MIRIAM

INTRODUCTION

The title of my thoughts for this 18^th Tuesday  is, “Miriam.”

She’s the main character in today’s first reading from the Book of Numbers [12: 1-13]

“Miriam”: it’s a nice sounding name. In a high school English poetry class, one of our teachers talked about the three most beautiful sounding letters in any language: M, L and R  Our teacher said that his favorite word in the English language was “oleomargarine”  - a word that has sort of disappeared - when shortened to “oleo.”  Looking back that is only thing I remember from that course.

Miriam has an M  - and a R - two of the those three most beautiful sounding letters. It doesn’t have a “L” the other beautiful sounding letter.

But who wants to have the name: Malaria?

“Miriam” - a clear sounding name.

It’s like “Marion”

However, if you name a little baby girl Miriam or Marion - you’re slating them to be older aunts and librarians as the song goes.

TODAY’S FIRST READING

Lately, in these readings from Exodus and Numbers that we’ve been using for first readings - on weekdays - we’ve been hearing some early Jewish history and roots stuff.

So today - from Numbers - we hear about Miriam - hence this homily.

Miriam appears only a few times in the scriptures - 13 times to be exact - mainly in Numbers - but Exodus as well and in a few other spots.

She is the sister of Moses and Aaron.

In a story, we hear about the good, the bad and the ugly.

Let me start by mentioning some of the good stuff about Miriam.

She takes part in playing the timbrel and leading the dancing for the famous song in Exodus 15  which celebrates Israel’s escape from Egypt. Notice the mention of this after the song in Exodus 15: 20-21.

She gets associated with water - saving Moses with the basket story - and Pharaoh’s daughter discovers little Moses in the waters. Then the Red Sea escape. Then she is associated with a well in the desert.

In the feminist movement in Judaism, there is in modern times, Miriam’s cup. It’s a painted chalice that contains water. It’s on the table for the Seder meal. I wonder it that gets snickers and scorn from purists in Judaism.

On the bad and ugly side, she and Aaron criticized their brother for marrying a Cushite woman - also labeled an Ethiopian woman.   The other comment on the bad side is that some Jewish commentators say her motive for not liking Moses at times is that she was jealous of his success compared to her life.

CONCLUSION

These are just a few comments about Miriam.  I’ve been trying in these past few years to speak about stuff in the first reading - because after 50 years - I’ve done a lot of yakking about gospel stuff.

P.S. If you have a sister, give her a call and thank her for her presence in your life. If she has passed away, look at her life with you, and thank the Lord for the good stuff - and if forgiveness is called for, give it.

And if you’re going to have another baby, and it’s a girl, think Miriam!