Narrative Arts: Maryam of Quidun, My Mother, and Me

We all have stories we tell about ourselves. As the oldest of three girls and the one I think my mother would agree has a particularly strong independent streak, I long thought of myself as “the easy child.” 

I was a top honors student at one of the country’s most competitive public schools. While I refused to learn to drive, I took public transit everywhere. When I left home for college, I put four hours between me and my family, which felt like the bare minimum and asked them not to visit during family weekends. I followed that up immediately with a PhD program nearly 1000 miles from home. I confidently left the nest. What more could a parent want, right? 

Now that I have some distance from those first years of adulthood, I know better than to guess how my mother would actually characterize her pack of daughters, but I do know that the story is never so simple. My sisters might have needed more chauffeuring around to activities, more academic oversight, or may have stayed closer to home, but they also never called home from a psychiatric hospital, only to receive the response, “I was wondering when this would happen.”

That line alone makes it quite clear that I was not the easy child.

Still, we all have stories we tell about ourselves, even when they aren’t always helpful. In fact, more than just being unhelpful, our personal narratives can be a barrier in our closest relationships and to our experience of God’s love, which is precisely what seems to have happened to the much-mythologized Maryam of Qidun.

Maryam’s Story: A Play In Three Acts

Maryam of Qidun was a 4th century monastic and is one of the most popular Syriac Christian saints, commemorated specifically in the hagiographic extract, The Life of Saint Mary the Harlot. Of course, calling Maryam a harlot traps her in the worst part of her own self-narrativizing, but how did she come to be known as such?

Maryam’s life can be envisioned as a play in three acts. In Act One, after being orphaned at age seven, Maryam finds herself in an unusual position. Her only living relative is her uncle Abraham, a hermit, and so she is sent to live with him at the monastery, where she, too, becomes an ascetic. Revered for her wisdom, people come to her window seeking Maryam’s insights.

Act Two begins with one of these visitors, but he is different from the others. Described in the hagiography as being “a monk in profession only,” this man comes not seeking wisdom but rather to tempt Maryam. He persists for a year until Maryam is finally lured out. She has sex with him and, despairing of her lost purity and overwhelmed by the belief that she is now beyond salvation, Maryam flees the monastery for another town, where she becomes a sex worker – hence her being dubbed a harlot. 

Finally, Act Three is catalyzed by a dream. Abraham receives a vision of his niece and, breaking his vows of asceticism, disguises himself to go and find her. After sharing a meal at the tavern where she works, Maryam takes this supposed stranger back to her room, where he reveals himself to be her uncle. 

Upon his reveal, Maryam is stricken in her shame, but Abraham’s response is not what she expects. He cries out to her, “Why did you not just tell me when you had sinned? I would not have been angry with you, for who is without sin, except for God alone? I would have done penance for you myself, yet instead you have left me all alone in unspeakable sadness and grief.” He brings her home, and they dwell together in separate rooms of his home, where Maryam spends her days in repentance and is once again revered for her faith.

Rewriting Our Stories

After initially falling into sin, Maryam writes a story about herself: she is fallen and cannot be forgiven. She should not even approach her uncle, and should not seek his forgiveness nor God’s. She is willing to spend the rest of her life separated from her only remaining family, sinking further into this sense of brokenness, rather than avail herself of grace.

I told myself I was the easy child. In my story, my independence was one of my defining characteristics, so I spent four days in the hospital before I was convinced to call home. I decided I needed my story, in which I had invested so much of my sense of self, more than I needed my mother’s help or even her sympathy. 

I wonder what stories you’ve been telling about yourself. Are they serving you? What vulnerabilities might you be using them to protect you from? 

We will always tell stories about who we are. That’s just part of creating an identity. But we need to listen to who other people say we are, too, particularly those who care about us most and know us best. And, of course, we also need to rest on those shared traits that are part of our identity as people of God. We are beloved. We are whole. We are accepted—not because we are free of sin or fervent in prayer— but just as we are.