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

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

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

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

 

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

Davie’s Return, Part 1 conclusion:

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

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

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

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

Davie.

 

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

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

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

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

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

The same time as her divorce?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Most people don’t ask those questions.”

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

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

 “What don’t you believe?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Agape,” Jasmine smiles.

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

“Phileo.”

            “And one for affection.”

“Eros.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Jasmine’s heart stops.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Davie grins, “You’re just like Eve.”

No one could have paid her a finer complement.

Return to Davie's Return, Part 1

Return to Jasmine's most recent discoveries

Follow Davie's story, starting here 

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

Davie's Return, Part 1

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

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

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

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

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

Davie.

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

Continue to Davie's Return, Part 2

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

Start at Jasmine's most recent discoveries

Start the story from Davie's point of view

Jasmine's Journal: Liberating Eve

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

Colorado Springs, CO, August 5, 2012

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Continue to Davie's Return, Part 1 

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 

Misunderstanding with Pastor Tired (Part 4 of "Translation Overload" Sneak Preview)

Dear readers, this selection is the fourth and final part of a sneak preview to a future memoire I think I will call "Translation Overload."  To start from the beginning of this four-part series, click here.

 At home in Washington State, June, 2005

            “I think I have an exaggerated case of ‘reversed culture shock.’”  I had just sat down, awkwardly, in the chair before the senior pastor of my church, mid-50s, balding.  He’s a hiker in good shape, but has been asking the congregation for prayer over pain from a foot surgery gone wrong.  It’s late in the afternoon, 4:00, and his face looks worn.  Perhaps he is tired from a long day or suffering in his feet.  Had I been more wise and less desperate, I would have suggested we reschedule. 

I had planned my first line with him very carefully.  At least this idea – that disconcerting feeling upon one’s return from a mission to another country – could be a simple way to ease into the more challenging dialogue over the nightmares and the extrasensory I had been experiencing since returning from a three week mission trip to Venezuela.  I was about a month into a 3 ½ month period I would later call my “summer in the twilight zone.”  My friends, unable to provide the council and support I sought had urged me to make this appointment with our pastor to receive his more expert spiritual council.  

How was I to describe the remarkable myriad of the extrasensory I had begun to experience in Venezuela, then glorious, and now continuing, yet with terror?  In Venezuela, these had been beautiful: the waterfall of memories from my toddlerhood in Brazil, the aurora vision, and the loving whispers of mystery.  Now at home, these continue, but they are also tainted with painful memories, nightmares, migraines and vomiting, and demanding voices.  While the whispers of mystery are lovingly repeating Samuel’s words, ”Karina, tú tienes el poder” (you have the power) to encourage me away from the Prozac and toward the divine forces within me, other voices in a stronger volume are sending apocalyptic warnings and ordering me to pack suitcases of supplies for immediate evacuation from some sudden disaster.  Hoping Pastor Tired can reinforce the whispers of mystery encouraging me into divine strength, I forged my plan last night: omit any apocalyptic fears and begin with reversed culture shock, then move to the memories, then shift to the nightmares, and close with a request for council and prayer. 

            Pastor Tired looks blank.  No nod.  No expression of understanding.  He’s led mission trips.  He must know what reversed culture shock is?  For all of the previous mission trips I had participated in, the leaders had prepared us not only for the potential of culture shock upon entering the country of service, but also of the common experience among many to face “reversed culture shock” upon the return.  This happens when you come home from a mission trip, having accustomed yourself to the foreign country, possibly loving it and learning from it, and you return a changed person and disoriented in your own country.  At 16, when I returned home from my first church-sponsored mission trip to Mexico to build houses, I felt my breath leave me as I walked up to my three-story house and opened the door to exceptional spaciousness.  Our green tiled front entryway was about a third of the size of the homes we had just built, but this space before me was just an empty entryway.  To the left of our entryway were two staircases, one up to the four bedrooms, bathrooms, and a small linin room, and the other down to the family room, a third bathroom, laundry, and garage.  To the right of the entryway was our kitchen, ending with a space for the kitchen table.  Behind the entryway and straight in front was a living room and to its right was a full dining room.  Since the family room had the TV, we didn’t use the living room much, and it was about the same size as the full houses we had built for families of six and seven.  Why did my family of three need this house?  Some of my teammates were asking similar questions, sparing me from that lonely experience of processing these questions all alone, as we supported one another.           

Today, sitting in the pastor’s office, I am twice the age I was then, and I had accurately described my reversed culture shock as “exaggerated.”  This time, it carries the unexpected “waterfall of memories” from my toddlerhood in São Paulo, Brazil which I enthusiastically begin to share with Pastor Tired.  Might he perk up upon hearing of the flood of memories from the ages of two and three that had poured into me while I was in Venezuela? 

No, he slumps in his chair with his head bowed down.  Still desperate, I persist.  “One memory even goes back to 22 months old,” I tell him, hoping for an eye of interest.  “And all the memories from Brazil were very positive, loving, joy-filled.  But now I am back in the United States, and I’m getting more memories, but these are from my childhood in California, and they are painful, making my reversed culture shock exceptionally strong.” 

            Pastor Tired’s head is now bent even lower.  Has he heard me?  I shift my body in my chair and take a breath.  Everything I’ve shared he should comprehend. Wouldn’t any pastor or leader of a mission trip understand reversed culture shock?  I have since discovered that many of them don’t.  Four months later, this same pastor took a mission trip to somewhere in Africa, and he returned to report a cacophony of obstacles and how relieved he was to be back where the roads are paved and people don’t make a living by blocking bridges and bribing you to cross them.  More open than many among the white clergy, he advocates for people of color.  But in Africa, he faced no reversed culture shock.  As I listened to his story, I reflected that the notion that some of us might be more disoriented upon our return from a mission must have been as foreign to him as the country he had just come home from. 

            The hour was getting late, 4:30; I had to get to the point.  “I’m not sleeping, and when I am, I’m battling nightmares that are also haunting me during the day.” 

Still slouching with eyes off to the side, Pastor Tired conveys polite impatience.  I’m not crazy and have a genuine need for support.  Can he please listen? 

“I’m also vomiting and having migraines,” I continue.  Then I add a detail I had not planned.  “Until now, I had experienced only one migraine in my life: on the night of September 10^th, 2001.”  I emphasize the “10^th” and the “1.”  Finally, he turns to look at me, but with eyes of irritation and in a voice like a teacher to a middle schooler who had just misbehaved.  “And what makes you think that’s relevant?” 

“What I’m going through is not normal.”

 He releases a tired sigh.

 He thinks I’m wasting his time.  How can I prove my need for support is not superficial, but genuine?  Now at home, speaking English to an English-speaking pastor, I should no longer be suffering the translation overload I was in Venezuela, where I was translating for teammates who wanted me to translate culturally inappropriate messages or at times when the culture calls for silence.  While there, I coined that term, “translation overload,” though I never defined it like that for my teammates.  I just apologized that I had “translation overload” when I refused to translate.  But now, speaking English, I realize I can also suffer from translation overload in my own language. 

Longing to be taken seriously, I shift to the nightmare of getting lost in the lions’ lair at the zoo, the reminder of the nightmare to the prophet Daniel in the lion’s den, the name Daniel of the pastor in Venezuela I was translating for, and the attraction between me and Daniel, for which, on one day, Daniel needed to take leave for a couple of hours. 

Now I have Pastor Tired’s attention.  His eyes, no longer looking away, dart straight into mine as piercing swords.  “You think a pastor was attracted to you?” His eyes glare at me, and he shakes his head, skeptical and annoyed.  “And why do you think this?” 

            Why is he pursuing this extra detail to take us off the trail of our conversation?  I’m feeling at least as annoyed as his darting eyes reveal him to be.  I did not come for Daniel.  I came for counsel, prayer, and support for the post-mission trip whirlwind.  But, tinged with insulting skepticism, Pastor Tired is driving us onto an unnecessary tangent. Why had I kept this appointment?           

Finally, I do what I should have done from the start.  I let out a deep breath, shake my head, look at him with eyes just as straight, and reply with confidence.  “His head elder confirmed it.” 

He rolls his eyes, shakes his head back and forth, and sighs with a groan.  His face scrunches up and I can see the question written all over it.  Even if true, why would the elder admit it?

           It is almost 5 pm, and finally I have some clarity about what to do.  I pick up my purse, thank him, and say, “That’s not why I came.  I’m praying for your feet, I’ll bother you no more, and I’ll look for support elsewhere.  Thank you.” 

* * * * *

            I wish I could say that this misunderstood dialogue cured me of my naivete toward the thinking patterns of North American religious leaders, but my desperation for support ran too deep, and I had been conditioned to believe they were the ones to provide it.  In my thinking, an attraction, especially a playful bond like the one Daniel and I shared, was natural and something to be enjoyed and celebrated, not something to fear or run away from.  My heart and soul, especially with the early childhood memories confirming it, were certain that something very significant had happened to me in Venezuela, and I had to pursue whatever it was.  

The whispers of mystery faithfully carried me through that summer in the twilight zone, and the divine forces concluded this period with yet another confirmation that arrived on the morning of August 30: my agonized perception of a disaster occurring at that moment, while I was camping in Oregon, away from any news reports.  After we left the campsite, we learned a hurricane was flooding New Orleans, and it was about to kill almost 2000 people.  Hurricane Katrina.

             My perception of Katrina was the final one of a visual or physical nature of that summer.  But the whispers of mystery have stayed with me ever since, and during that summer, they were faithfully reassuring me, especially with the echoes of Samuel (Karina, tú tienes el poder) and Daniel (Karina, soy tu pastor!).  Daniel spoke in jest when he called me his pastor, to prevent me from telling his friends the English word “skinny,” a word they intended to taunt him with.  But now, the same words, Karina, Soy tu pastor were whispered in truth and with tenderness by my own divine forces.  To them I was to turn, and to the scriptures, as a solitary seeker.  

That was 17 years ago.  I listened to them and I learned from them, and I have remained mostly silent about this story ever since.  But that is changing.  Outside this blog, I’ll begin crafting this wild story of the summer in the twilight zone, the translation overload, and the murky workings within the patriarchal evangelical church.  I hope you’ll join me in encounters like this with Pastor Tired, including my first-hand discovery of that odd, cultish term I had my character Ethan explain here in “Just like Eve”: “entrusted to a pastor.”  With each interaction with a religious leader, I continued to discover that I was hitting an extra sensitive button for the male clergy in the evangelical tradition.  Many carry a buried fear of what I would call a natural bond of attraction, for which they apply a very different term: “lust.”  Oh how childlike my perception was!  While their inclinations may need to be faced, for a playful bond of attraction, which view is likely to be more natural, authentic, and grounded in truth?  Childlike I may have been, but today, sobered and triumphant over the unnecessarily complicated “adult” way of thinking, childlike I choose to remain.

"Translation Overload" sneak preview Part 1 

 Part 2 

Part 3

My other story of my time in Venezuela and the memories of Brazil