Mother's Eyes Read online

  A Mother’s Eyes

  Karen S. Woods

  Copyright 2011, Karen S. Woods

  Published at Smashwords by Sleeping Beagle Books

  Jacksonville, Illinois USA

  Icon of the Virgin of Tenderness on the cover

  by the hand of Karen Woods

  The persons depicted within these pages are a mixture of historical and fictional figures.

  All rights reserved.

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  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Chapter 1 Gavriel comes to Miriam

  Chapter 2 Shabbat Dinner with Yosef

  Chapter 3 Telling Yosef

  Chapter 4 Visiting Elizabeth

  Chapter 5 Returning to Natsarat

  Chapter 6 The Nissuin of Yosef and Miriam

  Chapter 7 Roman Census

  Chapter 8 The Nativity

  Chapter 9 Yehoshua receives His name

  Chapter 10 The Redemption of the Firstborn

  Chapter 11 The Magi and Flight into Egypt

  Chapter 12 Life in Egypt

  Chapter 13 Return to Natsarat

  Chapter 14 To Yerushalayim for Pesach

  Chapter 15 Finding Yehoshua in Temple

  Chapter 16 Yosef’s death

  Chapter 17 Sitting Shiva for Yosef

  Chapter 18 Yehoshua to leave Natsarat

  Chapter 19 At the Yardin River with Yochanan

  Chapter 20 Cana

  Chapter 21 Those who hear the word and live it

  Chapter 22 Shabbat dinner with Yehoshua and disciples

  Chapter 23 A prophet without honor

  Chapter 24 Raising the dead

  Chapter 25 Spikenard

  Chapter 26 Triumphal Entry

  Chapter 27 Washing Feet

  Chapter 28 The Disciples and Women in distress

  Chapter 29 The Crucifixion and burial

  Chapter 30 Blood Moon

  Chapter 31 The Resurrection

  Chapter 32 Until the Ascension

  Chapter 33 The Holy Spirit Comes

  Chapter 34 Returning to Natsarat

  Chapter 35 Luke’s Icons

  Chapter 36 The first martyr

  Chapter 37 Road to Damascus

  Chapter 38 Council of Yerushalayim

  Chapter 39 Fleeing Yerushalayim

  Chapter 40 Back in Yerushalayim

  Chapter 41 Preparing for dormition

  Chapter 42 The Queen comes

  Author’s Note

  Chapter One

  The afternoon sun felt warm on her back as she poured water from the village well into two large earthenware jugs. Fresh water needed to be in the house before Shabbat began, as after sunset today no water could again be drawn until after nightfall tomorrow.

  The single room of her small stone house had been scrubbed and polished, flowers had been cut from the garden and placed in vases, and the loaves of bread retrieved from the communal oven an hour ago.

  For wealthier families, dinner tonight would feature roast meat and a great variety of dishes, so many that the table linen could hardly be seen for all the food. But, dinner tonight in her house would be far less grand than that. Between the cost of the wine, the fine wheaten flour and the eggs for the six extra large loaves of the egg-rich braided bread for the three meals of Shabbat, and the beeswax candles for the table, there simply wasn’t the money for meat. Still, no one would go hungry. But, dinner would be much like dinner every other night; lentil stew, cheese, fish, eggs, greens and onions, olives, dried figs, dates, melon, olive oil, and salt.

  The first of the three blasts of the shofar, the ram’s horn, sounded, warning workers in the fields to come in to prepare for Shabbat.

  Soon, Yosef and his children would be here. Not that they had far to come. Yosef had installed her in this small house across the courtyard from both his own three room house and his carpenter’s workshop.

  “Rejoice, Full of Grace! You have found favor with Elohim. Blessed are you among women!” a man greeted her.

  Miriam looked at the stranger who spoke to her and then she turned away. What an extremely odd thing to say to anyone! She didn’t know what to say in return, so she picked up her heavy water jugs and walked away from him as quickly as possible. That man was definitely “strange”, in more ways than one.

  Strangers were seldom seen in Natsarat. It had been seven months since Yosef had brought her here from Yerushalayim. Only now, after all this time, was she beginning to feel accepted in this small village.

  She went to her own small stone house. Yet, when she turned to glare at the man at the well, he was gone, as if he’d never been there at all. Exceedingly strange.

  She placed one jug of water on the small table that held her wash basin, picked up her large covered earthenware serving dish as well as a wooden ladle and the other container of water. Then she went out the back door into the common courtyard shared by her neighbors.

  After she added more fuel beneath her earthenware pot to bring her dinner stew back to a boil, she spoke with several of the older women who also cooked their families’ Shabbat dinners in that courtyard. Most of these pots of food, including hers, would continue to cook, unattended, inside the communal clay oven in the courtyard, well into tomorrow, providing a warm meal for the families after morning prayers.

  Miriam’s mouth watered at the scent of the whole lamb roasting on Devorah’s spit. Still, she tried not to envy Devorah’s family. It was a good thing her neighbor was able to keep enough money back from the tax collectors to be able to afford to eat meat; particularly as Yosef’s daughter, Lydia, was wife to Devorah’s son, Ahron, in much the same way Miriam was wife to Yosef, consecrated as wife, legally bound, but living separately until their nissuin.

  Miriam ladled enough of the now boiling lentil stew into the serving dish for dinner, before she put the lid on her earthenware serving dish. The stew would cool enough to be eaten by dipping into it by the time they were ready for dinner, but not be so cool as to be totally unappetizing.

  After placing the serving dish on the communal work table, she poured half the water from the jug into her kettle and threw in a cup of barley, a crock of pre-soaked beans, and more sliced onions, salt, and dill, before stirring the mixture with a long wooden paddle. Seeing everything was well mixed, she replaced the lid onto the cooking pot.

  Devorah addressed her, “Miriam, would you like a leg of this lamb for your Shabbat dinner with Yosef and his children?”

  Miriam smiled and sighed. “Thank you. But, I already have cheese on the table. I can’t take it.”

  “Nonsense!” Hannah, another neighbor, urged, “Take the cheese off the table and put it on the shelf for another day, and accept the meat.”

  “Are you sure you can spare the lamb, Devorah? I’ve never seen anyone eat the way your boys do,” Miriam said with a smile.

  “That’s only because you’ve lived a very sheltered life in Yerushalayim, among your priestly relatives,” Devorah replied, with a kind smile on her face.

  “True enough,” Miriam admitted, with a chuckle. “I would be most grateful for the lamb.”

  “My Ahron will be there for dinner, anyway, with his Lydia. He could probably eat the whole leg himself,” her generous neighbor added, with a chuckle.

  “Probably,” Miriam agreed. “It is a good thing he has strong skills with cutting and fitting stone, and can earn a good living,
the way your Ahron eats.”

  Devorah laughed. “Indeed it is.”

  The second blast of the shofar came, announcing the time had come for the shops to close. Miriam and the other women began to shift their very hot cooking pots to the oven. The last step of that process was to shovel their individual cooking fires into the firebox of the oven and to add more fuel. The oven was still warm from today’s bread baking. But every bit of these cooking fires’ heat would be necessary to keep the meals warm for their families.

  Miriam wished everyone “Shalom” before taking her food into the house. She put the dish of the lentil stew on the table with the other food and wine. Then she took the dish of cheese off the table, covered it with a bowl, placed it on a shelf, then took her serving platter outside to receive the leg of lamb her neighbor had been so generous as to donate to her Shabbat table. Coming back to her table, she covered the platter with her largest crockery bowl, so the meat would stay relatively warm until dinner.

  Miriam removed her veil and cap, washed her hands and face, saying the blessings for washing. Then she combed and dressed her hair, before changing into her Shabbat clothes. She hung her everyday clothes on the peg in the corner.

  She was as ready for Shabbat as she was going to be. So she sat near her flax spinning wheel and worked for a few minutes. Using her drop spindle, she worked the very last of the wool she had to spin for this commission. When all the wool was spun, she could begin weaving the large drapery. Since coming to Natsarat, she’d worked more frequently in linen than wool because linen was usually far more profitable.

  Oddly enough, this single commission had done more to improve her standing in this community than anything else had done. She’d gone from being ‘that strange orphan girl Yosef married and brought here from Yerushalayim’ to ‘Miriam, the weaver, the maker of the scarlet curtain that is to hang in the Temple’.

  Yet, there was no time for reflecting further on this. She needed to get the last of this wool spun before Shabbat began. After the candles were lit, there would be no more opportunity to work on this until this week’s Shabbat ended with Havdalah, the service of separation of the Shabbat from ordinary time, tomorrow night.

  Although she hadn’t heard the door open, suddenly, she was aware of someone else in the single room of her house. She startled, looking up to see that strange man from the well, standing there just in front of her. The scream froze in her throat and the spindle dropped from her hand.

  “Do not be afraid, Miriam, for you have found favor with Elohim,” the man said in a particularly gentle tone. “Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son. You will call his name ‘Yehoshua’. He will be great and will be called the Son of El Elyon. Adonai will give him the throne of his father David and his kingdom will have no end.”

  Miriam drew a deep breath. Those words had literally taken her breath away. She forced herself to think about the meaning of the words. Her son would be the Moshiach promised by Avinu Malkeinu, Our Father, Our King? How was such a thing possible?

  She shook her head. None of this made any sense to her. “How is this to be as I am a virgin?”

  “The Holy Spirit will come upon you. The power of the Most High will overshadow you. The one who is to be born from you will be called the Son of El Elyon. Even now, your kinswoman Elisheva has conceived a child in her old age, and it is the sixth month with her that has been called barren. Everything spoken by Elohim is possible.”

  Miriam had heard Zechariah had been struck dumb while serving in the Temple on the Day of Atonement, after receiving a holy vision and had been sent home. Yet she had not heard of Elisheva being with child.

  Everyone said Elisheva was well past the age of being able to have a child. Then again, they’d said that same thing about Miriam’s own mother, Anna, of blessed memory. And they had been wrong, apparently on both counts. Elisheva with child? This child would be such a blessing to them in their old age.

  She looked at the man. He began to glow with the whitest light she had ever seen. “Who, what, are you?” she asked, hearing the tremor in her own voice.

  “I am Gavriel, who stands before Elohim, sent to you, today, as His messenger.”

  Miriam’s head spun with the implications of this, of what this would mean for her life, of what this would mean for her people. She couldn’t take it all in. But she’d have the rest of her life to learn how to deal with it, if she agreed to this. Could she agree to it? Still, if this was what Avinu Malkeinu desired, and He wanted it badly enough to send an angel, especially the same angel He’d sent to Moshe to inspire him to write his books, the same angel who had taught Yosef, the son of Yaacov, the seventy languages he had needed to know in order to rule Egypt, the same angel who had been sent to the Prophet Daniel; if this was what Avinu Malkeinu wanted enough to send Gavriel to her with this message, then what else was she to do other than to answer ‘yes’? But, how could she do that? What would her dear Yosef think? Still, Gavriel hadn’t come to Yosef. He’d come to her. How could she not agree when faced with this, especially this, messenger from Elohim?

  “I am the handmaiden of Adonai. May it be to me as you have said,” Miriam replied.

  Then Gavriel was gone, just there one moment and not there the next.

  Miriam blinked and rubbed her eyes. She laughed, her emotions bubbling over into sound.

  Chapter Two

  Just then the shofar sounded for the third time. It was time to light the candles, to accept the separation from ordinary time that was Shabbat.

  She went out to the courtyard cooking area, and lit a taper from the oven’s firebox, then, sheltering the flame with her hand, went back into the house to light the Shabbat lamps and candles.

  As women had done each Shabbat for centuries, she waved her hands around the candle flames, welcoming in Shabbat. Then she covered her eyes and recited the blessing, “Barukh atah Adonai, Eloheinu, melekh ha'olam,” Blessed are you, Lord, our God, King of the Universe, “asher kidishanu b'mitz'votav v'tzivanu,” Who has sanctified us with His commandments and commanded us, “l'had' lik neir shel Shabbat,” to light the lights of Shabbat.

  She removed her hands from her eyes and looked at the light of the lamps and candles. To her mind, there was not any lovelier sight than the Shabbat lights, calling the people of God both to remember and observe the holiness of Shabbat.

  She covered her face and walked to the village Beyt T’fila, the local synagogue, literally the house of prayer, for mincha, evening prayers. The women’s section was never particularly full. Halakhah, literally the way one walks, otherwise called the Jewish law, did not generally require women to be present in the group of the faithful for daily prayers. Women generally were not counted among the minyan, the quorum of ten adults, aged thirteen and above, necessary for public prayers. Miriam was deeply grateful for that degree of freedom.

  Yet, Miriam went to daily evening prayers, particularly Shabbat evening prayers, whenever she could. She enjoyed listening to the readings. Today, after her encounter with the angel, she felt an overwhelming need to pray with others.

  An hour later, after prayers, Yosef and his children—Shimon, Yehuda, Yaacov, Lydia, Hadassah, and Dinah—gathered around Miriam’s table. Shimon’s pregnant wife, Daliya, and their toddler son, Nathan, were at the table. Also present were Yosef’s daughters’ husbands, Ahron, Moshe, and Chiram.

  Yosef took the cup of wine in his hands and offered the blessing of the wine, “Vay'hi erev vay'hi voker yom hashishi”, And there was evening and there was morning, a sixth day, “vay'khulu hashamayim v'ha'aretz v'khol tz'va'am”, The heavens and the earth were finished, the whole host of them, “vay'khal elohim bayom hash'vi'i m'la'kh'to asher asah”, And on the seventh day God completed his work that he had done, “vayish'bot bayom hash'vi'i mikol m'la'kh'to asher asah”, and he rested on the seventh day from all his work that he had done, “Vay'varekh Elohim et yom hash'vi'i vay'kadeish oto”, And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it, “ki vo shavat m
ikol m'la'kh'to asher bara Elohim la'asot”, because in it he had rested from all his work that God had created to do. “Barukh atah Adonai, Eloheinu, melekh ha-olam”, Blessed are you, Lord, our God, King of the universe, “borei p'ri hagafen”, Who creates the fruit of the vine.

  Everyone answered with “Amein”.

  Yosef continued, “Barukh atah Adonai, Eloheinu, melekh ha-olam”, Blessed are You, Lord, our God, King of the universe, “asher kid'shanu b'mitz'votav v'ratzah vanu”, who sanctifies us with his commandments, and has been pleased with us, “v'shabat kad'sho b'Salome uv'ratzon hin'chilanu zikaron l'ma'aseih v'rei'shit”, You have lovingly and willingly given us Your holy Shabbat as an inheritance, in memory of creation, “ki vanu vachar'ta v'otanu kidash'ta mikol ha'amim”, because You have chosen us and made us holy from all peoples, “v'shabat kad'sh'kha b'Salome uv'ratzon hin'chal'tanu”, and have willingly and lovingly given us Your holy Shabbat for an inheritance. “Barukh atah Adonai m'kadeish hashabat”, Blessed are You, Lord, who sanctifies Shabbat.

  Again, everyone answered with an “Amein”.

  Hands were washed, with the proper prayer, and the bread was blessed, then the blessings were said for the rest of the items of the meal.

  Then everyone sat.

  Yosef cleared his throat. “I have agreed with David, the winemaker, today for the marriage of Yehuda to David’s daughter, Shoshonah. The kiddushin will be on the evening of the first day of next week at David’s house. Neither David nor I see any reason to delay their nissuin for the customary year, as there is a house for them.”

  Yehuda laughed, in clear delight. “Thank you, Father.”

  “Joy, Yehuda!” Miriam offered. Everyone else joined in the congratulations.

  Hadassah sighed. “Soon, Father, you will have a much emptier house, with most of your children married and in their own homes.”

  Yosef shook his head. “Not empty for long, as Miriam will soon be under my roof,” he said. “After Miriam and I have nissuin, this house will be Yehuda’s. Carpentry was none of my older sons’ strongest skills. But I’m so proud of the potter Shimon has become. And, I’m equally proud of the shochet and teacher Yehuda is becoming. Of course, I have hopes for Yaacov, that he may join me in the shop. But all any father can hope for is that his sons will be righteous men.”