As we approach the end of this week of reflections on the woman of Judges 19, today’s reading invites us to consider doorways and dreams . . .
In Anne Michele Tapp’s article “Virgin Daughter Sacrifice” in the book Anti-Covenant: Counter-Reading Women’s Lives in the Hebrew Bible, she notes that in this story and that of Jephthah’s daughter, doorways serve as a boundary between the “safety” of the home and the danger that lies beyond.
Only the male head of the household can pass through the doorway safely, and the well-being of his guests depends primarily on him. In these stories, the host protects the men in his home. The women are allowed, or pushed, through the doorway to deal by themselves with the dangers that await immediately outside. The doorway does not belong to the woman, yet it determines her fate.
The symbolism of the doorway reminded me of a letter I received from a friend in which she described a dream about a doorway of her own. My friend, who still deals with the wounds of childhood abuse, wrote,
I had a dream that I was building a door. It was a beautiful wooden door. It was partially open as I was working on it and the frame. Friends came by to help but it was my door—I was in charge and competent enough to build a door. And it wasn’t a “keeping out” door, but it was a “going through” door. I think that’s just where I am in my life. I need to claim me, my doors, and my ability to make them with the intention of going through them.
My friend’s dream and her life speak to me of claiming our doorways, our passages—turning them from other-owned openings to death into self-owned, self-fashioned passages to life, passages through which others may find safe space. Honest doorways that open into ourselves, into God.
Questions for reflection
What kind of door are you creating in your own life right now? Is it a “keeping out” door, a “going through” door, a door of some other name? What are you allowing or inviting into your life, and what amount of intention are you bringing to this? Is there a threshold you need to cross, a passage you feel drawn to enter?
From Sacred Journeys © Jan L. Richardson
