Timbrel by Marianne Mersereau

 

Author Interview written by Jennifer Astion, Communications Specialist at St. Andrew’s in Seattle:

Parish Profile: Marianne Mersereau

by Jen Astion, Communications Specialist

 

Perhaps you have enjoyed glorious flowers on Sunday morning or been moved by hearing the Prayers of the People read in a lilting Southern accent. If so, you have felt the influence of parishioner Marianne Mersereau. Currently a member of the Flower Guild and a Lay Reader, Mersereau has been a member of St. Andrew’s since 1995.

 

Mersereau grew up in Appalachia in an evangelical church but has found the Episcopal Church to be the right place for her. “I love the tolerance, acceptance, and inclusiveness. I feel accepted for who I am. No one was ever trying to change me!”

 

She has volunteered at George Center for Community work parties, served on the vestry, and performed liturgical dances at St. Andrew’s. Her daughter Bailey, 17, was baptized here, and served as an acolyte for several years. Her son Ben, 20, also served as an acolyte. As a member of the Youth Group, Ben participated in mission trips to Alaska, San Francisco, and New Orleans. Her husband Dave Mersereau currently serves a counter for the 10 am service.

 

Marianne Mersereau is also an accomplished poet whose new book Timbrel (Hebrew for tambourine) will be published in early June. “Miriam, the sister of Moses, is described as having a timbrel,” she explains. Miriam is one of four women whose stories are woven together in Mersereaus’s narrative poems. Another is the daughter of Jephthah who is sacrificed by her father in the story found in the book of Judges. In Timbrel, she is named Bathsheva, after a central figure in the story of King David. Talitha, Jairus’ daughter from the New Testament, becomes a symbol of reincarnation. Devorah, the fourth character, plays the tambourine in an Appalachian snake-handling church. These linked verse poems explore the theme of gender equality.

 

These four characters first appeared together in a novel Mersereau set aside in 2010. “They did not want to be in a novel,” she says. “I did a labyrinth walk with this in mind and learned that Devora’s story needed to be told.” Inspired by St. Andrew’s 2012 Sing a New Song music program, Mersereau found a new way to tell her characters’ stories as poetry. For a preview of Timbrel, you can watch Mersereau’s book trailer on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyS6qxT7jW8

Rating: [5 of 5 Stars!]

 

“Get your timbrels ready / sisters, mothers, daughters / Ready to follow me / in a dance…” Marianne Mersereau’s verses sing of visionary Biblical women, beginning with Miriam, whose “prophecy takes root / in a watery womb.” These are poems of feminine strength, of unwavering resolve, of Bathsheva and Talitha, and on to Dvorah of “the Holiness Church of the Living God in 1976.” Hold your tambourines high, “ready to dance (into) this strange world,” under the New Moon, across the Red Sea, a jar of honey in hand.

–Ronda Broatch, Author of Shedding our Skins and Some other Eden

Rating: [5 of 5 Stars!]

 

In a mesmerizing journey through Biblical times into 1970’s Appalachia, Marianne Mersereau’s Timbrel juxtapositions religious gender bias against the lives of strong women of faith: Miriam, maligned sister of Moses; Bathsheva, Jepthah’s gracious daughter, whose sacrifice saved a whole tribe; Talitha, risen from the dead; and Magdalene, whose shame becomes glory through her association with Jesus. These are Biblical women who sing, dance, and, in states of ecstasy and praise, play the timbrel to sustain their sacred exultation. Last is Dvorah, a 1970’s mountain woman whose spiritual gifts become anathema to the men of her congregation, causing her to question: “Why are only the men called/ When your best friend on earth was a woman/ Mary Magdalene with You to the end/ And first to see You after the resurrection.” Woven through the three sections, or “Songs,” the themes of water, birth, death, and redemption weave in and out of these stories in verse, moving gracefully as the waters of the Nile or even Copperhead Creek, or perhaps some elegant line of women snaking through the lines of words, swaying and chanting. Above the strife and misunderstanding, over the never ending noise of male voices saying, No you can’t, is heard the striking and responding reverberation of the timbrel, alive in the hands of a woman who replies, Yes, I will.

–Christina Lovin, author of A Stirring in the Dark, Little Fires, and What We Burned for Warmth

Rating: [5 of 5 Stars!]