Julia M. OBrien

Old Testament scholars get excited when anyone pays attention to "our" documents.  So I was anxious to watch NBC's Kings, a contemporary story of David.  I hoped that viewers would be so enthralled that they would run right out and (re)read the accounts in 1 and 2 Samuel and heated conversations would break out around the coffee pot.  Maybe the series would be so successful that everyone would jump on the biblical-story-as-TV-series bandwagon, setting Esther in a racially-divided nation in which the heroine initially "passes" as an insider but ultimately stands up for "her" people in times of danger. I imagined Jacob's story as Dallas, siblings fighting over family money and Rebekah looking like Miss Ellie (or maybe Glenn Close).

 I just finished reading a book of poems by Lucille Clifton: Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems. BOA Editions, 2000).

Clifton's poems sometimes include humor, but they almost always speak the hard truth about the brokenness of the world.  In this collection, she writes powerfully about the death of her brother, dialysis, cancer, lynching, menopause, and racism.  The poems are short with no capitalization, but they are not small things.  Her words burn on the page.

My goal in writing about the Bible is to generate discussion about important issues.  Honest, real discussion that pays attention to the implications of what we're saying.