Joan Chittister writes that friendship “colours the very air we breathe. We can see it in the eyes of old women, in the kitchens of the women they love. We can hear it in the voices of one young woman giggling to another over the phone. We can feel it beating in our own hearts on lonely rainy days in faraway places.” It has fascinated philosophers, spiritual teachers and mystics, artists and poets, yet remains “eternal mystery, eternal desire.” Chittister draws in threads from classical scholars such as the author of Ecclesiastes, Cicero, and Ælred of Clairvaux, “who wrote a theology on friendship founded on the belief that 'God is friendship.'” But these views of spiritual life faded. “In a world dominated by war, famine, plague, and oppression, the God of Love lost out to God the Judge and Jesus the Lord.”
The women Chittister focuses on belong to the “hidden tradition of the Bible.” True, we are told a fair bit about a few, such as Mary Magdalene and Esther. Others, like Phoebe and Lydia, are deigned a few verses. Others are even more obscure. And yet they have much to teach.
Martha of Bethany knows that women weren't allowed to study Torah, and yet Jesus teaches it to Mary. Martha recognizes the tradition He is breaking down. And she speaks her belief that Jesus is the Messiah before anyone else other than Peter. She trusts and speaks the truth of her own experience, no longer excluded because she is a woman. Like Martha, “any woman who honours the truth in her frees the woman she calls friend to discover for herself what is behind the next question.”
