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There is a door leading to those wide open spaces where escape from the subjugation of belief patterns is possible. It may take courage or at the very least, perseverance, to find it and walk through. Or it might simply take luck.

Freedom may arrive in disguise. She hides in ambiguity. Or lies in wait, concealed by turmoil or chaos. Other times her boisterous fanfare trumpets in the seeds of change, as she unlocks the iron constraints of obedience or conventionality. She may bring only the slightest hint to reveal liberation. Some blockage undone, some knot unraveled. Perhaps she requires a step back into the realm of the bigger picture; distance enabling a different view to the interpretation of perception.

She might swagger in with a careless disregard for consequence, or pirouette around the edges poking fun at our bonds of restraint or submission before providing the laxity to do what we want. We don't always fully appreciate or understand what she offers, the gifts she bestows. Nor do we always embrace the independence she delivers.

She can be as refreshing as that first change of wind direction from north to south bringing relief from the humidity and intolerance of hot summer days (southern hemisphere weather traits obviously). She may tease, taking the form of things not going as planned, turning us left instead of right, off our preferred path. She may emerge as our saviour, helping us to hold firm to an idea despite opposition, feeling strong in our privileged position to make choices. 

Or she may simply reveal herself in the act of surrender.

George Johnston discovered freedom while sitting on top of his roof one Sunday morning. He saw all the manicured mowed lawns below, laying bare his prescribed life of suburban conformity. This revelation preempted his flight to a Greek Island. 

With writing, freedom can come from reading the works of others, how they play with narrative form, delving into the abstract of words. I was advised to read Jean Didion who viewed the structure of the sentence as essential to what she conveyed in her work. Charlotte Perkins Gilman's movement behind the yellow wall paper also comes to mind.

Freedom came calling after a long day, full of what I thought was procrastination but might loosely be described as research. I had been following every thread, tangent, link, reference and bibliography. The line of tabs waiting patiently. She made no announcement. No pomp or hullabaloo. Quietly awaiting her cue. It eventually came, compliments of Dr Barbara Thiering, whose name I read initially as Thieving. The scent of criminality, theft wafted in between the lines. Silly me.

"The biggest controversy, at least according to some scholars, is that there is a discrepancy between the 'historical Jesus' and the '(religious) Jesus' of the Bible."

Dr Thiering was an Australian academic who spent over 20 years studying the Dead Sea Scrolls. In her book Jesus the Man, she says Jesus was the biological son of Joseph, a member of the Essene sect. She proposes that Jesus came from Qumran, where the scrolls were discovered and that he was married twice and had three children. She says that he did not die on the cross but was drugged and later revived.

I particularly liked her translation of the language used in the "deliberately constructed myths" of the Bible. In Dr Thiering's interpretation of the Pesher Code (which comes from the Hebrew word meaning 'interpretation' and pertains to the interpretative commentaries on the scripture), 'virgin' among the Essene meant nun. The term 'holy one' means a celibate, while its opposite, 'sinner' means a married man.

From such a serene entrance, Freedom seemed to dance across the screen with this information. Not only was Jesus married to Mary Magdalene, who apparently divorced him for not being militant enough, but then he married Lydia. And he could do this because he HADN'T died.*

I love this.

I have been unleashed, unfettered from the dictates of historical (biblical?) accuracy.

Because there is none.

I am liberated from the constraints of maintaining an historical basis for the context of my story. As the extremes are so polarised I don't believe it matters. There is no Truth with a capital T. There is no agreed narrative. The words I construct in my novel, that is, those make-believe, made-up, fictional assemblage of letters with meaning, do not need to be written too cautiously. I do not feel bound by any onerous legitimacy.

When I wrote A New Day I was mindful of the words that brought the Minoan culture to the page. Their story is little known and I did not want the responsibility or onus of setting up a definitive perspective about them. Arthur Evans had done enough damage. My research was thorough, studious in its revelations of this glorious ancient culture. But for The Invisible Woman the shackles are off. Of course I can write from the perspective of Mary Magdalene's child. Academics, scholars and experts are nowhere near united, regardless of how many honours bestowed for the number of years they studied.

There is no agreement whether Mary did or did not have a daughter. But she could have. And if she could have, well, then there is a story to be told. 😉

*Apparently this had been noted in the Koran (c/f Koran 4:157: "they slew him not nor crucified him, but it appeared so unto them").