AlwaySane Is In Da House

Death?

We've all come across countless of quotes about deaths - positive or negative. For example:

"When death smiles at you, the best thing you can do is to smile back" - Gladiator

"Because I could not stop for death, he kindly stopped for me" - Emily Dickinson

"It is worthwhile to live and fight courageously for sacred ideals" - Norbert Capek

I was just reading a book this morning on the way to work and this one line the author wrote struck me deep inside, right to the core of my being, shaking every ounce of flesh in me.

She said:

"Death does not linger where it has been defeated" - Anita Diamant, The Red Tent

You see why I was so overcome by emotion not simply because of the depth and profundity of the subject matter, but the brevity in which it describes what it means to us all who can proudly proclaim that we have conquered death, through the ONE who conquered it for us on the cross.

The Red Tent is a fiction novel about Dinah, the daughter of Jacob and sister of his sons. We hardly hear about her, except for when she was raped.

Anyhow, The Red Tent expounds on her and her life with her family and eventually in Egypt.

Be forewarned though, that this story does not strive to hold truth to biblical-sense. The author tries to give us a sense of how life could've been like in the times of Israel and she tries to bring in elements of their times such as the herbs they would've used for cooking and healing, the machinery, the kind of work they do, the kind of houses they live in. However, as far as character development is concerned, the author took the liberty to carve out personalities for each of the brothers, Jacob, his wives and handmaids, and of course, Dinah.

We read how the brothers banter among themselves:
"Reuben was, by nature, kind to children, but we avoided Simon and Levi, who laughed at us and teased Tali and Issa, the twins. 'How do you know which of you is which?' Levi taunted. Simon was even worse: 'If one of you dies, our mother won't mourn since she'll have one exactly the same.' That always made Tali cry."

The Red Tent brought us from the beginnings of Dinah's mother and aunts (Rachel, Zilpah and Bilhah), which is about one-fifth of the novel to Dinah's story. And eventually we read about Dinah's death in the arms of her true love Benia, the carpenter in Egypt.

We also read how she met Joseph, who was already Pharoah's right-hand man and how that brief meeting was so brief but poignant.

It was because in the novel, Dinah truly loved the man, Shalem, whom the brothers killed, along with the rest of the men in Shechem. In The Red Tent, Dinah was heart-broken beyond belief and went on to curse her brothers and her father, for allowing the murders to happen.

The Red Tent continued to spin the story of how Dinah eventually settled in Egypt, gave birth to Re-mose the son of Shalem, watched her son grew to a man, met Benia - the carpenter with whom she spent the rest of her life with and died in Egypt.

The chronicle of Dinah was compelling and believable but as the author mentioned, this is a fictional novel.

Read it for the love that Dinah has shared and has the privilege to share with the people she knew - her mother, her aunts, her brothers, her father, her true loves, her son and her people.

"Death is no enemy, but the foundation of gratitude, sympathy, and art. Of all life's pleasure, only LOVE owes no debt to death"




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Truly, love knows no bounds and death has been defeated.

Sane reflects @ this location permanently