth like a finger that says “shhhh.”  Something mysterious is brewing within her that knows this revelation changes everything.  She does not need a man to be complete.  She just needs one who lets her be herself.  First, of course, she needs to find herself, and this task appears to be baffling in its complexity, seeming to call for the removal of layer upon layer upon layer of conditioning.  She had been conditioned by her parents, her church, her teachers, her community, and seemingly everyone to think in a certain way, and when she thought differently, she was mocked and sometimes even scorned for “thinking at odds.”  Eventually, to make her life easier, Jasmine permitted the conditioning of everyone else’s thinking to permeate into her.  Without even realizing what was happening to her, she became a person she didn’t recognize anymore.  Nor even like.

A whisper comes to her: Remember what Gabbie said?   The film strip of her conversation with her friends at The Alley begins to roll, and she prays for help to remember.  Bit by bit, enough returns.  She recalls Gabbie saying we each carry within ourselves a feminine principle and a masculine principle within, and some spiritual traditions teach that the masculine principle is dead without the feminine principle, and the feminine principle can’t act without the masculine principle.  Gabbie’s summary now comes back: “our inner feminine and our inner masculine need to harmonize themselves with each other.  Unless both our inner masculine and our inner feminine are alive and well, we’re stuck.”

It’s not about human people who might have lived named Adam and Eve, Jasmine records into her journal.  It’s about finding wholeness within.  We discover ourselves complete when our masculine and feminine parts come together.

With this new insight, Jasmine is eager to re-read the text of Adam and Eve.  Will it shed any further light?  Remarkably, it does.  The story carries a theme of unity and separation.  Adam was one being, but he was formed from two parts: dust of the earth (his fleshly nature) and the breath of God (his spiritual nature), suggesting a duality and a separation.  Then a rib is removed from him to create Eve, and they become two beings.  But they still have unity: they are walking in Eden together with the Creator, united with this divine force.  Later, they eat from a tree called “knowledge of good and evil.”  Duality: “good” and “evil,” or forces that are separate.  Upon these forces, now separate, the man and the woman also find themselves separate from one other.  Or, at least, they see themselves that way, as “their eyes were opened.” Upon seeing differently, one of them blames the other: “She made me do it.”  Again, they see and feel as if they are separate.  Finally, they are sent from Eden and find themselves separate from this Creator.  The story begins with unity and ends with separation.  

But are they really separate? Jasmine wonders.  Is it simply that they see differently and think they are separate when they really aren’t?

Jasmine is beginning to land upon a concept that mystics throughout the ages have called “the illusion of separation.”  We really aren’t separate, but we think we are, and discovering our unity is part of what this life on Earth is designed to teach us.

Could it be, Jasmine wonders, that this experience of completion, of unity within, is what Jesus calls the kingdom of heaven?  Jesus makes this entrance sound so simple: we just need to become like little children.  Of course, he also adds in mysterious remarks, like telling us to make our eye single.  Peter is blunt, calling entrance into the kingdom a “fiery trial,” and Luke says it comes only by way of “many tribulations.”

Ironically, one of Jasmine’s tribulations is that the closer she feels she’s coming to a single eye, the more she confuses and upsets the man she made a life-long vow to.  Is that vow one of the layers of conditioning she needs to peel off?  She shudders at that notion.  That would make for a harrowing double tribulation of both her marital trial and the trial of shifting away from one of the most powerful forms of conditioning her culture enforces.  Both of these trials terrify her.  Yet another would be even worse: cutting off the process that has begun in her to become her true self.  She has begun to find herself irritated by her former self, the one who had adopted the thinking of other people who had told her what to think and how to think.  The only person within her that she can truly love is the authentic, complete one, the one who is finding truth and unity within herself.

When she met Davie, he let her think for herself, and some of the layers of conditioning began to come off.  For the first time since she was eleven, Jasmine has begun to discover her true self.  She marvels that she is also discovering the very completion she had been seeking, and thought she had needed from a man.  Perhaps she has begun to glimpse into the kingdom of heaven.

Jasmine’s mind is spinning so fast she’s stuck on what to write next into her journal.  But she closes with a question she had never anticipated: 

Could some of the tribulations into the entrance of the kingdom involve not only thinking, but even living, quite different than what is taught by the very churches who follow the teacher who pointed the way into the kingdom?

© 2021 by karina.  All rights reserved.  Please use with permission and/or a link to this blog post.

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