As we close our week reflecting on the life of Hagar, I invite you to read the following poem. Does it have anything to say to you, and where you are, in your own life? Is there a relationship in your life that could benefit from imagining it in a different way?

“Hagar Writes a Letter to Sarah as a Cathartic Exercise Suggested by Her Therapist”

from Hagar Poems by Mohja Kahf

Dear Sarah, life has made us enemies

But it doesn’t have to be that way.

What if we both ditched the old man?

He could have visitation rights with the boys

alternate weekends and holidays

(especially the Feast of the Sacrifice,

–he took that Day anyway,

forgetting it was about me in the desert

watching my baby dehydrate near to death).

Anyhow, you and I, we’d

set up house, raise the kids,

start a catering business maybe

You have brains. So do I.

We could travel. There are places to see

besides Ur and this nowheresville desert

with its tribes of hooligans

No. Your lips thin when you disapprove,

like the mother I almost remember

from before I wound up in your house.

I was barely more than a girl.

You used to laugh then. In those days,

you could stand to look at me. We

even hugged, sometimes.

Oh, Sarah, you need years of therapy.

Can’t you admit that what he did was wrong?

Be angry at him – for just one second.

You don’t have to be angry forever,

just long enough to know the world won’t fall apart.

Long enough to pity him,

yourself, me

Laugh, Sarah, laugh

Imagine

God, the Possibility

Sincerely Love,

Hajar