this one

and the daughter of creation, of creator,

of the name her begrudging husband prayed to,

became a coin exchanged for labor.

this one,

her father said.

leah wanted

to be loved by her husband, probably

wanted her father to give a shit, too.

the tent closed itself around her

and she was held and loved

for the one night she

was mistaken for another.

leah wanted

to be loved, and became

instead a punishment. became a mother

to lesser children, lesser because hers.

finish with

this one, her father said.

When I was in college I spent a quarter defending what seemed to me the right of men to exist at all. It was a feminist theory class, and as the only outspoken and happily hetero woman there, I took a beating. I should mention that I am well aware of the great many lesbians who do not hate men. However, my introduction to their world was blatantly anti-male. I am and always have been exuberantly pro-male (perhaps too exuberantly at times), and the inability of anyone to not find men perfectly, heart-breakingly beautiful struck me at the time as willful and in defiance of the evidence.

Which is all to say, I came from a somewhat naively loving attitude towards men.

I remain convinced of the need all humans have of one another, regardless of sexual specifics, and I probably also remain somewhat willful myself in my persistent adoration of men. But the story of Leah and Jacob only grows worse in my eyes as I get older. The very thought of a woman spending the majority of her life longing and praying for her own goddamn husband to love her, and being denied the gratification of such a simple wish, is gut-wrenching to me. And make no mistake: Leah's story in the chapters skipped over by the liturgy is nothing short of tragic.

I have no concrete reason for thinking that the creators of the lectionary skipped over the most painful parts of Leah's story intentionally. I do, however, find it somewhat disgusting that the next we hear of Jacob in the mass is from his glamorous "wrestling with God" moment. I might ask for a similar "begging of God" story for Leah. It is a plea which Jacob never deigns to answer.

I sometimes try harder to find some redemption in a woman's story - a glimmer of hope, a perspective that shows she was not as powerless as she might appear at first glance - but in Leah's case, I would be lying to my own heart. Jacob and Laban behave reprehensibly towards a woman who was placed by God into their care. I can only pray that I never treat any one of God's creatures in such a manner.

Whidbey

When your head hurt and you laid it down on the spring-smelling dirt, I thought you might be Jacob, or Rachel, or Leah.  The wind washed over the tall grass and it waved - all golden-ocean-like - as though we were in some impossibly romantic movie.  You told me it looked like where you grew up in Ohio.  We agreed it was the most beautiful thing we'd ever seen, and you told me that you never want to go back to Ohio.

I sat down beside you on one of the paths through the tall grass, and from there I could barely see over the top of it.  The dog didn't stick to the well-cut paths.  He bounded like some enormous rabbit through and over it.  Up he went, then down.  Up, down.  He came to the paths occasionally, and then only to check on us before continuing on after the songbirds and the garter snakes.  And I thought what a lovely Dante he would make, or Beatrice.

When we spotted a pine tree a little ways away, we decided to move into its shade.  Gradually your head cooled and stopped hurting so much, and again your dog rushed over to make sure we weren't leaving him.  As the day wore on we both spoke less and less, each for our separate reasons.

And then we went to the beach just before leaving, and listened to the tiny and smoothed-over stones, their bodies all shell, all gray skin prickling against each other with a hushed clatter.  The island itself seemed to quiet down as the sun moved lower, when one huge and out-of-place wave rushed up and soaked us through with icy water.  You yelped - a beautiful cry of fear, I thought.  And the wave slid out, pulling with it stones shivering like stars.

In the Garden

In the dream, you feel your body fall apart into muck and clay.
It goes down to the beetles and the worms and the black sounds.
The roots, all hunger and patience, plunge holes in your skin,
And suddenly you notice that you feel also gratitude.

In the dream, your mind begins to lose its tether.
Your bones gape into the shapelessness which the roots transform
Into new bodies; nausea sets in, and you are unsure of its cause:
The mind's departure from reasonable thought, or the body's dissolving.

In the dream, rain seeps down to what is left of you through the soil.
It is summer, and warm, and the worms continue their sure wounding. 

Rebekah

Let her be the woman

whom the LORD has appointed;

and she came,

drawing water from the well.

In place of fathers, O king,

you shall have sons.

Something which was not there before

tries to exist, though

of course it cannot,

and cannot try.

She bears it.

Gets herself a new nose ring, 

some gold bracelets, veils

her face and walks out into the desert.

She takes him who was

and makes to-come.

Let her be the woman

whom the LORD has appointed

for him.

It is so easy for me to identify with this reckless woman who agrees to a marriage site-unseen.  She just crosses her fingers and jumps in feet first.  And it is beautiful to me that she is a comfort to Isaac.  But I cannot ever be allowed to forget that this isn't really Rebekah's story.  I cannot feel that her story is told quite right when the blessing for Abraham and Isaac is a future, and the women are always only the means to that blessing; not a part of the blessing.  And they don't seem to qualify for much blessing themselves other than the shared glory of making a baby boy.  This is a Rebekah chapter in Isaac's story.

But the sons in place of fathers still seem so important.  I don't want to let them go.  We need to be reminded that the future doesn't have to look like the past.

We compel our children to repeat our mistakes so we don't have to face the fact that, no, that was not the only way we could have gone.  We want them enslaved to consumerism and lust and sexual shame and xenophobia because we are desperate to not have to confront the child in us who could have been something new, who maybe still can, but dear God, what would it look like?

And what of Rebekah?  What of the woman foolish and brave enough to do the work, and then to fail in her own ways?  I want to be so foolish and brave, but how do I continue to ask her to bear up under this burden, a burden of secondariness, even if she is strong enough to carry it?