Job's wife

It started with a song, I was thinking about an idea proprigated in popular culture that loves and learns through stories. The fact that the hero is the first person, the one telling the story.

Pen and teller talked a bit about how magic is possible because man actually believes he can think about more than one thing, when actually, he cannot.

So, if we are seeing things from our point of view then we are the hero.

It always bothers me in terms of news stories and deaths. For example, the movie "The Secret of Nihm". It is a tale told by a mouse, making one sick mouse and a rat or two soooo significant, meanwhile a woman is raped and killed somewhere in an alley and because she is not headlining a movie we do not really concern ourselves.

Another song that I love by Nickleback When We Stand Together suddenly draws attention to soldiers being killed as you complain about your subpar breakfast...and they sing, about how we just turn off the tv and let it happen "over there" and return to what actually matters to us.

I do not know why but the song, "I Heard it Through the Grapevine" felt so self-centered. "..of your plan to make me blue." Hardly, I imagine that was not the motivation of his once was lover. I wonder what we would think if we heard her song. I imagine her singing, "You don't  own me." But, nevertheless it was not intended to cause a pain, just cause it did.

(Brief pause for Wuthering Heights, and a scene in the Ralph Finnes/Juliet Binoche version, where Heathcliff marks a calendar all of the days Cathy spends with him vs. with the Lintons. He says, "It is to show that I DO take notice." She is hurting him, but makes it clear that was never her intent. If he wanted to spend time with her he ought to make such a prospect desirable.)

Ok, on to Job. He is the dude in the Bible whom God granted Satan the power to tempt and ensnare because God  was certain allowing such would not change Job's alliegence. And I was thinking how we all "coin the phrase" that "when it rains it pours", meaning that when one thing goes wrong they all do. That always reminds me of Job. He lost his house, bad. He lost his sons, bad. He lost his health, worse. And his wife died and his closest friends said he just ought to curse God and die, worst. And to me, it has always troubled me that his wife and children are easily replaced to make the ending happy, as if her life was a mere accessory to his.

I wonder what sort of story would be told if Job's wife was the central character. I get this idea not entirely originally either. One of my all-time favorite books was Jane Eyre and so, I had to know the story from the view point of Bertha Mason. That is what makes up the comoanion novel of Wide Sargasso Sea. I only actually read the sunopsis and watched a movie, cause none of it is true, ha ha ha as if Jane Eyre is.

My kids are always asking me if this or that Bible stories are true, too. The answer I give is,very important. And the answer I always give is "We believe the Bible to be the word of God, as far as it is translated correctly." That actually bothers me, too, but I will save that for another time. I go on to say that regardless if it is factual, the ideas a pure and help us be better people and that matters, and then tell a story I feel confident telling them is 100% true.