I know I had a setback over the last couple of weeks, but I'm ready to delve back into writing. I need to start racking my brains in order to remember a small lesson a woman from church gave me once called “Advocates in the Bible”. She wrote the lesson herself years before she showed it to me, and taught it to me briefly when I was staying at her home between apartments. I was about 23 years old then, and she was a mom figure to me. I often referred to her as my “foster mom”, even though I was grown and not a foster child. To make a long story short, she was a spirit-filled Christian and was diagnosed with bone cancer. Her denomination believed in miraculous healings, and she prayed for one. She believed she would receive one, but didn't. Her passing was what made me sort of “give in” to dating my first husband, Anna’s father. I didn't believe that I really could ever have a partner, but grieving her just made me give up and be like “ok I'll go out with you.”
Before her tragic passing, though, she did write this lesson called Advocates in the Bible, and perhaps she taught it to others in the past. She and I spent a few days at her table going through the lesson. She went through all these biblical characters and explained how they were advocates of a certain cause. I hope that makes sense. I was a little lost in life, because I really wanted to know what advocacy was, but was constantly told it meant I had to go to law school. An advocate can mean a lawyer, but it means many other things too.
I no longer rely on the Bible for inspiration, but I did then. Over the past 20-something years since she passed, my faith has evolved. I deconstructed before deconstructing was popular.
However, in the last couple of years, I honestly hate to say it, but the war in Israel has really caused a totally unexpected wave of deconstruction. Some people say this war started on 10-7-2023, some say it was 1945, but honestly, it started when Joshua fought the battle of Jericho and the walls came tumbling down.
As I watched the news over the last couple of years, I realized that the stories in the Bible that used to bring me so much inspiration are actually stories of this same war that's been happening for thousands of years. The Queen Esther story was part of this war. When David killed Goliath, we are also taught that it was an inspiration for if you are facing an insurmountable problem. When Moses went before Pharaoh (as an advocate) and said, “Let my people go”, it laid the groundwork for the following battles. “The promised land” is used as a euphemism for either the end goal of something positive or maybe going to heaven, but it didn't start out meaning those things.
Don't get me wrong, I'm not taking a side in a war in a part of the world I've never been to. I've struggled enough taking sides in my own country. I've spent the last year or two listening to the advocacy of Ms. Rachel, the education from Miriam (and the subsequent antisemitism against even her 1-year-old baby girl), and I can't stomach the hate against the innocents on both sides. That's all.
Going back to those biblical stories and remembering my inspiration when it's now two decades later and I'm learning to associate those stories with current events is going to be really hard. There's no room in my book to talk about the war in Israel since 10/7/2023. I do talk about the crisis of faith in other ways.
To sort of get back into the spirit of who I was when Mary sat me down at her table and essentially gave me what I wanted by teaching me what an advocate actually was, I've started listening to some songs that I stopped listening to. The main one is Jericho by Andrew Ripp. It's supposed to be an inspirational song, and it is. The chorus goes, “All of my fears like Jericho walls gotta come down, come down, come down.” No one is actually talking about what happened in Jericho- we just want our fears and anxiety to come down like Jericho walls. The song is about us, not them. I'm trying to get back into the innocent t headspace I was in when I was 23 or 24 and sitting at Mary’s table.
Once, right after the October 7th attacks in Israel, I was venting to my mom that this has been going on since Joshua fought the battle of Jericho. Now my mom is very religious, but has never read the Bible. I think that's pretty common for her generation. When I said that, she told me, “I don't know the story of Joshua, but I do know the song.” I thought she meant the Andrew Ripp song that I mentioned above. No, actually she meant when Mahalia Jackson sang it to MLK. The fact that we have drawn so much inspiration over the millennia from the battles and wars that led to the events of today is wild to me now.
In order to write about this effectively, I have to temporarily let go of all the ways in which the current events have clouded my view of the biblical stories in the actual lesson Mary had. Mary lived from the 1950’s until then early 2000’s, so probably never had the opportunity to watch the ongoing conflict live like we do now in 2025. RIP Mary C,
I'll do my best.
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