blood line

Once upon a time there was a prostitute called Maria. Wait a minute. 'Once upon a time' is how all the best children's stories begin and 'prostitute' is a word for adults. How can I start a book with this apparent contradiction? But since, at every moment of our lives, we all have one foot in the fairy tale and the other in the abysss, let's keep that beginning.

eleven minutes :: paulo coelho

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reading that paragraph for the first time tonight had me breathless, and in the opening scene coelho captures the essence of the adolescent transformation into womanhood in a way i didn't imagine a man could ever grasp with such beauty... so deliciously written i want to lick the pages...

coelho is one of the few authors for which i feel a little guilty, or no, ashamed for not having read... and i rarely feel ashamed for not having read any author, or by the same token, listened to a musician, or known an artist... these things all find their place and time in our lives when we are ready for them...and a messenger to deliver the good news...belated thanx are due to zippy ben for the josh ritter recommendation and finding girl in the war on my ipod...

so, very present thanks to susan, for passing this book on to me following an evening of planning for this sunday's service at city church...(yes padraig, this is indeed become something of a habit)... i've been asked to write and narrate the story of tamar. alongside susan and 3 other women, including dear willow, we each will be telling the tale of one of the 5 women mentioned in the genealogy of jesus as given in Matthew 1...tamar, rahab, ruth, bathsheba and mary...

we spent a couple of hours discussing the tales and the links between these women and it was a beautifully humanising and intriguing evening...trying to connect with these women and their place in the story of the messianic line...

it's amazing how you can give up so much belief and yet allthesame find so much to wrestle and embrace...these are stories worth hearing...and women worth knowing...i accept them as a gift...

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awhiles back i wrote the narrative of my own passage out of childhood... the boat and the bleeding... only yesterday, having spent some time in the company of tamar, i revisited my account...and tonight i find coelho's version of the same tale... and as much as each is as unique as the girl, they hold universal truths... a red chord runs through them all...

the intricacies of life are where the beauty lies... the divine, not the devil, is in the detail...

LB,x