We Should All Be Marthas

We have two interesting Bible stories in today’s readings, both of them juxtaposed. In the first, Abraham spots three angelic visitors in the distance and literally begs them to stop by his house, ordering Sarah, his wife, to make bread, and his servants to kill and cook an animal. Abraham himself waits on the guests.

“Where is Sarah?” the angels ask Abraham as they eat, leading me to assume that Abraham is not a traditional silent waiter but has been talking to his guests.

“In the tent,” Abraham says, confused. Where else would Sarah be?

“Next year we will stop this way again,” the angels tell Abraham. “By then, she will have had a son.”

This, of course, is a notoriously tricky issue, because men have been telling Sarah all of her life that, eventually, she will conceive. But does Sarah see a baby? No. Has Sarah seen these angels of the lord? No. At some point in the coming year, she gives up and tells Abraham just to sleep with her maid already, give her a son by proxy. What happens is that Ishmael is born, from whose line Islam descends. Of course, Sarah is a total brat and sends Hagar and Ishmael away because she has (finally) conceived: Isaac is born, as the angels prophesy, just after Ishmael is born.

What is fascinating about this story, though, is that Abraham and Sarah are rewarded for their work and hospitality. Sarah especially is given a promise from these angels whom she may not have even met. As a reward for her hard work and service, she will have a son, and then everybody will stop judging her already.

Taken with today’s Gospel reading—that of Mary and Martha—this story is an interesting choice. It would appear that humanity is rewarded for cooking and serving those who—to paraphrase Catholic doctrine—“come in the name of the Lord.” Yet Jesus seems to say the opposite to Mary and Martha.

The story begins with Jesus visiting some of his best friends, Mary, Martha, and Lazarus, who appear quite often in the gospels. Of course, where Jesus goes, his twelve besties come along, and then that one girlfriend of Mary’s who has a crush on Andrew, and then maybe Peter’s wife or mother-in-law show up because dude, Peter, you have responsibilities, why are you following this guy around Galilee? Then that one guy Jesus healed last summer comes around to remind Jesus how grateful he is, and suddenly instead of an intimate get together of fourteen besties, Martha has a rave on her hands.

Now, women rarely get to party. My aunt hosted a retirement party for her husband yesterday, and she’s having a Baptism party today for her most recent granddaughter, and let me tell you: It is all work and no play for my aunt. Yesterday I watched her get out the kid’s toys and put them in the backyard so the wee ones would stop pestering so-and-so, and then check on the grill, and then run into the house and make sure the food inside wasn’t getting cold, and then greet the latest person to arrive, and then console the oldest grandchild because he had become convinced that a cop who dropped by had come to take him to jail. Today she called me up and then she apologized for not spending more time with me, and I was dumbfounded: Who on Earth apologizes for not spending enough time with the niece who lives ten minutes away because there were thirty other people (many of whom live several hours away) to entertain and feed? My aunt, apparently.

The same would have been true for Martha and Mary. They would have had to wash the disciples’ feet, which would have been dusty and muddy from their travels. John, the youngest apostle, would have complained of thirst and hunger, and so Martha would have had bread in the oven and some hamburgers on the grill. And then one of the wee ones that Jesus loved so much (possibly one of Peter’s neglected daughters) would have had to go to the bathroom, and she wouldn’t know where it was, so Martha would have had to leave everything and show her. Then Matthew would have asked something about income, and Thomas, the most annoying disciple, would have said something to Lazarus and picked a fight, and Philip, the stupidest, would have knocked over one of the casks of wine Martha had been saving especially for a prized Jesus visit.

Sometime during all of this, Mary ends up sitting at the feet of Jesus, listening to him teach.

There is nothing more on this planet that Martha wants except to sit at the feet of Jesus and have the noise stop. But all of her life she has been taught to be silent, to serve, not to complain, not to draw attention to herself. This is a woman of great faith. When her brother Lazarus dies later in the Gospels, Martha runs out to meet Jesus on the road when she hears he is coming and she cries to him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother would not have died.”

At that moment, Martha is acknowledging that Jesus is God. He can raise people from the dead, or save them from death. This is faith, and Martha has it in abundance.

 But in this story, she goes to Jesus and says, “Lord, you see what I am dealing with. I need help. I need Mary’s help.”

But Jesus says, “Martha, wonderful, patient, Martha, you don’t need Mary’s help. You need mine.”

This is a revolutionary moment. Jesus is telling Martha to ignore the tumult of her household, to go against her training from girlhood, her own instincts, and to sit at the feet of Jesus. Jesus is inviting Martha and Mary to follow him, to learn from him, to become enlightened. Just because they are women they need not sit with Sarah in a tent far away from the angelic guests. They have a front-row seat to divinity, and Jesus wants them at his right hand.

Jesus wanted women in his ministry. He wanted them to listen to his words. Jesus never saw any woman as secondary, as a background, as a work animal whose salvation was conditional on her husband’s. When he died, three woman and John were at the foot of his cross. Jesus knew all along that Martha would be there at the foot of his cross. And he wanted her to know that he saw her, saw all that she was doing for him, saw all that she feared and worried about and wanted—and her place was not in the kitchen but sitting beside him.

I will end this week’s lay homily with a few lines from poem I have always loved by Franz Wright, “The Raising of Lazarus:”

here was Martha…

…He knew

she would not stray,

as he knew which would;

he knew that he would always find her

at his right hand,

and beside her

her sister Mary, the one

a whole world of whores

still stood in a vast circle pointing at. Yes,

all were gathered around him. And once again

he began to explain…

If I Ran for President

If I ran for president, I would choose Rand Paul as my Vice-President. That way everything we did in the White House would be, by definition, bipartisan. Rand Paul would handle all of the finances of the United States of America, because I am hopeless with money. I would have him deliver a weekly address to the American people, because his beautiful face would soothe everyone. 

If I ran for president, I would pardon not a turkey on Thanksgiving but a white deer. I would give the doe a sign to hang round her neck that said, “Let no one touch me; it has pleased the president to set me free.” Throughout the ceremony I would cackle and surreptitiously watch my iPhone, because I would have a poll going on Twitter to see how many Americans knew what I was doing. I would take the sign off after the ceremony, though, because deer don’t need collars. 

If I ran for president, I would agitate for more women in sports. I would personally go to each of the U.S. women’s soccer team games until everybody was watching girls in sport and getting more excited about women’s games then men’s games. I would have ESPN change the names of their channels, so when the men played it would say UEFA MEN’S SOCCER, so there was no default “an athlete is male, but a female athlete isn’t.” I would also champion, in the spirit of my bipartisan presidency, a sports team that was co-ed, because the idea that men and women can’t play together in sport is just stupid. I would phrase it that way in the bill I presented, too. “Just stupid.” 

If I ran for president, I would throw around acronyms like “STEM” and “HEART” a lot. “I went to a liberal arts college,” I would say, and pause for loud applause and cheers for liberal arts education. “We cannot have sciences without the humanities; we cannot have the humanities without science. Neither group is better than the other.” Chaucer might tweet me. That would be really cool. 

If I ran for president, I would take the time to speak with YouTube journalists once a week, because I have a high respect for many YouTube journalists. I would tell traditional journalists to get over it if they complained, because I am twenty-three years old here, of course YouTube is more important to me than a newspaper that doesn’t even carry UEFA EURO 2016 scores. 

If I ran for president, I would subtly insert reminders that we should not visit Mars until 2028 into all of my campaign speeches. It would be like Dr. Eyster mocking Newt Gringrich and his moon colonies. Nobody would catch it except Dr. Eyster, who would grin, and Rand Paul, who would threaten to quit. 

If I ran for president, I would get a lot of hate mail. Once a year I would publically burn it and dance around the fire. Okay, I probably wouldn’t dance. But I’d make some s’mores and share them with Rand Paul.

How to Read Jean Rhys's "Wide Sargasso Sea"

1. Wait for a very hot day. No, hotter. Hotter than that. Okay. 

2. Find a place that has no air conditioning. This is now your home for as long as it takes to read a hundred page novel. 

3. You should probably be sick. Brain fever might be best, but anything that affects your head will work. A perforated eardrum, sinus pain and pressure, a headache that affects your vision. 

4. A storm will appear sometime in the night. A proper one, with lightning and thunder. You will half-wake and fall back asleep with forks of lightning still glowing on the back of your eyelids.

5. Everything around you will suddenly become more colorful. But also skewed. Everything is so bright and so hot and sideways. It might be the perforated eardrum messing with your sense of balance. Or the brain fever, giving you hallucinations.

6. Nothing is real. Everything is a dream. 

7. The woman at the dentist’s office calls you Autumn. Your name is not Autumn. They insist that your name is Autumn.

8. Your boyfriend cheated on you, maybe. He’s being super vague about what he did that weekend you visited your best friend, and now he won’t kiss you. 

9. For future reference your best friend’s advice on your love life is super worthless. 

10. There are ghosts living in your not-house. You saw them last night when you were not-sleeping. Also, you think you had a son at one point. That might have been a dream. 

11. You’re going to wake up. You’re going to wake up. 

12. Lightning strikes. A fire starts somewhere. You die, but not literally. It’s a metaphor. 

13. Start praying for a break in the heat wave or another ice age. Doesn’t matter which at this point. You haven’t slept in three days.

Rebekah Gets a Hobby, Or, Lots of Embroidery Ahead

For the last five years, “I need a hobby” has been my mantra.

“You’re a writer,” my former roommate once told me, “writing is your hobby.” 

And I corrected her: “No. Writing is my career.” 

It is also my hobby, but what I was going for was if I was going to school to be a Writing major, a Professional Writer, a Person Who Writes Long Academic Articles And Also Bad Novels That Will Never Be Published Or See The Light of Day, I needed to do something that wasn’t writing. 

Friends tried to interest me in everything from belly dancing, to baseball, to Catholic Youth Groups, to opera, to making bear claws, to yoga. Most of these failed. (I never went to the Catholic Youth Group. I never went to the opera, either. I sat at home and read North & South.) 

In short, my hobbies included writing academic articles and really bad novels that would never be published, and reading books for school and for fun. Never mind the fact that sometimes I read so much Spenser and Spenser-related material that I couldn’t read Maggie Stiefvater without pronouncing the /v/s like /u/s; this was all I had, and I was going to take it for what it was worth. 

Then summer happened. 

And I could not stop thinking about my 4th grade sampler. 

My mother is a crafty person. She and my sister both are. They bake things, and then wonder why I can’t make Texas Sheet Cake without messing it up beyond recognition. My sister has more than ten trophies from 4-H for things she has baked, or sewn, or drawn. 

I write things, like this blog, which people generally do not read. (I’m looking at you, dad.) I own a lot of books. I have read almost all of them. 

But for some reason, I kept imagining the kiddie cross stitch my mom had given me as a child. I don’t know why I had one; maybe my mom thought it was a good skill for her elementary school daughter to have. Maybe it was because we’d been to Greenfield Village so many times I thought I was living in a world where guests would come over for tea and marriage proposals and would want to see my sampler, which would be my only qualification of how good of a wife and human being I was. 

I never finished this cross stitch, because I was an elementary school girl with better things to do than thread needles. I’m not sure what those better things were. Playing Pocahontas and reading, I expect. Definitely not doing my homework. 

So I brought this up to my mother, who took me to Hobby Lobby, and I bought a set of kitty-patterned tea towels and a Queen Bee counted cross stitch. 

My first tea towel did not go so well. I will spare you the back, because it looks like Armageddon happened. Or like my elementary school self sewed it.

The second tea towel looked a lot nicer.

Back of the tea towel

And Queen Bee turned out pretty well, too.

So today I went to Pat Catan’s with my mom, and I bought a sewing box. I kept calling it a “cubby,” which made no sense to my mother for obvious reasons, and I decided a name was necessary. (Names are always necessary.) 

I put all of my needles, and my future cross-stitch patterns, and the little bits of thread I have accumulated in the last few weeks into the sewing box. And as I looked at it something whispered the name Josephine, and I thought, oh, like Josephine and Napoleon? Yeah, sure, that seems to fit. It clicks. 

I went downstairs and said, “I have named the sewing thing” (because I do not have, in speaking, the same feature I have in typing, which is, that I can stop for five minutes and go, “What’s the cubby called again??”). 

“Oh?” mom said, once she remembered what, exactly, her oldest daughter was on about. 

“I have decided to name it Josephine.” 

“Oh!” mom said, the same sound that people who like babies make when they see a baby and are allowed to hold the baby and then the baby does something, like gurgle, or smile, or take the person’s finger in their little hand. 

It is the same noise I make when I see puppies. 

...and also babies. 

“Why Josephine?” mom asked, and I couldn’t tell her. The Voice said to, and the Voice is almost always right. 

I asked my mom what the fuss was about, and she said, “Josephine; Great-Aunt Josephine, she was the quilter. She must be smiling down on you.” 

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is the fun part about Catholicism: Your relatives never leave you alone. They come to you in dreams, and in strange lights, and in phone calls from the electric company, and in sewing boxes. They are like Saints, but a little bit less well meaning (I’m looking at you, Grandpa) and certainly less powerful than God. 

Anyway. Writing is still my career. I still spend 80% of my life writing. But now I spend the other 20% watching UEFA Euro soccer and doing cross stitch. 

Speaking of which, Germany is playing Italy in half an hour.