Part III of the Sunstone Classics series.
Carol Lynn Pearson is the author of the best-selling memoir Goodbye, I Love You, and the multi-award-winning play Facing East (being re-staged by Plan-B Theater in October 2026 for its 20th anniversary). Sunstone published this reflection by her in issue 97 in 1994.
As I perform my one-woman play, Mother Wove the Morning, I find myself having unusual responses to various sections. Most recently I have experienced a strong emotional connection with the gnostic woman who speaks of what Christ did for women and, according to their tradition, for the concept of God as Mother as well as Father. Sometimes my eyes fill with tears as I say: “And what shall I write my dear Tertullian?” (The cousin who has written her that her priestly activities and her prayers that include the Mother are a great shame.) “What would Jesus say to me? Ah, yes. To take the little circle my orthodox cousin has drawn that has no place for me, and to draw around it a larger circle, that I may have a place for him. Love one another, little flock, as I have loved you.”
Recently I performed in San Jose at the Sisterspirit Bookstore and Coffeehouse. I studied the audience and noticed that most of the women there were lesbian. They were highly appreciative throughout the play. As I became the gnostic woman, they were very much with me. “And what shall I write my dear Tertullian,” I asked. From the front row came a voice that most of the 150 women there could hear, “Up yours, Tertullian!” A laugh rippled through the audience. I stepped closer to the woman who had spoken. “Wait,” I said, “What would Jesus say to me? Yes, to take the little circle my orthodox cousin has drawn. …”
I heard hushed vocalizations from the audience, little sounds of surprise and insight and agreement. Most of those women had been the victims of the small circle, placed outside its circumference by their orthodox cousins and sisters and brothers and friends and institutions. What a thought, to draw the circle large enough to include those who have excluded us!
I try to draw the larger circle offstage, though not always successfully. Last Sunday, I succeeded. The first person I saw as I stepped into the foyer was the Rush Limbaugh of my ward. His highly patriarchal circle has no room for my feminism, and he has long looked at me suspiciously, though I confuse him a lot by being warm and friendly and publicly acknowledging his good heart, and telling him an occasional joke (to which he has lately responded by telling me insulting Bill and Hillary Clinton jokes).
I put my hand to him last Sunday and said (he would never read Sunstone, but let us just call him “Rush”), “Good morning, Rush! How are you doing?”
“Oh, not too good,” he said. “My goal today was to shoot five politicians and I’m way behind.” And then, of course, I got a really dumb Clinton joke that didn’t even have a good punch line. I looked at him and shook my head.
And what would Jesus say to me?
“Well, Rush,” I said, “My goal today was to hug five people who are so very strange I can hardly believe it. And you are the first.” So, I hugged him right there in the foyer, then turned and went on into the chapel.