As part of her series on the women of the Gospels Rachel Held Evans recently posted this retelling I wrote of the story of the Widow of Nain. I’m reposting the story here and I encourage my readers to follow the series of posts at her blog!
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“Soon afterwards he went to a town called Nain, and his disciples and a large crowd went with him. As he approached the gate of the town, a man who had died was being carried out. He was his mother’s only son, and she was a widow; and with her was a large crowd from the town. When the Lord saw her, he had compassion for her and said to her, ‘Do not weep.’ Then he came forward and touched the bier, and the bearers stood still. And he said, ‘Young man, I say to you, rise!’ The dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother. Fear seized all of them; and they glorified God, saying, ‘A great prophet has risen among us!’ and ‘God has looked favorably on his people!’ This word about him spread throughout Judea and all the surrounding country.” – Luke 7:11-17
At first I thought it was strange that the town gathered to mourn my son. All these years later and I still feel like an outsider, not really one of them. Granted, I grew up just down the road from here in Endor. I saw the same solitary dome of Mount Tabor looming in the distance when I would go to fetch water from the well there as I do here in Nain, but still it is different.
It was a difference I felt sharply when my husband first brought me here as his young bride. What I had always thought was a short walk to the neighboring town when I would accompany my father on the journey, suddenly became the other side of the world. Not that my husband mistreated me or that I protested our marriage, just that I knew I was no longer home. The other women in town knew each other already. They would walk to the well together or spend the morning pleasantly chatting as they gathered to do the wash. I was the inept young bride who didn’t even know how to fashion a new needle when my old one splintered. Oh, the mending I had to do once I finally got a new one!
It wasn’t until my belly started to swell with child that I began to feel a part of the community. It’s hard for the women not to get involved when they see that one in their midst is expecting – especially when it is her first. At first it was casual – someone dropping by with a handful of herbs she had happened upon that were supposed to help with the incessant nausea or backaches. Soon it became long chats as each and every one of them felt it was her duty to tell me the gory details of her birthing experiences. Goodness knows why any woman would ever want to have children after hearing all those stories, but somewhere in the midst of hearing Miriam confessing that she thought she was giving birth to a demon instead of baby and Hannah warning me for the fourth or fifth time to make sure the child suckles on both sides if I didn’t want to be crippled with pain – I became one of them. In the camaraderie of women’s shared experience Nain finally accepted me as one of their own.
It was that acceptance that later allowed me to survive. My son was a healthy young lad, a blessing to our house, but the two daughters I bore since never made it through their first winters. It was that long winter that took our second daughter that claimed my husband as well. And once again I felt utterly alone. The horror stories of childbirth were nothing compared to this. The very act of putting food on the table became a near insurmountable task. As the bitter winter raged on and death surrounded us all, for the first time I understood why those women with the ragged clothes and hollow eyes would dare defile themselves with man after man. Yet somehow it never came to that for me. I don’t doubt that I would have done anything to feed my son, but the women of Nain wouldn’t let one of their own starve.
Granted, nothing was ever again the same. I wasn’t like them anymore. Instead I was the one to be pitied – but at least we survived. My son, young as he was, always found there was a stable to be cleaned for a coin. And the women who I once would laugh and share stories with were always willing to pass on their mending to me in exchange for the occasional jar of oil or loaf of bread. Once again I was an outsider of sorts, but it mattered far less that it had before. Making it through each day became my goal.
When my son was finally old enough to learn a trade, I began to breathe a little easier. Once he could earn a living, we wouldn’t have to live in constant fear wondering where our next meal would come from. I say I trust in the Lord to provide, but despite the generosity of Nain, the question always remained as to when that well too would dry up. It is hard to have faith when despite the pity and the charity, you feel so alone. So it wasn’t until my son was able to work that I dared have hope again. It was more than just knowing we would survive. With his support, I wouldn’t be just a widow anymore, but perhaps could spend time with the other women instead of just taking in their mending.
So when he too was taken from me my world came to an abrupt end. Now I was completely alone. I think I might have laughed when some of the women once again stopped by with herbs for his body and they told me to muster up the courage of Jael to face the difficult road ahead. If only survival was as easy as driving a tent peg through the head of the enemy commander fleeing down neighboring Mount Tabor. Perhaps the women who have never had to question if they belong here can find strength in the tales of old, but I doubted even faith could sustain me now.
So when the town gathered to help me bury my son it felt odd to be surrounded by those to whom I must now entrust my life. We had managed to survive before, but now without the boy to feed I wondered if they would be so eager to provide for me alone. The loss of my beloved son compounded by these fears consumed me with grief. As his body was carried out of town for burial, I could not help but wail in despair and angry. How could God forget me so? Was I as much of an outsider to God as I was in Nain?
Yet even as my faith crumbled in the face of my grief, something amazing happened.
We had just carried my son’s body outside of the town gate when we encountered a traveling teacher and his disciples. I doubt I would have noticed them, but this teacher came right up to us, halting our progress. And then he commented on my grief. Someone must have told him I was a widow who had just lost her only son, for he seemed to genuinely care about my plight. I half expected him to offer some hollow words of comfort or press a coin into my palm without quite looking me in the eye like a few others had done. Instead he looked at me and seemed to understand – not just my loss but it almost seemed like he knew how utterly alone I felt. And then with deep compassion that went far beyond awkward pity, he told me not to weep and he walked over to my son’s bier and touched it.
A few people gasped at how seemingly oblivious he was to the purity laws, but their concern was quickly dwarfed by what happened next: For the moment he touched the bier, my son sat up and started talking to him!
I was too stunned to speak, my sobs caught in my throat. One of the bearers nearly dropped his side of the bier breaking the tension of the moment. The teacher, laughing, then helped my son down and brought him over to me. All I could do was embrace my son, weeping all over again – this time with tears of relief and joy. Everyone was in awe of this teacher, calling him a prophet and proclaiming that he had brought God’s favor among us. But no one understood the magnitude of that favor more than I. My son and my ability to survive were restored to me – surely I had been blessed.
Like Hagar cast off into the wilderness, God saw me in my isolation and looked with favor on the lowliness of even one like me. I wasn’t forgotten or merely treated with pity, God accepted me even in my grief and despair. I finally felt like I belonged.
The fear and the ridicule remained, and even increased as people tried to grasp what it meant that I was a Christian and a feminist. I recall being in a small group once in a church where I self-identified as a feminist. Immediately one of the women in the group spat out at me, “Oh, so you’re a baby killer.” To her, nothing else I said mattered since she could label me according to what she thought she knew about feminists and therefore dismiss me. While I fully understand how intimately tied the abortion issue is to some strains of feminism, it continues to amaze me how that one controversial issue has been used to shut down the entire conversation regarding the freedom and worth of women in certain circles. Especially in the church, where abortion is often opposed, many women feel like they can’t explore what it means to develop their full potential as women because of the fear of being associated with abortion. Yet discovering the freedom that comes in Christ for women should not be restricted because of fear and misunderstandings. There is such a rich history of feminism that has nothing to do with abortion and that even opposes it, I just wish that full and diverse story could be better understood.
Patriarchy continues to encourage fear of feminism by spreading the lie that it is about dominance and not equality. The July 2010 issue of The Atlantic played on these fears as they titled a widely-read cover article highlighting the advancements of women 
without feeling like I had to accept the parts that didn’t represent me or my faith. Some may say that I was naïve – wanting my cake and to eat it too. But here was this movement, founded on Christian principles of love and justice, that sought to deliver freedom to the oppressed. Women were breaking free from lies that had held them back for centuries and were finally finding the space to be their true selves. I knew that freedom like that can only come from God; so, despite the ridicule and the misunderstandings and the parts I couldn’t affirm, I wanted to be a part of it.
It would require the practical realities of the Second World War for these Victorian ideals to be (temporarily) set aside as women flooded into the factories to keep this country running as the men marched off to war. As a result, feminism in this country began to shift, even though the old paradigm persisted. When Rosie the Riveter gave up her position in the factory at the end of the war, she did so in favor of the domestic life she had been told she should desire. The post-war years of prosperity, full of conveniences like electrical appliances and a car in every driveway, not to mention a newly built house in the suburbs complete with white picket fence, were sold as the new American dream. Picture the stereotype – a woman spending the day vacuuming in pearls who has dinner ready and a cocktail in hand to greet her husband with as he walks through the door. This was the life that women dreamed of – right?
Around the world groups of people who were denied full equal standing in society were gathering together and demanding that they stop being treated as lesser human beings. In America this mostly manifested itself in the Civil Rights and Women’s Liberation movements. While this wave involved some political causes like the Equal Rights Amendment to guarantee equal social standing regardless of sex (this amendment was first introduced in 1921 and has yet to pass, despite repeated attempts), its main focus was on ending cultural inequalities and discrimination against women.
Then, in the 12th and 13th centuries, during a time when a woman’s only options were commitment to an arranged marriage or lifelong enclosure in a convent, a lay movement called the Beguines arose which offered women a third way. Women could commit to living in community with other women where they would engage in spiritual and intellectual endeavors without having to commit to lifelong chastity. Think of it like an early college for women during a time when most women weren’t even deemed worthy enough to be taught how to read. Living in community, discussing theology – sounds like my kind of ideal dorm life experience (yes, I am a bit of a theology nerd). Unfortunately, many of these women were accused of being heretics and burned at the stake for their pursuit of the life of the mind. Then, in 1617, Rachel Speght became one of the first women to publish a 
So if you were like me (and just about every other person who grew up in America) you saw the movie Mary Poppins as a kid. Amidst the spoons full of sugar and chim-chimneys you caught a glimpse (albeit a negative one) of one of the main purposes of first wave feminism – getting women the vote. While Disney portrayed Mrs. Banks cluelessly marching for the vote as evidence of how she neglected her children (and then turning her “Votes for Women” sash into a kite tail once she reprioritizes her life), they at least planted in the minds of a generation of kids the reminder that women had to fight for the right to vote. Yep, for most of our country’s history women were not considered intelligent or capable enough to have a say in who made the laws they had to live by.
That’s where I think the sad roots of this video lie. Girls in most areas of our country are rarely taught the history of the feminist movement. History is generally “his-story,” so the struggles of women to have a voice in our culture rarely make the textbooks. If students are taught anything at all about the great achievements the women’s movement has made (like the right to vote), they are not encouraged to take pride in it. Instead girls are often made to feel embarrassed by any association with feminists. They don’t want to be seen as angry, or bitchy, or asexual, or Nazi-ish (whatever that actually means). So even if they care about equal status and rights for women, the last thing they want is to be called a feminist.
Ironically, I found that I was a lot like the women in that YouTube video. I cared about women, but was too afraid to really learn what feminism (and its long history) was all about. I was the perfect example of the “I’m Not a Feminist, but…” poster, which reads, “I’m not a feminist, but… I appreciate the right to help choose my government representatives. I enjoy the option of wearing pants or shorts if I want. I’m pleased that I was allowed to read and write. It’s awfully useful to be able to open a bank account and own property in my name. I like knowing that my husband or boyfriend cannot legally beat me. It’s really swell to keep the money that I earn….”