All the Women in Scripture: introduction

I am overdue on this, and I apologize. Honestly, the only reason I mentioned this at all was out of frustration, and that frustration has become painfully agonizing.  Regardless of where you think you fall on the egalitarian--complementarian spectrum, keep this in mind: All that matters is the whole of Scripture, not any one individual (or a mass of individuals) interpretation.  I'm so absolutely sick of knee-jerk reactions without any  personal study of Scripture, and all the assumptions and presumptions and bad or lack of Bible study on the topic. This used to be a rage limited to the general attitude toward the OT, but now it's bleeding over into the NT conversations as well. So who knows, maybe I'll go to my grave having turned into a Bible teacher after all, if everyone is going to skip such elementary teaching - either by failing to learn it or failing to teach it - as basic Bible History.   At any rate, here I am, in all my lack of glory, ready to dive into the entire "women and the Bible" conversation. 

In other words, for the love of all things holy, please stop with all this pretending that women are dismissed in Scripture.  I can show you that they aren't.  And, since this is Kaci Hill writing, it's gotten long and therefore will be in four parts: 

Introduction & Old Testament

New Testament

Passage List(s)

Introduction

This was not an issue for me growing up. I never felt marginalized, objectified, neglected, ignored, or somehow "less" because I was a girl. The men in my life have become my standard, and apparently for the majority they are the exception. So the bar's high, in my universe.  I preface with this to state plainly that I have no dog in the complementarian/egalitarian fight -- and I'm not sure what's being fought about anyway.  The concepts of "male headship" and such, despite my very church kid background (I am at least fourth-generation church kid, and graduated from private Christian schools; in the Bible belt buckle; I know far too well what Paul meant when he went on about himself), was absolutely foreign to me until college, so I did what every good church kid does and researched all the things for myself--because, at the end of the day, I really only care about the actual text of Scripture. 

The journey started at some point early in college when, in a fit of irritation, I combed the NT for passages directed specifically at women.   The paraphrased verse now taped and beaten up on my computer monitor is: "the unmarried woman is anxious only about how to be holy in body and spirit, and her attentions are undivided" (paraphrase of I Corinthians 7).  The other is from one of Peter's epistles and reads  (again, paraphrase) "You're Sarah's [that is, a child of the woman who represents the place where God made and kept his promise] daughters if you respect your husband and fear nothing that is fearsome." (We'll argue about the first part of the sentence another day; I personally honed in on the part where God's daughters fear nothing. It's scary, and we aren't scared of it.)

This ultimately would lead to another exercise in which I started marking any time a woman was mentioned with a symbol in my Bible. As it turns out, the women in the Bible built cities, worked their tails off with the men, counseled & rebuked kings, prophesied, had fights with God, & mediated before God.  Ruth is a beast; Abigail is "wise & beautiful"; Jael was conniving; Mary was brave. Jehosheba saved the crown prince from a massacre; and an old wise woman dressed down generals like children. 

So, occupationally, in Scripture you see women:

• prophesying
• communicating directly and one on one with God, occasionally with the men being deliberately thrown out of the conversation
• judging
• building cities, temples, & tabernacles
• inheriting property in the absence of a male heir
• stopping a band of angry, humiliated men in their tracks
• stopping  a war general from destroying a city
• engaging in war via command, or conniving 
• hiding spies
• pulling a trick on her father-in-law because he wouldn't do the legally right thing by you (was Jesus thinking of this woman when he told the parable of the persistent widow and the corrupt judge?)
• ruling 
• saving a nephew from genocide
• saving their son or younger brother from genocide 
• saving their husband from divine execution 
• ruling a country, making an epic quest to Jerusalem, and, long after her death, being upheld as someone who will sit in a judgment seat 
• saving their general and master
• saving a nation
• running businesses
• doing "outdoor work" our culture has traditionally associated with "men's work" (despite the number of exceptions)
• participating in temple or tabernacle construction
• leading the worship music
• made some long road trips, alone and without any bodyguards (keep in mind they would've been on foot, not in a locked vehicle going 60 miles an hour)
• proposed (hey, it happened at least once)
• saving  infant boys from genocide
• helping their husbands escape their father (she spoiled it later, but hey, you have to give Michal this much)

And, all of a sudden, that whole verse about Adam needing a helper took on  a life of its own. If anyone is a damsel in the OT, it's the men in these women's lives. There's two sayings from somewhere I've heard in my life, and two of them are: "The old is in the new explained; the new is in the old contained" and "the OT is descriptive; the NT is prescriptive".  If that's the case, there contains in the Torah, Histories, Prophets, and Wisdom Literature significant amount of women in an active capacity, usually rescuing a man from something or someone or offering wise counsel and mediation between the man and God.  

Now, we can argue female pastors and teachers all we want, but, descriptively, we're seeing women in what can only be described as a teaching and pastoring role, OT style. This is the point at which I begin repeating the phrase "There are too many exceptions to make the rule."  (I am saving things like "authority over a man" and whether or not they should be pastors for the NT post of this series. Please hang with me until then. I promise I have an argument coming, but we're not to the NT yet. Although I must point out that all of this is before the Cross and before Joel 2 has been fulfilled, which is kind of the stunning part.)

The third descriptive category we see starts getting into the character section of this post.  These women could pray. They might be mad, scared, depressed, destitute,  or a thousand other things, but these women, for the most part, were people we could look up to, named or not, onstage or off. 

Offhand, only a few are mentioned negatively:

• Crazy Jezebel 
• Her insane granddaughter Athaliah, who tried to off the entire Davidic line
• Lot's wife (though she's known for her disbelief; it's not actually stated what her character was like)
• Job's wife (might not have been a terrible person, but the only thing we know about her is that she apparently felt they'd been betrayed by God and no longer owed him anything. I think that was grief talking, as they had 10 kids after this mess was over.)

And, also offhand, fewer still are mentioned as being in a place of absolute helplessness. Those are:

• Hagar (Ishmael's mother), who  is depicted as pretty resilient and willing to trust God despite some rather monstrous, from her POV, circumstances)
• a few unnamed widows and/or barren women who, despite this, is also depicted as resilient and trusting of God (even when they're a bit annoyed with him) despite circumstance (Ironically, several stories about Elijah and Elisha aren't actually about Elijah and Elisha, but the women they visit).
• Tamar (Judah's daughter-in-law, who is also still described as pretty resourceful in the end)
• Tamar (David's daughter, who is a passive figure in this)
• Dinah (I'm assuming, as nothing proactive about her is actually written)
• Bathsheba (she has a twist, though; she begins as the victim here; by the end of her story, she's working with David and the prophet Nathan to get her son on the throne, so there's more to her than meets the eye)
• Leah (Jacob's first wife - again, she's pretty resourceful, but you really have to feel sorry for the woman)

As a matter of fact, any time a woman is *completely* without resource, she either finds it herself or gets a little (direct or indirect) divine intervention. Or, if it doesn't happen, there's usually some kind of curse involved. Maybe that should be its own thing, later.

And that's just the Old Testament, and not the entire list.  The point is that women turn up in every arena of life: business, war, the arts/craftsmanship, politics, home, and spiritual life.


Having said all of that, in terms of character, the OT does have more descriptions of women than Proverbs 31. Shock, horror, wonder, amazement, and awe.  But since we know that one, let's start there, especially as it’s the closest to  a prescriptive passage, and it's all description. I'll be honest; I've never read that passage as a daunting checklist, but in the spirit of someone on Mother's Day going on and on about how wonderful their mother or grandmother or Female Older Person in their life is. It goes on and on about how great women are, and how that greatness spills over and makes everyone else in their lives better as a result.  

We're a little more familiar with God's promise to Abraham that he would be blessed, and through him all the nations would be blessed, but there's something in this poem at the end of Proverbs that strikes the same chord: this woman overflows with blessing and abundance.  And maybe that's what Paul and Peter mean when they refer to Sarah as the woman who represents Mount Zion, where the new covenant is struck, where the Messiah King to the nations came from, where the Savior of the universe was born, lived, died, and resurrected, where the Holy Spirit fell like fire and wind and water and something that swept over time and space happened.

In college, I became a little fixated, and remained so, as to what the phrase "Mother in Israel" meant. It's only used twice: of Deborah the Judge (ch 5) and a wise woman, whose reputation determines that of the whole town, and who, as I said, dressed down David's general (II Samuel 20).  

In the first instance, it refers to pre-monarchic Israel where a judge acted as savior, protector, and vindicator. My reading of Deborah's keeping court under the tree always reminds me of how Moses conducted this role. They both have a spot, and to get counsel or civil judgment you had to go to that spot. Deborah was a judge. She also had that mediator between God and Israel aspect, to the extent that we remember her, not her prophet husband, and to the extent that people were going to her, not her prophet husband. I mean, the war general received a word from God through her, and then wanted to keep her with him (I’m not sure if that's speaking to her in a battle capacity or as an advisor capacity, but either or both, this general wanted this female judge on the battlefield against a formidable enemy. If that's not impressive, I don’t know what is. This is as close to a Biblical Joan of Arc or Mulan as it gets.) 

In the second instance, it's referring to a woman who hears a commotion and steps out to see what it is. There's a battering ram slamming the gates, and siege equipment against the wall. A rebel has fled for his life into her town (which, I have to look it up, but this may have been one of the cities of refuge) from David's general Joab (remember this guy? He's nuts.) and Joab's men have now surrounded the town and threatened to besiege and destroy it to get this guy (I told you he's nuts).  We never get her name, but she promptly hops up and calls for Joab, then demands to know what he thinks he's doing to this city that's "a mother in Israel" and goes so far as to accuse him of threatening Israel's inheritance (read your OT; this was a high charge).  My favorite part about this story is that Joab, for all his power and hubris and independent nature, this Joab who really is one of those "man's man" types people talk about, who will defy David to his face and go behind his back,  answers her with all the gusto of  a scolded child.

"Far be it from me! Far be it from me to swallow up or destroy! That is not the case!" he calls back. He goes on to explain himself, then promises to withdraw once they have the rebel.

So she tosses the rebel's head over the wall. Joab goes home.

Can we put this on a mother's day card? However you look at it, "mother in Israel" apparently was the ancient phrase for "mama bear."

They're those women who are a shoulder and a kick in the bum, the one your friends claim as their own because she's quick to pray for you and with you and sometimes despite you and what you think you should be praying for, who counsels, corrects, rebukes, gets mad, sad, glad, and everything else because she's only got one goal in mind: help you turn into a mature adult who loves Jesus.  She's that little church lady with no physical kids and a thousand spiritual ones.  When we get to the NT, I'll say she's Anna, or Priscilla, or Chloe, and a dozen other women.

So, according to the OT, descriptively, Godly women are:

• Resourceful & clever (we'll throw industrious/productive in here)
• Fearless (courageous, brave, valiant, etc)
• Prayerful (they have a relationship with and communicate directly with God, not through a mediator)
• Wise
• Fear God
• Beautiful (favorable - we like being around these women and doing business with them; these women are a pleasure and a blessing)
• Is someone you can be proud of
• Steadfast & resilient, strong
• Humble
• Noble
• Trusts in/is devoted to/obedient to God (Deut 6)
• Loves (Leviticus 19:18)
• Women of integrity/good report
• Is just/righteous
• Is merciful/compassionate/generous
• Is trustworthy

Man, this is long, and I'm just warming up. I'll post about the NT, then make the official list. But really, don't tell me Scripture is dismissive or negative toward women. If anything, it's an extreme: these women are forces to be reckoned with, indispensible allies and formidable foes, that type of person you meet and think "I am so glad they love Jesus."

So when Peter wraps up with "you're Sarah's daughter if. . .  you fear nothing that's fearsome", those are the women his Jewish upbringing means.

And I know, some of you are thinking "I'm not a prophet or a warrior woman." Okay, so very quickly:

• Hannah was a housewife who prayed until the priest thought she was drunk and ultimately had Samuel, whom she then dedicated to the tabernacle service (and had more kids because of that decision)
• Samson's mom figured out she was talking to an angel, and the angel rebuked her husband for not believing her
• Abigail was stuck with a horrible husband and actually protected his sorry life from David and his men. . . with breakfast
• Jael was a nomad who conned a general and executed him
• Naomi was both widowed and deprived of both her sons. . . in a foreign country
• Zipporah was a priest's daughter and Moses' wife
• Moses' mother was a Hebrew slave, as was his sister
• The Hebrew midwives in that story were also slaves
• Rebekah, Rachel, and Leah were. . . no one special, in theory
• Ruth was average, widowed young, and moved to a foreign country with her (widowed) mother-in-law
• Hagar (I have grown to love Hagar; I think she had it worse than most)
• The widow of Zarapeth (sp?) was no one "notable", nor were the others written in the historical books

Now I'm going to quote something entirely NOT from the Bible.  If you ever saw "A Little Princess" (or read the book) you know that the theme of the book hits home when Sara Crewe, rich girl turned to rags and treated horribly by the headmistress, corrects Miss Minchin by stating that "I am a princess! We're all princesses! It doesn't matter if you're rich, or poor, or ugly,  or pretty. . . we are all princesses! Even you!"

So when Paul writes that in Christ there isn't male or female, slave or free, Jew or Gentile, I think that's what he's getting at, and what Peter's getting at. God made women in his image. (More on that later, too.)  And we are Jesus' little sisters, and we inherit the kingdom with him, too. He's the firstborn over all creation, the firstborn from among the dead. And we are his kid sisters.

Stay tuned for the NT overview. Or the OT passage list. Whichever I decide is the most logical.  

 

A Lament

I have been unable to express myself for awhile, now, and, well, while this is nowhere near what I intended to write when I sat down, when it's time to speak, it's time to speak.

This one is for everyone.

-----

I have not dwelt on the latter things;

"why haven't you dwelt, and pondered in your heart?" they asked of me;

"Because when I think of all our hands have wrought,

whenever I let my spirit consider long the deeds of men;

every time I hear the cry of blood,

and the poverty of children,

and the fear of women,

and the terror of all men--

when grief strikes my soul,

down to the quick,

turning my bones to milk,

the storm battering down on me,

causing the rivers and seas to rise,

breaks the barrier of ocean tide

and bursts the endless dam;

God above, hear our prayers,

forgive what us what we've done--

"You ask of me, 'why don't you lament?'

and I say, the sea is dry,

and all the creatures of its womb exposed,

even dread leviathan,

and kraken mighty beast.

When the ship-graves give up their dead,

spewing them on the ground,

when the devils  gasp for air,

and the proud are left panting,

then will end my lament,

then my soul will rejoice,

for justice like tsunamis will roll,

mercy rain down a hurricane force,

and truth will heal up the bitter gall,

and silence the toxic one."

"Lament! Wail! Wear sackcloth and tear your clothes!" I'm told,

and they cannot see me weep.

God divide between you, the humble and the upright;

the blood of Abel's sons,

screams from the ground;

they will not be comforted;

they are mourning still.

Take us to the River from whence all oceans spring;

take us to the City where Death is hanged from a tree,

oppression and violence and wickedness,

bitterness and weeping cease;

Take us to the one great tree,

whose leaves are for healing, and whose fruit forever;

step down from the throne of majesty,

lift our faces up;

how I long for lion and lamb to play,

for the last foe of ours to die;

how I long for Rachel's children,

Abel's sons, Abraham's daughters,

to find comfort and upturned face;

God forgive what our hands have done;

forgive us, Lord, we pray.

Shaleh.

God of Gods - a Tenebrae Poem

"And all the heroes of godlike ilk

fall 'neath the depths of watered earth,

crestfallen below sky and sea,

knocked down by fire and wind and light;

kingly though they may be,

but one crown claims eternity;

graveyards shake; church doors crash;

the gates below bulge and rust;

and then kings doomed to dust

cheered for heart and tongue thus stilled--

but what did they know of godly things;

their wisdom knew naught but heroes,

say nothing of more ancient ways,

older lore long lost,

things spoken, long forgot

with none to comprehend--

Those ghastly ones of divine right

pierced his very heart

and the rib from his side;

happy were they;

terror struck all around;

Sky lost her light,

Sea her luster;

and Underearth proud was put to shame;

There they were, wine and roast,

concealing pent-up fear,

for the wine sloshed from the glass;

tables quaked and feasting turned to plague --

too late, too late, they saw what they had done,

looked desperate on him whom they pierced,

tore, destroyed--

they wept;

he screamed out,

sea and sky and underneath

shuddered at the onslaught

while above, unknowing why,

they shivered, and they cried.

untitled poem

I fell into your shadow, 

chasing after the wind,

Falling into the depths of oceans

never touching its floor;

children reach skyward

for clouds they cannot touch.

I aspired to be what I am not,

yearned for heights so human;

children do not notice

that pedestals are for none.

So I found another shadow,

one who touched Ocean's floor

and spanned immortal skies,

Endless chasing endless.

Writing in Real Life: A Tense Relief

Spoiler Note: I talk about the original Star Wars trilogy in this post. While the new one will not be mentioned, I'm pretty much assuming anyone who cares has seen the original trilogy at this point. I mean, it's been 32 years plus a few months since Return of the Jedi came to theaters.


Hello again!

I have a sister and four first cousins. Growing up the rule at Christmas Eve was that we would eat first, then have a ritual passing out of gifts, then a ritualized tradition of going around the circle opening one at a time so we could all watch (until we hit a certain age, the kids would open first, then the adults, but by age 12 we were considered old enough to be patient).

My family jokes about one year when we cousins ran out of patience. Everyone had eaten, but the cousins were left to amuse ourselves while the adults had yet to vacate the dinner table and begin passing out gifts.  I'm not sure exactly how long it was we waited, and the length probably depends on who's telling the story, but finally the suspense got to us, and we began plotting ways to convince the adults to hurry up without being annoying. Ultimately, we  sorted the gifts (which also necessitated dictating who was sitting where, so the adults didn't get to pick their seats) and probably tried to make just enough of a show of it to make it obvious what we were doing, then joined the adults at the dining room table (the cousins' table was in the kitchen) and announced Santa's elves had distributed everything.

It worked.

If the First Law is that Characters Must Matter (because people matter), the Second Law is Tension.

I say "tension" over "action" because, as Steven James put it once in a lecture of his (and in his resulting book "Story Trumps Structure"): in a story, the bomb going off is the release of tension, whereas that ticking timer counting down to its going off is the tension/suspense. (He discusses suspense HERE.)  Up until the moment it either goes off or is stopped, suspense exists. Afterward is only the aftermath, dealing with whatever happened.

In other words, the tightrope of "what's going to happen next?" is much more important than "what happens?" (though the resulting event had better live up to said expectations, which is another post). Usually, you want things to escalate at a decent clip, but not necessarily at the same clip the whole way, and not necessarily at full-speed the entire time.

There are reasons for this. One, again citing James, if you start a story at Level 10 (this being the fastest pacing), you won't have anywhere to escalate. Take the original Star Wars. Lucas didn't start with the Death Star blowing up. If he had, he'd have had to come up with something even more sinister and devastating. (He did blow up a planet, but blowing up a planet implies something worse can and will happen if nothing is done about it.) Two, if a story stays at Level 10 too long, Level 10 becomes Level 1, and, again, you can't escalate. (The reason you feel breathless after some movies is because they did not give you room to breathe. The body responds to the mind, and the mind will tire if it is not given a break.)

Moreover, not only can you not escalate, but suddenly the two-hour life-and-death chase scene seems "boring."  It's not really boring. What's happened is at some point it's "here we go again." There is no anticipation anymore. The same sharp turns, near-misses, and almost-caught moments keep happening.  To fix that, the chase has to end. The chaser gives up for the time being. The chased temporarily eludes or buys  a few hours. Something more important than catching the chased comes up.  Something has to break up the action, even for a few minutes, or the action becomes lackluster.  (Even superhero movies do this. Maybe especially superhero movies, even if it's only long enough to re-group.)

So basically, the only way tension and suspense works consistently is to adjust the tautness of the line periodically. It never really goes away (everything would fall apart), but it does vary. (In case you don't believe me, this even works with family dramas. Everything may look okay, but we're still left with that one unanswered, unresolved thing that nobody's necessarily talking about at the moment.)


Writers thrive on tension - anticipation, suspense.  In real life we think we don't want this. We want all the answers resolved, all the conflict ended, and all the risk over with. But it doesn't happen in stories because it doesn't happen in real life. Writers are a conniving lot who like everything to come to a purpose: the chase scene, the pending doom, the inherent, endless conflict.  Usually, the peacemakers prevail. Usually.  Coincidence doesn't really happen in stories, and it doesn't really happen in real life.

Oh, I can hear the protests. Yeah. Loved ones fight. Bad - horrific - things happen. Misunderstanding happens. Confusion, lies, betrayal, miscommunication, natural and manmade disasters, all of that.  And here I am daring say that nothing is coincidence.   Does that make it okay? Good? Right?

I'm neither that cold nor stupid.  But there's this part of me that thinks if I, finite, limited, flawed person that I am, take care that no amount of tension is lost, that my characters and readers find some occasional rest and comfort in their struggles - whatever they are, however large or small - and if I, little mortal that I am, take that much care, how much moreso does the Author of us all know we must have relief, time to rest, time to reflect, to regroup, time for peace? The story's not over, so it will only be brief,  but it will be.

Writing in Real Life - The Blog Awakens

Happy New Year!

Merry Christmas, etc.



I've decided to go back through Writing Excuses' "Master Class" season, which is exactly what it sounds like.  Every time I listen to these, I start going down the list of things I've decided not to do in my own writing because whenever I read or watch them they only serve to make me crazy.

Yeah. I am horrible to characters, but there are things I will not do to a reader.  And yes, there is a physical list in existence.  

The First Law is: Characters must matter. It doesn't matter how cool the world is or the plot is or how great they are at what they do or how original and deep the themes are. If no attention is given to who this person is, then I really just won't care what happens to them. This doesn't really have to do with "relatable". I don't "relate" to Dracula, Hermione Granger (honestly, I relate to Harry even less), Katniss Everdeen, or a host of others in any sense of feeling like they're me. But it matters what happens to them. Even deplorable, completely unrelatable villains must have this sense of "what happens to them matters". If it doesn't matter whether the villain prevails or not, I'm not sure there's a real conflict to start.  (I *think* this is perhaps why I always liked Saruman better than Sauron as a villain. I just didn't care one way or another about an amorphous being I never really saw. Contrast that with the treacherous Saruman who's seduced by the Ring or even Grima who is a slimy little weasel you're sort of waiting for Eowyn to slice to bits, well, much as I like Lord of the Rings, I care considerably more about making sure Grima and Saruman get what's coming to them - my tendency toward poetic justice can be another post.)

The ways in which they matter are usually also the ways in which they're messy. People are messy, and the challenge is creating chaos, a semi-calculated mess of principles and behaviors, conflicting ideas, emotions, and beliefs, all piled on top of the absolute truth that they can only see through the two eyes they have. Experiences are always teachers, but they aren't always good or accurate teachers, and even if they are, previous, bad ones may just make for a confused student.

A few friends and I were talking, and we agreed that sometimes a writer or filmmaker will so accurately depict human nature that the audience splits between believing it brilliance and believing it madness.

That's the brilliance of it, though: capturing human nature in such a way that it exposes our flaws and weaknesses with as much power as our strengths and perfections.  Sometimes the former is captured so well it's offensive, a mirror in which we dare not look.

Really, though, that's the world we're in.  There's a journalistic saying that if you start talking about people by numbers, no one cares. If you highlight the one person, though, suddenly everyone cares.  A million people die in a tidal wave, doubly as many homes and livelihoods destroyed, and what gets people's attention is the one little story about this woman who managed to drag her family to safety. Or tried, but didn't. Or the one little story about the man who organized a total reconstruction project for his city in the aftermath of all of that. Or got sick before it was completed.  The point is, the one matters.

There are literally thousands of people somehow connected to me, thanks to the whole six-degrees-of-separation phenomenon. And my prayers go to them all, but then I hear about what's happening in the worlds of a few.

Illness.
Healing.
Family dissent.
Reconciliation.
Financial struggle.
Spiritual attacks.
Depression.
A pregnancy.
A miscarriage.
A college degree.
A drop-out.

It's not that I have no affection or concern prior to the news, whatever it is, anymore than the average person isn't concerned about hurting people wherever they are, but suddenly it's not "someone somewhere over there" but "THIS person, with a name and a face."


As a writer, it's my job to put faces and names on people, and make you care.  I read somewhere once that people who read are also prone to be more empathetic, because they immerse in The Other, the people not like them.  All of these things are happening, to this person who may or may not be like you, and whether they share your experience or not, they matter, because they're people.

Writecraft.

I press my fingers together and worlds appear.

I turn the course of the world on the spin of a well-timed word.

My nails strike the keys, and villains appear;

By callous-worn hands heroes rise and fall.

I am a composer.

I am an artist.

I bend and twist, build up and burn down;

Come dance to music only I can hear

--unless by chance our spirits meet, and our beating hearts drum as one;

Come see the threads become one tapestry

--and shards of glass create windows stained.

Beauty rises on the wind and shadows sink with a blood-red sun;

Enemies come, an ocean vast, deep, wide, high and long--

Ten thousand upon ten thousand--

And only one confronts the throng.

The curtain is my canvas; the pen remains my sword.

Fear not a bard who loves to sing,

--but dread him whose voice does cease.

Dread not the Teller who sports his tales;

--if his heart goes cold, let courage die.

I'll face the darkness, so you do not;

I'll eat the poison and spare you all;

And plunge the depths of bitter gall--

Even perish alone in ink--

If that means the ball of clay rolls taught 'neath my hands.

For you, my hands grow old and break;

For you my fingers twist and bend

And for you do I expend my strength.

The ink sprawls across the page,

Making me feel as a musing mage;

Join me in this war I rage;

Creating, sustaining, saving, destroying, revealing

Secrets beneath parchment hid.

So bring me pen;

Bring me ink;

Let me my own fingers break

And the canvas spin beneath my palms.

I press my fingers

And see the turn of the universe;

Know the angle of this axis;

And the exact measure of the earth's curve;

Watch my hands all you will

But the magic shall never be revealed.

Update

Don't worry. The blog didn't disappear. I want to update some things, so I reverted everything back to Draft status. It'll come back, I promise!

The immediate thing I've changed is the url. Much as I love the "remadegold" concept, it's time I used my own name. So the url is now "kacihill.blogspot.com."

You know, that, and the fact that the grey was a bit ugly.

Another Himalaya-inspired poem

Note: The thing about Nepal is, it's an unconquered kingdom.  The more I read about the peoples of the Himalayas, the more I'm taken with them. 

And, as for the earthquake, my prayers are for a people I have never met and a place I have never been.


A kingdom never conquered;
a people never tamed: 
let these mysteries like ghostlings
never fade away;
how can the unrivaled mountain crown
be hidden for days long past;
ancient and forever,
like leopards of the snow
ever present, rarely seen;
feared, warriors revered,
a bulwark against empires,
their warriors painted for strife;
their people bound by a thousand ghosts
and spirits of the other-realm,
conquered in soul,
unfettered in flesh;
who are you, ancient people,
your stories untold?

The Human Puzzle

This was the second guest post of mine over at The Author's Chair. 



One of my favorite scenes is of a powerful lord who defies every cultural convention to save a slave, and in so doing declaring that a few hundred slaves are of equal value to one of their world’s priceless treasures.

Another involves a man who believes himself abandoned: imprisoned, mocked, tormented, and doomed to be made sport of until he dies, only to, in the end, when he’s had every possible thread of hope torn from him, realizes his master is standing right there, and he’s in the middle of being rescued and never knew it. Suddenly his pain and humiliation are forgotten.

A third is between a king and his best friend and counsel who’ve had a disagreement. The king refuses to listen to this man who crowned him and readies to set off on a trip that will kill him. As he boards his ship, his friend calls out and asks if he’s being left behind, to which the king melts and calls him onto the ship. (I cannot give you the names of the books; sorry. I don’t do spoilers. )

The best stories leave me an emotional wreck for weeks. They seep into the bone and consume from within. Those scenes cannot be explained; they can only be experienced. These scenes are magnificent because they hit all of the notes. My friend Ted calls them “watershed scenes” because they are the culmination of all the themes, emotional and relational points, and plot direction.  Everything prior rises up and converges upon them, and everything concealed is made plain.

Two things, specifically, seem to make this work: the complexities of the characters and the underpinnings of the story’s structure itself – and by that I mean more than just the collection of scenes, which is a bit like saying the collection of notes makes the scene. No, it’s more than that: the arrangement –  the length of time each note plays, what instruments play – makes the difference. A modernized version of “Amazing Grace” sounds much, much different than the earliest ones; and so it is with Story.

Similarly, simple, one-dimensional characters do have their place, but most of the time it’s the complicated ones who really attach themselves to the reader’ soul.  I was fascinated, for instance, at the contrast between Paris and Achilles in The Iliad. Achilles, as I said before, is known for his rage. But rage rarely exists by itself, and the whole point is that his rage stems from  his shunning, betrayal, and public humiliation.

Moreover, there’s plenty in the text to indicate he and Briseis really did come to love each other. (The woman throws herself on Patroclus’ body and laments his death, and then goes so far as to thank the man for making sure she wound up with Achilles. This is not a simple relationship, nor a simple man and woman.) By the end, it’s grief, not rage, that drives Achilles. Paris, on the other hand, for all of his supposed lovesick-puppy behavior, is short-tempered and violent to the point of unleashing it on anyone, including the people he supposedly loves.  In the end, Achilles holds his temper in check, not Paris. So Paris cannot be described as simply a lovesick princeling and Achilles cannot be described as simply a man with nothing but rage in his heart.

They aren’t the only ones. I’m reading Wheel of Time, in which I have realized a character who drove me insane for two and a half books can suddenly change my mind. Wheel of Time is interesting: The men and women don’t understand each other; the main characters don’t understand each other; and you may or may not ever get the other’s perspective. Everything about men and women appears to be broken so that they’re unable to work together as one unstoppable unit – and so I wonder, in book five, what book fourteen will bring.  I keep wondering, too, if the very fault people accuse the books of is the very thing that made it brilliant. Robert Jordan wasn’t perfect, but he nailed unredeemed human nature.

A complex character can drive you crazy and make you terrified they’re going to die – or, worse, turn their back on everything they’ve considered virtuous until now, shun the very core of who they are. One writer took a character I loved in book one and drove him all the way to the edge of the moral and ethical cliff to see if he’d jump off. The entirety of the second book asks what his bitter need for vindication is going to do, and we know if he takes it, it’ll destroy him – from that point he would become a hateful, despised character, and I’m not sure there would be any going back. Nope, I’m not going to tell you what he chooses.

That was the brilliance of the writer, though: in a small-scale story of the tormented underdog, we’d be rooting for the character to take matters into his own hand, unmask his villain for what he is, and have his revenge. But no. We’re given the bigger picture, which says that  this man is so narrow-sighted and ignorant that what might be a celebrated act is, in truth, juvenile and bitter treachery. He’s broken, and he’s hurt, so to a point we can accept it, but the longer the story goes, the more the reader dreads his fall and realizes it really might be over.

Just by way of a teaser, Bryan did something similar to Phoenix, those of you who haven’t read. I’m not saying what, though. Page one made me love him; a little later made me worry; even later made my heart sick.

So, what do you think? What characters did you fall in love with? Which made you angry, excited, and grief-stricken all in one book? Which ones can’t be boiled down to one word?