Psalmist's Mother: My God, my God

 Psalm 22

"Yet it was you who took me from the womb; you kept me safe on my mother’s breast. On you I was cast from my birth, and since my mother bore me you have been my God. Do not be far from me, for trouble is near and there is no one to help." (Ps 22:9-11)

"My God, my God"
I moaned, I cried
and then he was out,
delivered.

Then there I was
swamped with feeling,
a tiny purple thing
latched to my breast
overwhelmed with love.

My child, my child,
how can I love you
how shall I protect you
from the baying dogs
and the charging bulls,
from people who will laugh
and scorn and abuse,
from death that lurks
for us all in the end
who am I
to take you by the hand
in this world where I have no control
helpless
just like you?

My God, my God,
I cast him onto you
for what else can I do?
When I am too weak
when I am too small
when one day I am gone
You will be there.
A Love even greater
than the one that's threatening
to tear my heart in two.
My God, my God
never forsake him,
do not be far from him
in his time of need.

Can a mother forget her child?
Never.
And neither can you.

___________________________

[11. June 2023]

Reading through the Psalms right now and found out Ps 22 mentions a mother and a birth scene and I was inspired.

In my daughter's first night I looked at her at one point and just had to burst into tears ober the realisation that God loves her with a love even greater than I could ever have. For me as a mother, knowing that God is there when I can't be is such a great help with so many things in motherhood and in life just not being in my control.

Ps 22 is the famous "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Psalm that Jesus quotes on the cross. Having this little scene of the mother entrusting her child to God in the middle of it for me is a reminder of how we are dependent on God from the beginning. These verses set a contrast to the negative beginning. But also emphasises again the question: Where is God now in my suffering?

The Psalm ends with the experience that God is still there and does not really turn away or abandon anyone. The lament of the first half abruptly turns into praise. God can be trusted. I wanted to make this poem less about the lament (though I picked up some elements from the Psalm) and more about the trust, and that decision to entrust one's child to God because we can't do this parenting thing alone.

Picture by Joaquin Sorolla y Bastida

Oholibamah: Girl

Genesis 36

Please be a girl.
So I can dress you up and style your hair.
So I can have small helping hands.
So I can have a companion
in this man's world
to talk to and share with
all the wisdom and beauty of womanhood.
I want you to know the wonder
of living in a woman's body,
of carrying the potential for creating life.
I want you to be free
to show your emotions,
to cry sometimes, to be weak,
which they wouldn't let you
if you were a boy.

Please don't be a girl.
Because they will forget your name.
They won't count you
in their genealogy lists.
They won't value you
the same as your brothers.
I don't want you to suffer
as so many of us have done,
to bear the heavy weight of womanhood.
I don't want you to fear
the footsteps behind you,
don't want you to second-guess
a man's look, a man's touch.
I don't want you to be hurt
but I know you will be
if you are a girl.

I wish I could keep you
in this safe little bubble
of neither-nor;
no expectations,
no stereotypes,
just you
yourself
for this little while.
No "boys should do this",
no "girls should be that";
no rules what to wear,
who to be, how to act.

How I wish this were a world
where I need not be scared
of having a girl
and keeping her safe.
I long for a girl -
still I pray you're a boy,
for your sake
precious child.

______________________________________

[7. May 2020]

I just had this idea in my head and I picked Oholibamah, one of Esau's wives, to "carry" it. She is one of many "women without a story" who appear in genealogies. The genealogy talks about Esau's "sons and daughters", but none are listed by name in the genealogy, so I felt it would be fitting to put Oholibamah's name to this poem. (I chose her of the three because the other two have a bit more "story" to them by being described to have caused grief for Isaac and Rebecca - whatever that means. To Be Written About Later...)

I imagine it would not have been easy being a girl or raising a girl in the world of Genesis - seen e.g. by the missing daughters in genealogies, stories like the rape of Dinah, the predicament of childless Tamar or the "handmaidens" (Bilhah, Zilpah) of Jacob's wives. In such a "man's world", I imagine a woman would have been torn between wanting a daughter (someone to be her companion in the "woman's sphere" which was probably pretty separate from the men's world), and being afraid of having a daughter. Not just because of the pressure to have "sons", but because she knew how hard it was being a woman in that world, dependent on the men around her, viewed as "less than" and sometimes even truly in danger.

It's still like this in many parts of the world today, where being a girl is hard and even dangerous. I keep hearing people say "we don't need feminism" - but we do. As long as mothers still need to be afraid for their daughters, as long as girls are being aborted just for being girls, AND as long as boys are being taught that it's "not manly to cry" (boys suffer under toxic masculinity too!), as long as the sexes are not treated fairly and equally, and for so many more reasons, we need feminism.

The image of the "bubble of neither-nor" was what came first for this poem (though I was playing with the idea for weeks). I don't want to know the sex of my child in advance, and I realised why when that image came to me. There are so many fixed notions about boys and girls, so many expectations, so many stereotypes, starting with the "pink and blue", gendered clothing, things like that. These expectations and stereotypes do so much damage - to both boys and girls. Why not let at least the time in the womb be completely free of all that? I think it's important even afterwards to not push a child into what is stereotypically "expected" of their sex - to view the child as a person, a human being with a dynamic personality, not a "princess" or whatever. I think we CAN keep that "bubble" even afterwards by not making "being a boy" or "being a girl" such a fixed, "you-can-only-be-like-this" / "you-can-only-have-these-interests" thing. Of course there are gender-specific things - but not all girls like pink glittery tutus and not all boys like trucks. Girls like trucks too (I did - and pirates, and soldiers), and boys like pink glittery stuff too. Just my thoughts.

Art by Gustav Klimt - "Hope II". I felt the skulls and the (weeping?) women at the bottom of the picture were kind of fitting.

I FINALLY WROTE A POEM AGAIN!!!!1!11!1
Sorry I'm so unproductive. 
This lady was not even on my list yet. This project is going to take YEARS more...

Lo-Ruhamah: What's in a Name?

Hosea 1:2-8

What's in a name?
Any name would be sweet
unless you are burdened
with the name they gave me.
Two letters too many
and the Loved becomes the Damned:
"No-Mercy" they called me -
just fancy that!

"No-Mercy" - imagine
the awkward looks
every time I introduce myself.
Picture little me,
shunned by other kids,
the brunt of every bully's jokes,
a victim from the start
of my father's stupid choice.

What the hell, Dad?
Did you even
stop to think what it does to me?
"God told me" - whatever!
What about me?
You made me your message
but also made me messed up,
blessed me with childhood trauma
and chronic doubt in God.

But guess what:
I have learnt
to grow beyond my bitterness.
I have learnt
that I am more than this name.
And now, I forgive you.
I want to try to understand.
I forgive God
if this was really from his hand.

It took me so long to see
that God never hated me.
That for God
all along
they were just two letters.
And God was for me
all the time they called me damned,
waiting
to strike two letters off my name,
"No-Mercy" no more.

And maybe the message
that I bear with my name
is that God loves the damned
and wants them saved -
just like his people
who went astray,
who lost trust in a God
they thought was far away.

So I drop two letters
and I become
Mercy.

__________________________

[26. December 2018]

You know what they always say about choosing a child's name. Make sure it's not too hard to spell. Make sure it's not too easy to twist into something nasty by bullies (because children can be horrible to each other). Make sure the name has an appropriate meaning.

Recently there was that news item about a girl called "Abcde" being mocked by a flight attendant and more people were angry at the poor child's mother than the flight attendant. Well, a parent does have to think about the consequences of their name choice!

Enter Hosea who named his children Jezreel (i.e. place where revenge will happen), No Mercy, and Not My People. I am sure the children did not get away completely unscathed psychologically.

Anyhow, here some thoughts from her perspective.

And another thought: biblical prophecy is poetry. It may well be that Hosea did not actually give his children horrible names, but that the idea of him naming them like this gives an important message.


Picture by William Adolphe Bouguereau

Dinah: Daisy Petals

Genesis 34

imagine
you're fifteen
sitting by the roadside
plucking daisies
waiting for love to come along

& there he comes
a man
(the man of your dreams?)
& talks to you nice
nicer
than the brothers back home
he talks like you're a woman
not just the baby sister
he talks like you're worth something
not just there to be teased

can you blame me?

i went with him
i thought, why not?
he looked good enough
he seemed kind enough
i wanted to believe him
even when he hurt me
i wanted him to love me
i wanted to be loved

can you blame me?

my brothers didn't
they blamed him
i wish they'd blamed me
i wish they'd listened
to my story
but now
the daisies on the roadside are red
& all my dreams are dead

imagine
you're fifteen
sitting by a graveside
plucking daisies
knowing love won't come along
because you're
second-hand goods
because no one listened to you
though they said they were
"only protecting you"
because they killed the only one
who would still take you now

________________________________________________

[May 2012 - commentary edited August 2019]

I left out all capitals and most punctuation to make it really look like a teenager is speaking. I'm even considering removing all apostrophes but maybe that will make it look a bit too atrociously spelled.

Tried to put myself into Dinah's head. I first learnt about this story as a "cautionary tale" what happens when you trust strange men. There are different theories about the Dinah story, whether it was a rape, whether Dinah really cared about Shechem but her family didn't approve ("The Red Tent" gives an interesting spin on that possibility), ... Here I wanted to try to look at it from the perspective of a teenager waiting for love, curious about love, and falling into the wrong kind of romance - but then also suffering the consequences of a patriarchal system, where victims of abuse end up rejected, suffering even more.

A theme in my mind here was: Who listened to Dinah? Did anyone listen to her? What did she want? As the only sister of twelve brothers, I can imagine Dinah often did not feel taken seriously. Maybe that made her open up to Shechem. But then in the whole situation with Shechem, nobody cared to ask her how she was doing. Her brothers committed a massacre for her sake - but did that help her? Dinah is one of the many mute women of the Bible - women whose point of view we just don't hear. And we can say that the Bible is terrible for keeping women silent - or we can be glad that these stories are included, that in this way these women are seen, are remembered. And the very fact that they are silent, that their voices are not included, can be a wake-up call to us, a reminder of all the women who are being kept silent even today, a reminder maybe to ask others and listen to them, instead of making decisions over their heads like Dinah's brothers did.


Another Dinah poem: "Stop Me"

Picture by William-Adolphe Bouguereau

Salome: Dear Head

Matthew 14:1-12

Other girls
would ask for clothes,
the latest fashion,
pretty little things.
I am not other girls.

Other girls
would ask for riches,
to spend their hearts out
and live comfortably.
I am not other girls.

Other girls
would ask for freedom
to choose the one they love,
a fine, handsome fellow.
I am not other girls.

I ask not for fashion
or glittery glamorous things.
I ask for a head on a plate.
I ask not for money
and limitless spending.
I ask for a head on a plate.
I ask not for love
and a fine, handsome fellow.
I ask for a head on a plate.

And now
as I look into your wide dead eyes
and your blood stains my fingers
and I hear your warning voice no more
I wonder:
why
was I not like other girls?

___________________________________________

[2. June 2013]

This was a five-minute write... though the idea (with the "not other girls") was formed in my head before falling asleep at around 3 a.m. last night... (staying up late can be really inspiring. My parents won't believe me though haha)

Salome is the girl who asked for John the Baptist's head. There are all sorts of legends surrounding that (I heard of one where apparently she "liked" him but he didn't like her and her revenge was getting his head.. or something..) but what actually happened is that she followed her mother's orders and got the head for her mother. So it was actually her mother asking for revenge.

At first I was going for a sort of defiant "I am not like that, I'm better and less superficial" thing, but in the end twisted it around to her becoming more self-critical, thinking twice about her choices. Sometimes doing something that seems brave / unusual / "badass" doesn't really bring you anything. Salome could have asked for anything - but she asked for a head. What do you want to do with a head?? Not to mention it's sort of disgusting.
_{Right now I'm picturing her bringing said head into a nice pink frilly lacy princess room. Uargh what a contrast!}


Picture by Gustave Moreau

Dinah: Stop Me

Genesis 34

Stop me, he said,

if I go too far,
and that put me at ease
for I thought that I could,
knew well my boundaries -
I'm a principled girl.

Stop me, he said,
if I go too far.
He held me,
and I let him.
He kissed me,
and I let him.
Was it not innocent?

Stop me, he said,
but I never wanted to -
it felt too beautiful -
and I always thought:
When it comes to it
I'll say no.

Stop me, he said,
and I gave in to his kisses,
and I gave in to his touch,
and I knew that I should stop him,
but I never wanted to.
Stop me, he said -
Don't stop, said I.

Stop me, o Lord,
I'm going too far -
Stop me, o Lord,
I cannot say no.
How can I say no
when my body screams YES?
Stop me,
stop me,
stop me -
I've gone too far.

_____________________________________________________________

[29. November 2012]

Written with Dinah in mind a bit... also as a sort of "reply" to my other poem, "Say No".

The Dinah story is traditionally interpreted as a rape - other interpretations though (e.g. in the novel The Red Tent by Anita Diamant) suppose the possibility that Dinah was in love with Shechem and wasn't being forced to anything.

My earliest memory of the Dinah story is my parents citing her as an example of why you shouldn't talk to strangers / get into a stranger's car / etc. XD

I wrote this one after hearing someone tell me that a guy told her to "say stop when I go too far" - which of course didn't work. We might tell ourselves we'll say no. We might be certain that we want to say no. But will we be able to? I get the impression that many guys expect the girl to set the boundaries and keep control. But it's a bit unfair to expect her to be the only one keeping a control. What if she can't?

My personal impression is that giving in is far easier than it may seem. So don't trust yourself to say no when the moment comes. Don't put yourself into a dangerous / tempting situation in the first place.

And: it's not only the girl's problem. I think in a relationship one needs to help each other in this area. Both need to keep watchful of themselves and not expect the other to be the controlling instance and stop them. Girls aren't necessarily more controlled than guys, despite common opinion.

Picture by Joseph Noel Paton... not really of Dinah of course, but there aren't really any good pictures of her... ;-; After my thesis I might try to revive my art skills...

Jairus' Daughter: Ex Nihilo

Mark 5:21-43

And,
just when it got interesting,


the story is over,
gone,
and I'm not part of it anymore.
I'll never know how it goes on -
never see the ending.

I guess
none of us do.

So away I drift
into eternal nothingness -
I'm sure it will be boring
to no longer exist.
But I won't be there
to care anymore,
will I?

I'll miss Father.
I'll miss Mother.
I'll miss my friends,
the fun we had,
the fun we could have had.
I'll miss the future
that You've taken away.
But I won't be there
to care anymore,
will I?

I'll miss being alive.
I'll miss the breath You blew into me.
I'll miss being part of Your story -
I'll miss being Yours,
out in no-man's-land,
where You don't come
to breathe on the bones,
because we're not there
for You to care
anymore.

So away I drift,
away, away,
and soon I won't be there.
Some will care - for a while,
until even my memory
disappears.
Will You remember me?

A light
drifts down into my darkness.
A voice
wakes me, lifts me
into life,
like diving up from under water,
like drawing the curtains for light to come in -
Talitha cumi! - Girl, arise!
My story is not over.
It has only begun.

You are the One
who can create Something
even out of Nothing.
You are the One
who will always care -
even when I am not there,
still You will find me
and hold me again.
Because of Your love
I am never forgotten,
nor lost in the darkness of death -
for You come,
You come, Lord,
to breathe life into the ashes
and raise up these bones,
to gather those You love
so we must never leave your side.

Death
will have no victory.
And this story
never ends.

______________________________________________________________

[2. + 24. February 2015]

(Yes, the big "break" at the start is intentional... to emphasise the "interruption")
So probably you noticed how this poem moves from "death as nothingness" to resurrection (breathing life into the ashes) and eternal life (never-ending story). I hope the ending is strong enough to "outweigh" the kind of "heavy" start. ^^; (And that the whole thought process doesn't weird you out...) (I sometimes try to imagine what it would be like if death really meant no longer existing and to me it's the freakiest thing ever.)

I wrote this not long after writing an essay about Old Testament ideas of death and the afterlife (had a class on this topic last semester), so some of those thoughts flowed in  - not necessarily that death means "disappearing" (I find it interesting how that is a relatively recent idea), but that it means falling out of God's reach (which according to the OT is pretty much the worst thing about death). In the Ancient Near East, the idea was generally that once people die, they go into an "Underworld" where they exist in a sort of stupour (and don't particularly like being disturbed), but are separated from God. The OT does, however, already suggest that God does have power over the Underworld too, that He can be present there too (e.g. Ps 139), and that He can take people back out. (You can find a sort of "summary" of this stuff here from my essay notes.) All this became much more pronounced in the New Testament though.

So I tried to depict that move from "death as separation from God" to "God's intervention into death", in the context of this girl's resurrection. We can have eternal life simply because of God's love, and because He wants to give life to us, and keep fellowship with us forever.
"Ex nihilo" = from / out of nothing (usually used to describe creation "out of nothing")
I think resurrection is also in a way "creation out of nothing" - in the sense that God doesn't really need anything to "be left" in order to raise us back to life. And just as God created all that there is, out of nothing, so He can create life anew. :)

Some little references here and there... in case you didn't catch them... The "breath You blew into me" alludes to Gen 2:7 (the creation of Man), the breath into the ashes / bones refers to Ezekiel's vision of God resurrecting the bones.
And the "story" imagery comes from little children hating cliffhangers! ;-) Or at least, I always used to!

Picture by Gabriel Max.

Jephthah's Daughter: No Ram For Me

Judges 11:30-40

Where is the ram caught in the bush?
Where is the angel to sweep me away?
I'll accept it, let it happen
if you don't stay his hand -
but tell me this: why
is there no ram for me?

So many things I'm going to miss.
I cry for the man I never will meet,
the first kiss that I'll never know,
his touch I'll never feel;
it is too late now -
and there's no ram for me.

Sometimes I've wondered how it feels
in the arms of a man. I used to dream -
only daydreams. Or was it wrong?
But now I'll never know.
They go up in smoke,
for there's no ram for me.

Is it because I am a girl?
No link in the chain of greater events?
Nothing special, no mother blessed,
no daughter of promise;
not special enough
to have a ram for me?

So a child will walk through fire,
and you don't let it stop - oh God, why not?
There's nothing here to save me now,
no lightning, no angel,
no voice from above,
and there's no ram for me.

But soon I'll be with you, safe and at peace
in the arms of the God I don't understand
most of the time - like now.
I will love you nonetheless,
and trust and hope that you know best
and have your reasons which I cannot see.

I'll swallow down my wishes,
forget all my regrets -
let it happen, and when it's through
the first thing that I'll ask of you
is: why
was there no ram for me?

__________________________________________________________________________

[December 2011] [Commentary February 2014]

The ram refers to the sacrifice of Isaac (Genesis 22). God asked Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, but in the last minute provided a ram to sacrifice in Isaac's stead - a beautiful image of what later happened with Jesus taking our place on the cross. But why did Jephthah's daughter not get rescued in that way?

I also had to think of this verse: "You shall not worship the LORD your God in that way, for every abominable thing that the LORD hates they have done for their gods, for they even burn their sons and their daughters in the fire to their gods." (Deuteronomy 12:31) - did God even want Jephthah to make such a sacrifice? (Hint: no.)


Jephthah found himself before an alternative: my child, or my God. I believe that was a false alternative. Are we understanding God correctly, if we get the feeling we have to hurt others in order to please him? The pharisees also thought they were pleasing God by getting rid of Jesus. I believe at the Cross God clearly showed: This is not how it's done. God is on the side of the suffering - because He suffered like them, with them, for them, on the Cross. There He also showed that He does not take pleasure at the brutal things done in His name. Because if we keep doing such things, at some point we kill God Himself - that's what the pharisees ended up doing.

What about Jephthah's daughter? Maybe she did not understand why God was letting this happen to her. Sometimes there is no explanation. Maybe there is no purpose (just read Job)! Sometimes the reasons God allows things to happen just really remains a mystery and we can't understand. Two child sacrifices in the Bible: one He stops, one He doesn't. Why? Judges paints us a picture of a world without God. Israel becomes worse and worse throughout the book. Judges is a criticism of society. None of the terrible things happening in Judges are therefore "endorsed" by God. At least we can be sure of this much. Sometimes God lets us do our thing - and reap the consequences. Jephthah's daughter suffered not because God did not care but because people are terrible.

I do think God gave an answer to the question, "Where is the ram?" though: on the Cross. Because Jesus became like Jephthah's daughter, suffering at the hands of people who thought they were doing God a service by killing Him, and in that showed that this is not right, and that He is on the side of those innocently and needlessly suffering.