Today we come to ending of this week’s story—and, as with last week’s tale of the daughter of Jephthah, to a beginning. How will we remember this woman, and where will our remembering lead us?
In Judges 19, we read that when the husband receives no response from his concubine whom he has found lying on the threshold, “he put her on the donkey; and the man set out for his home. When he had entered his house, he took a knife, and grasping his concubine he cut her into twelve pieces, limb by limb, and sent her throughout all the territory of Israel. Then he commanded the men whom he sent, saying, ‘Thus shall you say to all the Israelites, “Has such a thing ever happened since the day that the Israelites came up from the land of Egypt until this day? Consider it, take counsel, and speak out.”‘”
In Pieces
Piece by piece
they brought her forth;
piece by piece
they had gathered her
from the farthest corners.
In every land
where they had asked for her,
she was known by a different name.
Piece by piece
as they laid her out
piece by piece
they whispered her names:
Felicitas
Christian slave who, along with Perpetua, was martyred by the
sword in Carthage, North Africa, in the third century.
Bridget Bishop
convicted as a witch and hanged in Salem, Massachusetts, in 1692.
Kim Hak Sun
one of the 80,000–200,000 Korean “comfort women”
forced to be prostitutes for the Japanese Army
during World War II. Raped repeatedly for months,
Kim Hak Sun survived to speak out;
thousands of others died or were killed.
Anne Frank
young Dutch Jew killed in the Holocaust in 1945.
Anna Mae Pictou Aquash
member of the American Indian Movement.
When her unidentified body was found in 1976
on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota,
the cause of death was listed as “exposure.”
The FBI agent present ordered her hands severed
and sent to Washington, D.C. for fingerprinting.
After her family reported her missing,
a second autopsy was performed.
This time the coroner attributed her death
to a bullet fired into the back of her head
at close range.
Jean Donovan
a Catholic lay missionary who, along with
two Maryknoll sisters and one Ursuline sister,
was raped and murdered by government soldiers
in El Salvador in 1980.
And all the unnamed sisters,
known only by the earth
in all the places
you were buried:
Woman of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
annihilated by manmade pillars of fire in 1945.
Woman of freedom
who lived and died with “Before I’ll be a slave,
I’ll be buried in my grave” on your lips.
Woman of South Africa
still bearing the wounds of apartheid.
Woman of Bosnia
on your body their war yet rages.
Woman of silence
your voice beaten out of you.
Woman of hope
with your hands upon the threshold.
Piece by piece
they touched her skin
piece by piece
re-membering
the broken body
into flesh
the ancient wounds
into new life.
—Jan Richardson
Questions for reflection
The word remember means to re-member: to put the pieces together again. The pieces never return precisely to their former shape, especially when they have been torn apart by violence. Yet we are called to the work of remembering and to the difficult grace found there. In this Lenten season and beyond, God beckons us to hold the broken pieces—to gather them, to speak of them, to not forget, and to open ourselves to how the Spirit might act through us to breathe life and wholeness into those shards. In your own life, what might it look like to do this? In the presence of widespread brokenness—especially as we remember the people of Japan this week, and the people of Libya, and every place torn apart by natural disaster or human destructiveness—where is one place that you could begin? What single piece could you pick up and journey with in the days ahead?
Blessing
Blessed are you
who re-member the ancient wounds,
for through your remembering,
broken bodies and broken stories
will receive new life.
From Sacred Journeys © Jan L. Richardson
