Friday, July 13, 2007 at 2:02am
Ye shall go out with joy
Column: Interesting Times
There was, years ago there in my desert yard, a concrete wall 8 feet high, which met the corners of the house and extended 12 feet beyond it. Gray block, unpainted, standing solely to break the force of the southwestern wind and sand from cutting into the house, the wall reminded me that I was a woman shut up in a prison.
Standing alone in the yard with the laundry basket, I picked up a wet sheet and pinned one white corner to the clothesline. Before I could spread the fabric the distance to the next clothespin, the sheet was dry. I knew there was heat in the desert and waste places of the howling wilderness, but I also knew this was impossible. There are, after all, laws of physics.
But not then, not there. I looked at the sheet again and I saw instead women, wrapped in white, kneeling by a river, washing linens. They were at some distance and seemed to be suspended by the flowing river that appeared somewhere beyond my wall where no river existed before. They were talking and washing and smiling by the water, but I heard no sound; they saw me but gave no particular notice, as if they had always been there, both seeing and not seeing me.
What I was looking for relentlessly was a way out of a self that is gender, sociological, an object, out of my politically and emotionally naïve self, out of the marriage. Instead, what I saw was a distant view of some women like myself. I reiterated, in some implicate order, the actions of other unnamed women washing sheets in a world waiting to be seen through the stones and blocks of the wall. I stood on the edge between order and chaos. And I felt the spillover effect of the Resurrection.
For seven long years, I had stood at the tomb of my own life, and as I picked up the laundry basket with sheets unhung yet dry, I turned and walked back into the house, knowing mystery and that, in some significant and sightful way, I was moved to a different time and a different place. It is the direct relationship between this event and the next that from then on caused me to put store in a world far simpler than mere physics. I had glimpsed a world of fractal dimension where the power of unnamed women, the spillover of Resurrection, could disentangle the past and offer a future — revealed moment by indivisible present moment.
That very night my husband, 150 pounds heavier and 6 inches taller than me, infuriated by my calm, broke down a door to beat me and my son. As I stood there, fearless and silent, he struck me again, and then he stopped, looked at me and left. He returned at dawn with two men, called me names, and, after seven years of threatening my life, said that I could leave. He took the children. I waited for weeks in frantic desperation before he returned.
"I'm here to get their clothes and toys," he said. "Come outside and look at my new car."
This form of insanity was not for me.
"There is no milk," I said. "You pack, I'll have the children show me the car, and then I'll go to the store and get milk. The children can eat while you get their things."
It's hard to believe that he would leave the children alone with me while he packed, but the ego of one who believes he has power blinds the eyes. Parking my car in front of the store, children in the back, I turned and looked at the mountains. It was as if I could see through them to the other side. The wind whispered in the silver and gold light.
For the mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed, but my kindness shall not depart from thee. Fear not; for thou shalt not be ashamed; neither shall thou be confounded; for thou shalt not be put to shame:
For ye shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace; the mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.
I never went back with the milk. I left the store, the desert, with two children, $20, and my passport to freedom, the Bible I kept in my glove compartment.
— — —
Lynne Bundesen is the author of five books addressing religious issues including "So the Woman Went Her Way," parts of which are excerpted in this column. Her email address is {email lynnebundesen@hotmail.com}lynnebundesen@hotmail.com{/email}. Copyright 2007 Lynne Bundesen.
Standing alone in the yard with the laundry basket, I picked up a wet sheet and pinned one white corner to the clothesline. Before I could spread the fabric the distance to the next clothespin, the sheet was dry. I knew there was heat in the desert and waste places of the howling wilderness, but I also knew this was impossible. There are, after all, laws of physics.
But not then, not there. I looked at the sheet again and I saw instead women, wrapped in white, kneeling by a river, washing linens. They were at some distance and seemed to be suspended by the flowing river that appeared somewhere beyond my wall where no river existed before. They were talking and washing and smiling by the water, but I heard no sound; they saw me but gave no particular notice, as if they had always been there, both seeing and not seeing me.
What I was looking for relentlessly was a way out of a self that is gender, sociological, an object, out of my politically and emotionally naïve self, out of the marriage. Instead, what I saw was a distant view of some women like myself. I reiterated, in some implicate order, the actions of other unnamed women washing sheets in a world waiting to be seen through the stones and blocks of the wall. I stood on the edge between order and chaos. And I felt the spillover effect of the Resurrection.
For seven long years, I had stood at the tomb of my own life, and as I picked up the laundry basket with sheets unhung yet dry, I turned and walked back into the house, knowing mystery and that, in some significant and sightful way, I was moved to a different time and a different place. It is the direct relationship between this event and the next that from then on caused me to put store in a world far simpler than mere physics. I had glimpsed a world of fractal dimension where the power of unnamed women, the spillover of Resurrection, could disentangle the past and offer a future — revealed moment by indivisible present moment.
That very night my husband, 150 pounds heavier and 6 inches taller than me, infuriated by my calm, broke down a door to beat me and my son. As I stood there, fearless and silent, he struck me again, and then he stopped, looked at me and left. He returned at dawn with two men, called me names, and, after seven years of threatening my life, said that I could leave. He took the children. I waited for weeks in frantic desperation before he returned.
"I'm here to get their clothes and toys," he said. "Come outside and look at my new car."
This form of insanity was not for me.
"There is no milk," I said. "You pack, I'll have the children show me the car, and then I'll go to the store and get milk. The children can eat while you get their things."
It's hard to believe that he would leave the children alone with me while he packed, but the ego of one who believes he has power blinds the eyes. Parking my car in front of the store, children in the back, I turned and looked at the mountains. It was as if I could see through them to the other side. The wind whispered in the silver and gold light.
For the mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed, but my kindness shall not depart from thee. Fear not; for thou shalt not be ashamed; neither shall thou be confounded; for thou shalt not be put to shame:
For ye shall go out with joy, and be led forth with peace; the mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing, and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.
I never went back with the milk. I left the store, the desert, with two children, $20, and my passport to freedom, the Bible I kept in my glove compartment.
— — —
Lynne Bundesen is the author of five books addressing religious issues including "So the Woman Went Her Way," parts of which are excerpted in this column. Her email address is {email lynnebundesen@hotmail.com}lynnebundesen@hotmail.com{/email}. Copyright 2007 Lynne Bundesen.