Thinking about Jael

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Here you can expect the sort of thing I might post on Twitter or Facebook: my thoughts about something out there, whether a news story or a study or a book -- anything, really. On my blog Like Mother, Like Daughter, I like to welcome you to my world with at least one picture, and have a little chat about cozy things. There has to be one place that is not polemical (even if occasionally it does become so, for no apparent reason). 

On Instagram it's obviously about pictures -- do visit me there too. I am currently posting along with Bridget about our great galavant Out West, so if you were wondering about the radio silence here, your curiosity will be satiated, I believe, if you head over there.

But this is the spot I created to comment on current events and other thoughts without having the self-imposed limitation of posting a picture, and most of all, without the unnecessary drama brought on by Twitter and Facebook. That said, I welcome cordial (even if oppositional) comments here. My policy is to leave any well meaning comment stand. I reserve the right to delete abusive or spammy ones, of course.

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But on to more interesting things!

The hot topic of women preaching (ignited by the often clumsy, yet not incorrect assertions by some that women ought not to do it) reminded me of my one and only foray into meme-creation, which I can no longer find, but was along these lines that I first posted on Twitter: 

 

TFW you don't want to preach, you just want to drive a tent stake into your enemy's head because the men aren't doing their damn job

My expostulation was brought on by the German bishops clamoring for women preaching, which seems both patronizing and pandering all at once, and self-incriminating to boot. Men are so frustrating.

I admit that when I did a search for a depiction of Jael driving a stake through the head of Sisera (as prophesied by Deborah, see the Book of Judges, chapter 4), I didn't notice her bare breast in this one until I had posted it. But I stuck by my choice, because of course, the point is that she is a woman, and not only that, pay attention to the story:

19 Sisera said to her, “Please give me a little water to drink. I’m thirsty.” So she opened a jug of milk, gave him a drink, and hid him again. 20 Then he said to her, “Stand at the entrance to the tent. That way, if someone comes and asks you, ‘Is there a man here?’ you can say, ‘No.’”

21 But Jael, Heber’s wife, picked up a tent stake and a hammer. While Sisera was sound asleep from exhaustion, she tiptoed to him. She drove the stake through his head and down into the ground, and he died.

[emphasis added] 

The Baroque painting (by Gregorio Lazzarini, 17th century painter) brilliantly highlights both her feminine nature and her manly deed. I note in passing that it is only our remarkably prurient, yet also fatally puritanical, age that finds something shocking about depicting the female figure this way in art. All matters to ponder...

Anyway, and this is not at all polemical, when I was poking around for the actual meme I had made, I came across this email exchange in our little friend group with Fr. Mankowski, and thought I'd share it with you fellow irony-perceivers, humor mavens, and Wodehouse fans. I won't apologize for the length, because it's worth it, as is any story where the errant guy gets it in the noggin (although in this case, repentance saves the day, his soul, and the romance)! So here you go:

From Fr. M:

Leila, the painting of Jael killing Sisera pinned to your Twitter page put me in mind of this passage from Wodehouse ("The Salvation of George Mackintosh").  Celia had confided to The Oldest Member that her fiancé made her life unbearable by telling and retelling stories non-stop while on the golf course.

****

"I want your advice," said Celia.

"Certainly. What is the trouble? By the way," I said, looking round, "where is your fiancé?"

"I have no fiancé," she said, in a dull, hard voice.

"You have broken off the engagement?"

"Not exactly. And yet -- well, I suppose it amounts to that."

"I don't quite understand."

"Well, the fact is," said Celia, in a burst of girlish frankness, "I rather think I've killed George."

“Killed him, eh?”

It was a solution that had not occurred to me, but now that it was presented for my inspection I could see its merits. In these days of national effort, when we are all working together to try to make our beloved land fit for heroes to live in, it was astonishing that nobody before had thought of a simple, obvious thing like killing George Mackintosh. George Mackintosh was undoubtedly better dead, but it had taken a woman’s intuition to see it.

“I killed him with my niblick,” said Celia.

I nodded. If the thing was to be done at all, it was unquestionably a niblick shot.

“I had just made my eleventh attempt to get out of that ravine,” the girl went on, “with George talking all the time about the recent excavations in Egypt, when suddenly -- you know what it is when something seems to snap --”

“I had the experience with my shoe-lace only this morning.”

“Yes, it was like that. Sharp -- sudden -- happening all in a moment. I suppose I must have said something, for George stopped talking about Egypt and said that he was reminded by a remark of the last speaker’s of a certain Irishman -- ”

I pressed her hand.

 “Don’t go on if it hurts you,” I said, gently.

“Well, there is very little more to tell. He bent his head to light his pipe, and well -- the temptation was too much for me. That’s all.”

“You were quite right.”

“You really think so?”

“I certainly do. A rather similar action, under far less provocation, once made Jael the wife of Heber the most popular woman in Israel.”

From me: 

Haha! I’ll have to work that in somehow.

Without any undue modesty I have to say that that tweet was some of my finest work. “Well put!” as the uncle says about his own joke in Fiddler on the Roof. 

From Fr. M:

The story continues nicely too:

*****

She burst into a torrent of sobs.

"Would you care for me to view the remains?" I said.

"Perhaps it would be as well."

She led me silently into the ravine. George Mackintosh was lying on his back where he had fallen.

"There!" said Celia.

And, as she spoke, George Mackintosh gave a kind of snorting groan and sat up. Celia uttered a sharp shriek and sank on her knees before him. George blinked once or twice and looked about him dazedly.

"Save the women and children!" he cried. "I can swim."

"Oh, George!" said Celia.

"Feeling a little better?" I asked.

"A little. How many people were hurt?"

"Hurt?"

"When the express ran into us." He cast another glance around him. "Why, how did I get here?"

"You were here all the time," I said.

"Do you mean after the roof fell in or before?"

Celia was crying quietly down the back of his neck.

"Oh, George!" she said, again.

He groped out feebly for her hand and patted it.

"Brave little woman!" he said. "Brave little woman! She stuck by me all through. Tell me--I am strong enough to bear it--what caused the explosion?"

It seemed to me a case where much unpleasant explanation might be avoided by the exercise of a little tact.

"Well, some say one thing and some another," I said. "Whether it was a spark from a cigarette----"

Celia interrupted me. The woman in her made her revolt against this well-intentioned subterfuge.

"I hit you, George!"

"Hit me?" he repeated, curiously. "What with? The Eiffel Tower?"

"With my niblick."

"You hit me with your niblick? But why?"

She hesitated. Then she faced him bravely.

"Because you wouldn't stop talking."

He gaped.

"Me!" he said. "I wouldn't stop talking! But I hardly talk at all. I'm noted for it."

Celia's eyes met mine in agonized inquiry. But I saw what had happened. The blow, the sudden shock, had operated on George's brain-cells in such a way as to effect a complete cure. I have not the technical knowledge to be able to explain it, but the facts were plain.

"Lately, my dear fellow," I assured him, "you have dropped into the habit of talking rather a good deal. Ever since we started out this afternoon you have kept up an incessant flow of conversation!"

"Me! On the links! It isn't possible."

"It is only too true, I fear. And that is why this brave girl hit you with her niblick. You started to tell her a funny story just as she was making her eleventh shot to get her ball out of this ravine, and she took what she considered the necessary steps."

"Can you ever forgive me, George?" cried Celia.

George Mackintosh stared at me. Then a crimson blush mantled his face.

"So I did! It's all beginning to come back to me. Oh, heavens!"

"Can you forgive me, George?" cried Celia again.

He took her hand in his.

"Forgive you?" he muttered. "Can you forgive me? Me--a tee-talker, a green-gabbler, a prattler on the links, the lowest form of life known to science! I am unclean, unclean!"

"It's only a little mud, dearest," said Celia, looking at the sleeve of his coat. "It will brush off when it's dry."