[June 2003 journal entry]
My experience with the story/play Job in Jewish scripture is analogous to returning to a long-running Broadway play every week for more than thirty years. Changes/movements in my life over the past thirty years have altered how I have experienced the story/play Job. And the story/play Job has repeatedly altered my life. Different parts of the story/play Job have touched me at different times and in different ways – e.g., developing the ‘scrapheap’ metaphor or finding a way to engage the fairytale epilogue/ending (which I avoided for years by ‘leaving early’). Perhaps my notes on the story/play Job are similar to a travel guidebook. How is a travel guidebook (to be) used, given that the traveler will not be able to experience all the possibilities described in the book? My notes represent the accumulation of more than thirty years experience with the story/play Job. I cannot separate or easily/often distinguish what has accumulated from repeatedly returning to the story/play Job (as if each performance attended could have its own font in the notes). I am realizing that my reflections assume the reader will return to the story/play Job several times. Thus there are numerous promptings re special, specific, fresh ways to experience the story/play Job.