Seeing My Better Self
by Joan Chittister • Illustrations by Marcie Bircher
Prisca is mentioned six times in scripture, four of them prior to the naming of her husband, the kind of recognition that is unheard of for a woman of the time. Prisca is, in other words, a person in her own right. Prisca is not defined by anything around her or outside of her. Whatever her own lack of supports, of firm ground on which to take her place in the security of the system around her, she speaks her own truth in her own name and she is respected for it.
Prisca is the sign of all the untapped resources within the coarsest craters of the human heart. In her I recognize the one who has the capacity to draw from the well of the self when there is every reason in the world to believe that the well must certainly be dry….She is the prism through which I can catch sight of my own better self.
From the book The Friendship of Women: A Spiritual Tradition. Text © 2000 by Joan Chittister. Icons © 2000 by Marcie Bircher. Reprinted by permission of Benetvision.
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