Transcript
Speaker: Hi there, and welcome to Red Tent Midrash. We're a mystic, a pilgrim, and a storyteller, gathered to ponder the feminine themes of the Bible.
Speaker: We are women who nurture a love for our faith, even as we grapple with reclaiming scripture from traditionally male and religiously charged contexts. We three are writing books and curating experiences that connect women to themselves, to one another,
Speaker: and to the divine as they live their stories. This podcast is a safe space where we commit to keep learning together. We invite you to join us.
Speaker: Welcome back again, everybody. Episode three. are you doing? Pretty good. We decided last week that we were going to be talking about identity together. And as we've been prepping for this episode, I know we've had a couple of spaces of overlap, some really different spaces that our minds have gone, which doesn't feel surprising because identity is such a all encompassing and multifaceted subject for this book. um
Speaker: So with that, I think we should probably just like jump on in, but I'm wondering where do people want to go first? What was alive for you guys as you were sitting with this theme?
Speaker: I mean, i found myself I found myself thinking about who all was sent or or went to the wilderness, whether they were sent or they ran there. or So I spent some time thinking about that.
Speaker: um And one of the things that that i that I came across that I think is that I think is true. And, and, and I liked the way that it was phrased, which is that identity can't be settled inside existing structures.
Speaker: And i just, I, I, I liked it. It talked about would just that identity is tested when the, there's no infrastructure to lean on.
Speaker: and And, I think I like, I can, so I can see that as I look at, you know, what, What did God do with the Israelites? What what happened ah with Hagar out in the desert? What happened when Jesus was sent to the wilderness? You know, this sort of stripping that happens. But I think it happens for us too.
Speaker: And so um i i like I liked that. So I found myself thinking about that. So you were in a space chiefly of like the where, like where does identity get formed? That was like your driving question. I think so. The where and the how, right? And so the wilderness, the wilderness, is it a literal or is that the metaphorical wilderness? And I think I encounter a lot of women that when they have been exited from whatever it is, the the church, the ministry, the the place where they were employed
Speaker: maybe it's their family when they feel like they they have been ushered out and, and sort of those, those structures that have helped tell them who they are have been removed.
Speaker: The, the description is like, I felt exiled. I feel like I'm in the wilderness. I don't know who I am anymore. ah Right. So um though those were the kinds of things that I was thinking about for sure.
Speaker: I like it. Before we move on, just to give credit, who who wrote that quote that ah identity can't be settled in established structures? You know, it was i was I was honestly diving down this like very deep Jewish rabbi rabbit hole. And so... i It was a rabbinic maxim from one of the... Cool.
Speaker: Well, I just want to comment on that. I think place is... it's a great place to start because place is so formative, not just for us and the current stories you just alluded to but like we see that all throughout the Bible and even all of the the people that end up in the wilderness in the Bible, all the characters that are led there or driven there and have to wrestle with themselves or God or angels of the Lord in the wilderness. There's just, i wonder it'd be I'd be curious to know how many times
Speaker: the wilderness is referenced in the entire Bible or like there's scenes where that is the the location of the scene that plays out. So I do think that's an important place to start as we talk about identity.
Speaker: um My mind went back to, you know, this is, I think I've said it already. This is the origin story and some radical things are happening for the Israelites in the wilderness of the Sinai Peninsula in Exodus. And I feel out of my depth in many ways as I begin to explore all of that with the time period and the surrounding culture and history. The book that has been helpful for me is Tikva Frye-Markenzie's In the Wake of Goddesses, which is kind of her
Speaker: her analysis of the formation of monotheism and among the Israelites, among the Hebrew Bible. And it's been fascinating to pick it up again and remind myself that coming out of a polytheistic world, not just out of Egypt, but the whole world at that point was polytheistic. And even actually, so were the Israelites. you know i am was still an L and El Shaddai and some of the names we have forgot up to this point.
Speaker: And their concept is just one of many. And so they are they are learning that like this God, Yahweh, is actually telling them that it's it. He's said Previously, there would be a God for...
Speaker: You know, your water, the rain God, the God for grain and wheat and food and provision or fertility and fruitfulness. um Yahweh is saying it's all inside of me.
Speaker: And so I was focused on a particular passage in Exodus where that's really clearly laid out. And Tikva Friam-Rakensky just talks about how radical that would have been.
Speaker: for them to to imagine one all powerful, providing all things, God, deity would have been completely new to all of civilization.
Speaker: And so I was wrestling with what that meant for their identity. Yeah. And i I hear in that sort of an embedded question or reality of like,
Speaker: the the kind of watershed moment that punctures or allows someone to crack open enough to be open to such radical thought. What what has to happen inside a person, inside a people to like engage a monotheistic God with like a a belief and a turning towards and a total reliance upon um whether they are called to the wilderness, whether they're sort of like almost shuffle forced into the wilderness. And they're like, I guess we're with this God now. But like, how does that process begin?
Speaker: I don't even know that they that it was, I guess we're with this God now. Right. I mean, i you have to wonder, like, how much how how much agency and volition they go, get out. Pharaoh was like, leave leave. I don't think there was a whole lot of choice.
Speaker: ah you know i can just imagine people, maybe even some people like, I don't i don't want to go, but the choice has been taken away. And and it does feel, again, i it feels to me like these these are the stories. It feels like I hear from women, not just from women, but I hear from women again, and I didn't feel like I had a choice.
Speaker: ah You know, i was just, I was, I was out. It was over whatever, whatever it was. um Well, and back to your quote, that identity is formed when you're outside of the traditional structures or however that quote went.
Speaker: Like that is that is here, that is present again for your these women, for all of us, for the Israelites here right out, fresh out of Egypt and for the Jewish scribes who are actually writing this story ah thousand years later in captivity in Babylon, also exiled, also displaced in a you know forced out, drawn out,
Speaker: um not at home, and they are wrestling with with everything as they're telling a story of a previous time when they wrestled with everything.
Speaker: It is a pattern for sure that when we are drawn out of what is known, whether it's comfortable or not, what is known, it's it's like a um punctuation or a what's the word for plot twist, new act, where i you know it's we're we're entering into another level of identity formation, i guess is what I'm so trying to say.
Speaker: some of where my brain was rolling around in identity. I felt like the one of the questions I was bringing to identity in Exodus is like the inheritance of identity. Like how does identity pass down through a people?
Speaker: How does it, what makes it sticky and lasting and present and living as the generations move on? In that other Tikva book that I've been reading, reading the women of the Bible, she said,
Speaker: she speaks on, it's actually in her analysis of Hagar, which it sounds like, Mom, you were in similar space as well, where she says for a practicing Jew to read that Hagar is identified very quickly in her story as a slave from Egypt, that language like instantly transports a Jewish reader into the recitation of the Passover. We were slaves in Egypt called forth by God. And like that, it that's an identity statement. And those words have this like kinetic unifying power. And, you know, she goes on to describe like how Hagar is this archetype for Hagar.
Speaker: the people of Israel and that story. And she kind of considers that there are multiple individual stories throughout the Old Testament that are playing out the archetype and identity formation of the people of Israel, because that's like the central theme of the Old Testament.
Speaker: But I feel like that that's in similar but slightly different spaces. You were thinking of when was this being written and what were the people of Israel grappling with in their identity at that time versus when it was actually happening.
Speaker: All of that like shaping of identity and living of identity is very interesting. and And then i i was also maybe in that like monotheistic space a bit, like the the very first place I went when we decided to go into identity was in Exodus 3 when Moses experiences the burning bush. And that's when God...
Speaker: calls God's self I am for the first time, which is such a powerful, distinct, very different statement. And when Moses is sort of feeling uncertain about like, they're not going to listen to me if I go to Egypt, what would I even say? And God says, you know, tell them I am sent you.
Speaker: That sort of call and and that identifying of God. um Because it it really is, Exodus is both about the people of Israel coming to have an identity and the identity of God being made known and distinct. Like both are happening simultaneously.
Speaker: who Yes. In the most radical ways. Again, i just go back to again, the way that God was starting to describe who they could expect and relate to was just so different.
Speaker: Well, and to realize, and I think I i understood this more deeply when Beth and i ah were in Egypt, that I've always read the text and and thought, well, this is interesting. This is interesting. This is interesting.
Speaker: But to actually be there and realize, no, God is saying things very specifically and in a very specific way to them that ties in to everything that they've been taught, everything that they've been immersed in, in sort of in in their experience of of Egyptian religion.
Speaker: and and all of the gods. And so even that, Katie, what you were looking at where he says like, I am. And I mean, you just kind of it's like, what a weird name. What a weird thing to say. Why is that what you said? um and I, ah you know, without without like digging in theologically and and there may be more there, my my first thought is,
Speaker: that He's singular. i mean, he's saying, tell him, I am has sent you. there's There's only one. There's not a whole bunch of us. there's not it's It is not not the God that you know. ah you know i i am.
Speaker: i am that I am. i i find that fascinating and and particular. right It's not just, oh, that's a weird name to call yourself. it's it It goes directly to everything that they have been taught, everything that they understand about who gods are and what gods do.
Speaker: Yeah. And again, in this book um with Tikva, man, if she were alive, we could have her on as a guest. That would be awesome. um But she talks about the surrounding cultures.
Speaker: would have had kind of a, their household God, like their more intimate, personal protector was kind of served a role of like the intimate deity, like, and they actually would refer to those gods as mother, father.
Speaker: and then of course there was, you know, all the other gods and there was a big storm God and there was all, you know, but again, when we are replacing polytheism,
Speaker: with monotheism. And when we are embracing one God, we are incorporating all of those elements, all of those human longings for, you know, a more powerful protector God that includes this role of mother, father. And so I think that's also why we start to see Yahweh embodies some some male and female qualities, some father and mother aspects.
Speaker: Because again, if Yahweh is everything, then there's also that need for a more intimate relationship. And so we start to see wording like that and language like that, which also would not have been, also just would have been radical for them to to think that that's how they get to relate to this all-powerful God is in a more intimate relationship.
Speaker: Well, where he actually talks to them. Yeah. And that too. Yes. And is present with them. That was ah part of, so I, the two places that, you know, one of the places that I was, I was diving in was called, ah it's a website called Reform Judaism. And, and so there's just lots of articles there, but this is, you know, Torah commentary on the wilderness, but that, that this idea that like, God speaking was was a huge part of what I was reading about.
Speaker: And that for the for the Jews, God exists not in things seen, but in words spoken. And and I thought that was i thought that that was interesting. That feels like sort of where we are here too, is like this intimacy. if you're going to have an intimate relationship, there has to be communication like back and forth, really without a mediary.
Speaker: It's not intimate if i'm if we're going through someone. So one of the, I also, I read something else that that talked about that the ah the midrash around this is that is that there are as many interpretations of the of the scriptures as there are the number of people and that the the people, like there's a letter, ah each letter in the Torah goes to an individual person who exists. And that that's what tells us like, this is, this is all of the different ways that you, you can interpret and experience God, but there's something that feels really granular in that around, uh, identity and and that individually you matter to the story.
Speaker: So I have a question. um I love all of that. And I especially love recognizing that this like unified one God starts to exhibit and we see if we trace in scripture metaphor, both feminine and masculine attributes, both mothering and fathering tendencies. Mom, you're talking about the particularity of the experience of the Torah, right?
Speaker: We know that in at bare minimum English, there has been a ah simplifying and an eroding of that, of those various aspects of God into a more primarily masculine experience. It's always masculine gendered pronouns that are employed like there's sort of been a work to recover the words like rachum and to recognize that like God's first identifier to the whole corporate people is more of a mothering statement. Like I am ah a womb God, that would be a mothering God. So I just want to ask like, which aspects of God's identity do we feel like
Speaker: God prioritized in like the, like, what do we notice about what God needed to teach the people of Israel about God's identity? And maybe like, Beth, to your sort of wondering, I wonder if we live contemplate what parts of God were the people in Babylonian captivity seeking to recapture and reconnect with?
Speaker: And where were they maybe feeling like they Perhaps we're over identifying with a part of God's character. Like, is God the punisher? Are we are we being judged? And were they seeking a comforting God? Like, wait, God told us right at the beginning. You know, I just wonder, what do you guys think about that?
Speaker: Again, I feel out of my depth, but- This is, we're just like live contemplating- I know. Oh my gosh. Oh my gosh. if If Jewish scholars heard us, they'd be crawling in their skin.
Speaker: We're just mid-rashing. Like this is just our perspective. Some of the things I've read is that the the worship of Asherah as a goddess as a wife of Yahweh potentially continued among the Jewish people throughout centuries. And it wasn't until they were in exile that they kind of came down harsher on, actually, no, remember, we are monotheistic.
Speaker: In the exile, they're they're grappling with what did we do wrong? oh, we must have continued with too much idolatry. We must have you know defamed the temple or you know our households by maintaining worship of some someone, something other than Yahweh. Maybe that, because we don't we can't accept that God is not who we thought God was. So we failed and here's how we failed.
Speaker: My point is still this concept of our God is a good God. actually. Our God is a forgiving God. Yes, our God is jealous. And so we have sinned by worshiping other gods, but our God is compassionate and forgiving. And so if we can just realign ourselves, we will be forgiven and we will get to return to our promised land.
Speaker: So it speaks to still this higher level of what they began to understood Yahweh to be and what we see early on in the description given to Moses, I'm compassionate, i am mercy, i am forgiving. Those are the some of the first descriptors given.
Speaker: So they carried that concept through of God into, you know, that was that was the beginning of having it that new identity of who he was. Hmm. I feel like it's it's sort of acknowledging that like what was happening for the Hebrew people, what's happening for any of us is, can I find language that rings true inside of my body for what I experienced the divine to be?
Speaker: Like we're all trying to do that. And so up until that point, what was feeling the most true is this world is chaotic and There's a lot of competing forces going on. I feel like I'm getting thrown about. I wouldn't know how to author my own story, meaning I am just a ah victim to these colliding forces. And so I am going to call those colliding forces gods, right?
Speaker: And pray to whichever one I feel like is terrorizing or potentially blessing me at any moment. And so like, if God's not...
Speaker: threatened by that, but is instead making a move towards the people of like, i I want rest and joy and flourishing for you. And I want you to know me and that I know you, that I'm carrying you, right? Like that's a fundamental...
Speaker: reorienting of how they live their lives. And I think that's what God cares about. Like God's still God, God's doing God stuff. Like I'm not threatened by the fact that you believe there's a billion Egyptian gods, but is it making your life better? Is it, it you know, is it, is it creating flourishing for you? So I feel like that's, that's a little bit of what you're naming in this like steady through line of like comfort and forgiveness and you can try again and certainly like Moses is an archetype of that with God on a more personal like Moses becomes a face for the person who needs to try and try and try and try again because he messes up so so often
Speaker: And I think that's personally, you know if I bring it down to how this impacts us in our lives and today, i find a lot of comfort in that because I can, you know I read all of this history and the more I read and learn, the more confused I am, the less concrete anything feels.
Speaker: History feels very fluid. And even with archeology, the more people find, the more questions arise. And so that can make me feel unsettled.
Speaker: at times in my faith, but I come back to the overarching, again, like revolutionary, radical description of this God feels resonant with my soul and resonant with the best of humanity and something that didn't logically make sense in that time in history and therefore makes more sense to me. If that, it feels more true because it felt, and the same with Jesus, like nothing about Jesus made sense, which makes it feel more true.
Speaker: It's like an extraordinary interruption. i mean, that's what I'm hearing you say is the fact that it's so, it's so different that that makes it more believable. And so as you're, as you're learning more,
Speaker: And even in that feeling confused, it's like, and there's something about this. This is radical. It's always been radical. As I was listening, I i think, i you know, i was i found myself thinking like relationally, what is going on? and And you didn't you you weren't in relationship. There wasn't relationship for the for the Hebrews. There was no relationship with the Egyptian gods and goddesses. that they
Speaker: they that you it's all it It's all intermediated by Pharaoh. So they know who they are and what they represent. But you're you're not in a relationship.
Speaker: So i I think there's something, i just found myself thinking like, what what is it that God is actually doing? And Katie, I think as you were saying, you know, what you were when you mentioned just like the world is chaotic and and i'm just trying to figure out, the thought came to me, it's like, how can I get a little control over this chaos?
Speaker: what What can I do that gives me a sense that I have a little bit of control over this chaos? And God never promised that. He didn't promise that you as a person would have more control over your chaos or the chaos of the world.
Speaker: I think that we get stuck today wanting that same thing. we we want to we we want a God that's going to control the chaos. We want to feel like we have some control. So i you know if i just if I pray these things, if I memorize these verses, if I tithe, I i you know, we can get caught, I think, in that same, where we're not actually in relationship with God, we're we're wanting to control our outcomes.
Speaker: I would say without wanting to paint too broad a brush. I mean, i I feel like that style of interacting with the divine is still pretty like deeply embedded in most religious structures. Yeah. um A lot of churches. I mean, I think that's where some mom, some of the women you've talked with who find themselves needing the wilderness and not wanting the wilderness, but it's like, well, this doesn't,
Speaker: makes sense. This isn't working for me anymore. This isn't working for me anymore. i can't be praying for the things, whatever the things are. When in Exodus, like the identity claim is just from God, the identity claim is radical presence, like incredible nearness.
Speaker: i i'm here i'm I will not be leaving with the droughts. I will not, right? Because that was part of the fear is like, I need to appease these gods because they've left black they're going to run me They're going to leave me or they're going to punish me or they're goingnna you know they're going to do something. That's the same thing that Jesus promised, right? Is radical presence.
Speaker: I just think you guys, as say as I'm listening, I'm like... It's the same thing today. and And I think we do the same thing that they did, which is like, how how quickly does presence not feel like enough?
Speaker: Or how quickly is presence terrifying? Because like i to bring it back to your to Hagar. I mean, so Hagar names God. So God names himself. I am. And Hagar names him the God who sees me, like the God who witnesses. And that happens sometimes.
Speaker: because you're right next to, right, the withness there. And we have grown so adept at modulating intimacy, fabricating it, getting hits of it through, so there's observing through social media, but like we have grown, we've lost our comfort with truly being witnessed and sat with.
Speaker: um Because it means we have to be with ourselves too. Like it's it's very vulnerable. I think we were just talking about that. I've been i've been ah reading a series of different articles in the Atlantic that, ah you know, i want to try and like keep my point without putting all this, you know, context around it. But the bottom line is that what you just said is very true, Katie, but what we've done is we've created a touchless society.
Speaker: And so intimacy doesn't grow in a touchless society. Right. It can't grow. And what we're realizing, what the data is starting to show is that is that we we have a generation of people who cannot tolerate the unknown and relationship comes with the unknown. Intimacy requires being able to tolerate and navigate the unknown. That's how we it.
Speaker: that's how we do it It's like, how do i how do I become close to you Well, i have to I have to engage in the mystery of who you are and allow you to engage in the mystery of who I am.
Speaker: And we're losing our capacity to do that. I think that's really concerning. But back to what you were saying earlier.
Speaker: Yeah, so we we end up living in formulas and and the what what is expected and what is controlled and what can be planned. and And then in in all of that, the the wilderness, a place where where i feel stripped down and I don't know what's going to happen next. um and And I don't know that I really want to be dependent on God's provision.
Speaker: I think it's becoming more and more difficult to have an imagination for the goodness itself. that can come in the experience of of exile.
Speaker: Well, it's making me think like, so we're on the other side of that. But if you go all the way back to Israel, so it is, it's sort of like a nation that's been on dating apps for a really long time.
Speaker: Yes. It's been a lot of shitty, it's been a lot of swipe right, swipe left. It's been swipe right. And then it's like, welcome to monogamy. And it's like, you know, that doesn't just. That's so great, Katie.
Speaker: That's so great. And you're afraid of it when, when it's like, this guy's a little too good to be true. Right. Now he wants to take me to a death trap. Like there's no way this, this is not going to be okay. This is not going to be okay. like Oh, great. That would agree. That that that was perfect.
Speaker: I think you just, I think you just did that really well. Yes. And I think, This is a great place to end. And where we'll pick up next time is when they forget and swipe right and what happens.
Speaker: Yeah, totally. so you're going to swipe right again. You're human. like yeah Of course. You're going to live. you You have to live in the culture that you're in.
Speaker: and this is the culture that we're in. We're we're in a swipe right culture. And your body has known some things that it can't just unknow. It has to work them through.
Speaker: And that. That's good. A bunch of places I was not expecting. You landed the plane and now we're all going to remember the dating app metaphor. This is what we have.
Speaker: but ah i have to go because I have a truck pulling up to my house. Awesome. Great. Well, thanks for coming out, guys.
Speaker: This is Red Tent Midrash, where a mystic, a pilgrim, and a storyteller ponder feminine themes in the Bible and the Christian faith. We share this space to learn together and to grow, pointing to wiser and more studied scholars who have served as our guides.
Speaker: We do not claim to offer a definitive interpretation of scripture. But we do seek to consider it from multiple perspectives and encourage you to do the same. If you loved this episode or have a question to share, connect with us at Red Tint Living on Instagram.
