"Pharaoh's daughter came down to the river ..." Exodus 2
Women rule the world. One sign of it, if you need proof, is the invariable presence of a commanding woman seated at the front of the morning bus who holds court, chatting loudly with the bus driver and keeping the world together and on track with her regal observations. Coffee left standing all night is undrinkable. People do foolish things, and they always pay for it in the long run. What goes around comes around. Pay now or pay later. God help anyone who doesn't respect his mother.
She has genuine authority because, like the bass player in a jazz band, she lays down the deep, subsonic riff and rumble of the music, the basic story we share from birth to death. She is the true author of the Bible, the keeper of the family memories, shaping them to affirm that trial leads to deliverance, loss opens us to new possibilities. She frames the story like a tapestry woven from the many threads of human desire that intersect to create wonder and tragedy every day. A threatened child put in the river by its mother is drawn out by pharaoh's daughter and named Moses, chosen by God to deliver the Hebrews from slavery. The story will underwrite the aspirations of every oppressed people in history, including the American civil rights movement, a flood toward freedom, unstoppable surge, like birth itself once conception has occurred.
We are carried, even against our wills, by the power of this underlying story of God's engagement with the world. Lest we forget, the queen of the bus is here to remind us.
