God Is Patient (I Am Not): Rahab, The Coloring Book

I have been working on a series of monologues based on women in the Bible. The idea is that the monologues would be contemporary updated versions of women found in the Bible. Because anyone who says women aren’t a vital part of the Bible frankly hasn’t read it. Because they’re ALL over the place. You just have to read the damn thing to find them. In a nutshell, she hides Joshua’s spies from the King of Jericho’s army in return for a promise that they will save her and her family when Joshua’s army invades. And they promise, so she hides them, and the army eventually invades, and her family’s saved, and there’s an interesting discussion to be had about faith versus works, which is mentioned in Hebrews (she’s justified through faith in her works) and James (she’s justified through works demonstrating faith). Now, when I’m doing my research on these Women Of The Bible I invariably run across really well meaning church videos. Let me reiterate that most drama performed in churches today SUCK SUCK SUCK AN AMAZING MOUNTAIN OF SUCKITUDE! To a lot of churches in America, to perform a monologue of a woman in the Bible means you have a woman up in front of the congregation, sometimes in modern day dress, sometimes in “Biblical Gear” of a shapeless shift and headdress, but the monologue is almost always the same, and that’s that it’s basically a first person narrative of what you could simply read in Joshua 2 and 6. To these churches, it somehow means more to have a person “acting it out” rather than you reading it in your Bible.

The Sunday school journal

School library journal, SLJ.

The illuminated Blake, all of William Blake's illuminated works with a plate-by-plate commentary

The Nation

William Blake; essays for S. Foster Damon