Miryam's Space

Dear Sister: My book speaks to you still, do not give up hope.

This is my book, ours, not theirs. Remember, this is not the Book of Naomi or of Boaz. This book is for us, we who struggle, strangers in a land we didn’t grow up in. We can’t go back to our home, so we go forward, moved by love, and hope of a new life. We walk, and walk  and walk, sometimes frightened, sometimes with courage. Perhaps they will never accept us as equals. It doesn’t matter -what choice have we  but to follow our hearts and our hopes. This wandering is dangerous, I know some who have been cut down, but this we who survive to hold our life more precious. I promise not to forget those who have been lost along the way. I hold no judgement for my sister who returned home, but there was no home left for me.

Then there are the cynical ones like Naomi. I pray for her brokenness to heal, and by the force of my love perhaps she will. She never wanted Elimelech to move from home, but he had babies to feed. She tried to talk him out of moving, and knew they’d all be punished for disobeying her God. So when they all died, she had spent ten years waiting for this as just desserts. I tried to tell her, “no!” this is not the true G!d, this power of vengeance.  But her inner guilt made her unreachable, inconsolable. I try to teach her faith and to look to the heavens to find hope there.

We can love people who look ever so slightly different,  who speak another language, why can’t they return our love? Is it through our own failure that we feel we’ll never be one of them? But we are the same inside. We know this who break the boundaries and love outside our group. We have the same blood and the same spark of life. And when we bear a child that bond becomes indelible in our families. And this love brings redemption. Always remember that we are in the right, this is my book, not the book of Naomi or Boaz.