Once, they say, she sat listening at the feet of him who's both the Author and the Work, earning a sisterly scold, and became a character in the book she reads, her reputation forever fixed as the one who ignores what seems central (whether kitchen or court) in favor of what is -- patron saint of inversions, of the world turned upside-down. Don't be fooled, she warns us: though the words be all you have, they are enough. Tolle, lege -- for that is now, as it was in the beginning and ever shall be, world without end, the better part.
Author's Note: This drabble was inspired by "The Magdalen Reading," a fragment of a much larger altarpiece created by Rogier van der Weyden of the Netherlands in the early fifteenth century, most of which has been lost. The whole probably depicted an enthroned Madonna with the Child Jesus on her lap and various saints positioned around them; what remains is a seated female figure, the Magdalen, reading a book. "The Magdalen," as a character in Christian art and legend, is a composite built from women in several different Biblical stories (the woman who washes Jesus's feet with her hair, the woman from whom Jesus casts out seven devils, and Mary, the sister of Martha and Lazarus). This portrait of the Magdalen with a book harks back to the story in Luke 10:38-42 in which Jesus visits the house of Mary and Martha and commends Mary for her attention to his teaching, even though Martha would rather she had helped out with the duties of hospitality. Tolle, lege is Latin for "Take up, read" -- a man named Aurelius Augustinus heard this phrase in the sound of a bell ringing one day, picked up a Bible and went on to become one of the founding fathers of Christian theology. Reading can be a dangerous activity -- you never know what you might find yourself doing under the influence of a good book ... :-)