Emerging Women

By Jess Rivera

Who am I?
The question glares at me from the mirrored surface, reflecting dark eyes still heavy with sleep.
But I avoid it. And instead I think about brushing my teeth, and making myself beautiful with brushes and combs, scents and paint, plastered onto scrubbed clean skin.
No dirt, no oil, nothing to suggest a body and pores and earthy humanness, just beauty from an image smiling at me from glossy pages.
I ignore the swelling of hips and belly and breasts and stuff womanly shape into a different frame, circle into square because square is prettier.
Slip on, one leg at a time, the perfectly tailored suit of security called “confidence”, and whiten my pretty smile, and spray perfume on my body
to hide it, conceal it, subdue it.
All the while the question glares at me in red, angry, hurting letters from the mirror.
Who am I?

Who AM I?
The question follows me on paved streets and inside gas-guzzling car; where I ignore it once again by turning the radio up and listening to angst-ridden songs about standing up to the system and loving who you are,
all the while driving to a place where I am quiet, and perfect, and molded into what others would have me be.
Somewhere in this gray and walled in cubicle my voice has gone silent and I feel like the traitor to some great hero I have admired, even though the hero is just me, but it is the me that others see and love and admire, strong and not-ever silent, except for here, in this grey-walled cage of conformity.
And The Question sounds loudly in the back of my mind, its clanging cymbals, strangely dissonant, drowning out my perfectly ordered and formed thoughts.
Who am I?

Who am I?
This maddening question will not leave me alone, though answers come in droves from every source of information.
A constant and unending flood of sound and sight, taste and torment.
I am a woman; so I must be thin, beautiful, smart, strong, weak, vulnerable, nurturing, competent, needy, independent, dependent, all things to all people, nothing to myself.

I am numbers on a scale, people watching what I eat, wondering, guessing, judging.
I shop in the corners of stores where they keep the clothes for the ones who take up space and yet are rarely seen, a statistic, a joke, a pound of flesh and nothing more, just fat, no feelings.
I am a Christian and so must be black and white, right or wrong, blessed or Damned, fire and brimstone or too much grace, always pounding, yelling, fearful and even vengeful,
either a relativist or a caricature, a sinner or a saint, virtuous or lecherous, never both—couldn’t God be a paradox?
Who am I?

Who am I?
Not one word cleanses me in this flood of American, Faithful, Consumerism rhetoric and the unanswered question begins to burn itself into my flesh and my soul, demanding answers that are hiding, and I am lost.
Wandering amidst the noise and colors of chaos, words, images, this, that, you should, you must, you would, if only, just do this, 10 steps to freedom, 12 steps to wholeness, 8 steps to get to God, purpose driven, centered, balanced.
Driven yet still, calm yet active, steps and steps and steps winding upward like Jacobs ladder only higher.
Striving to get to some great white-bearded man in the sky with the meaning of life locked in a chest somewhere at his side and a riddle to answer in order to know—running, climbing, striving, organizing, reorganizing, downsizing, upsizing, breathing, not breathing, dieting, eating, running, running, running up the ladder till the 10 steps, 12 steps, 8 steps collapse in on each other and I fall into a heap by a basin of water.

Who am I?
The question is burned now, etched now, into my flesh, unanswered, raw red and I am bleeding and crying and I don’t know where I am, or who I am and it is quiet with no clanging symbols in dissonant chords telling me what to believe about woman, numbers, Christian.
There is only water.
Water.
Wet, flowing, gurgling, sparkling, still, running water.
Everywhere water, clean and clear and beautiful, and I am bathed, drowned, drenched in water like being in a womb again, and I remember.
I remember a womb, dark and beautiful, wet and warm, water over me, through me, in me, breathing water, water breaking, gushing, drenching and me;
coming with the water, breaking out into the world from water, from womb.
I remember Spirit was there and she was dancing and I was breathing, no longer water but Spirit and she kissed me and it burned, burned like fire, burned like a brand, burned like a cross.
And I was marked, marked when I burst forth from the womb, marked with a cross, branded like property…no, not branded, birthed, it was a birth mark, birth from the womb, the womb of God, birth in water, through water, wet with water.

Who am I? The question is no longer burned, etched, into flesh and bone.
The bloody words have washed away in the water of my birth leaving me naked and newborn from the womb of God and a voice says “child” and I know that is the answer
to who am I?
I am.
I am marked and claimed, sealed and drenched, filled and washed, new born from womb of God.
Called “child” called “beloved” marked with a cross on my forehead, a birth mark, a love mark.
The question no longer burning, is gone, washed, clean, replaced by cross and water and Spirit dancing in me, calling me.
Dissonant clang of rhetoric drowned by sweet silence of peace and Voice speaking somewhere from torn clouds:
“You are mine”

Written and performed as a spoken word piece for 2006 “Rivet This” event with the National Organization of Women, Twin Cities and Savvy House Entertainment. Inspired by a poem by Dietrich Bonhoeffer entitled “Who Am I?”

Rev. Jess Rivera is currently serving as Assistant Pastor at Resurrection Evangelical Lutheran Church in Gretna, Nebraska. She is an Alumna of Luther Seminary in St. Paul, MN and is an avid poet and blogger; you can check out her other work on www.dancingshadowspaces.blogspot.com and www.pjmystic-daughterofeve.blogspot.com.

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