Quote for the Day, July 22, 2009

The novelist Barbara Grizzuti Harrison writes, "When Eve bit into the apple, she gave us the world as we know it. Beautiful, flawed, dangerous, full of being. She gave us smallpox and Somalia, polio vaccine and wheat and Windsor roses. Eve's act of radical curiosity also gave us desire, appetite, and hunger."

Whether you are a Christian believer or a pagan, the mythology of Eve's choice of defiance cannot be denied. To this day, there are people and churches who point a finger of shame at all women, claiming that Eve brought sin into the world. Christianity would not have needed a Savior if Eve hadn't committed the sin.

But it isn't Eve's defiant sin that gives me pause to reflect upon her contributions to our world today. I think of desire and what life would be like without it, or appetite or even hunger, both physical and spiritual. It's always been a quandary of my personal faith to wonder if I'd want a life without sin in it. Oh sacrilegious thought, you radical woman.

I sat with a young woman yesterday at the end of a long and fruitful work day and she shared with me her desire to become an actress on the stage. She is playing the character Jo in Little Women in a play I'm directing, She's a fine Jo, youthful and energetic with just the right touch of empathy and awareness. We had been discussing the character of Jo and what makes her so very special for young women to know. We were in complete agreement that Jo is hungry, desirous of life. She tackles it with energy and appetite.

This young woman playing Jo has listened to too many Eve bashers in her own life. She shares her fears and uncertainties about her own ability and talent. At age 16, she has already decided she can't. Who convinced her of that? I don't know, but I do know that unless she can find some hunger in her, she will never be the actress she says she so wants to be. She needs to believe in Eve's power to show her the way.

I can hear the rumblings and grumblings amongst the faithful. And yet, I am so grateful for hunger, for desire, for appetite. I cannot imagine my life without them. Thanks Eve, for giving your gifts to us. And for every woman who has felt the drive to be taste the apple, I lift my cup of wine in sisterhood. Life is to be seized in all its beauty and power.

Preparing a simple meal tonight of zuchinni from the garden, I gathered fresh tomatoes and bit into one, a crimson globe of juicy redness. . Thanks Eve for giving us hunger and appetite for more in life than what the world would like to limit us too.

As my favorite writer, Mark Twain, said, "Hunger is the handmaid of genius."

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