On salt and tears and the future

In my meditation this morning, I was thinking of the kabbalistic sphere of Yesod, where we experience a descent into the Underworld — the place of dreams and vision. I know of two ways of doing this: to visit the Greek Persephone and Hades in their kingdom of the afterlife; or to descend with the Mesopotamian Inanna to a confrontation with her sister, Erishkagal, queen of the underworld.

I felt I wanted some other ideas; and I found myself thinking of the biblical story from Genesis, of the destruction of the Cities of the Plain — Sodom and Gomorrah — for their wickedness. Abraham’s brother, Lot, has moved there with his wife and children. He is warned by two angels to leave before the destruction and does so. He is told not to look back; but his wife does, and is turned into a pillar of salt.

It does sound cruel. How natural, when you can see the reflections of fire falling from heaven behind you and smell the burning brimstone turning the city to ash, to want to glance back. We don’t even know her name; the Bible doesn’t tell us. In the patriarchal society of ancient Israel, she is simply “Lot’s wife.” Some later sources give her the name Edith.

Two of her daughters — Lot’s daughters, also unnamed — leave Sodom with her. “Your two daughters who remain with you” suggests that Lot’s two unmarried daughters escaped, but others, already married, stayed behind to perish with their husbands. How natural for a mother to look back in anguish as she is forced, by the command of God and her husband, to leave her children behind to die.

There is a movement today among Jewish women to reinterpret such passages — texts written in a world that gave little space to women’s voices — and to restore compassion to their stories. One reading sees mercy here. Edith, let’s give her that dignity, is weeping salt tears for her dying children. Her heart is breaking for them. In mercy, she is turned into a pillar of salt — her tears made stone — and allowed to stand there forever, looking back on her memories, but freed at last from the agony of loss. And in doing so, she becomes one of the few women, even unnamed, to be remembered in the Bible.

When I think about Edith, I can’t help reflecting on how attitudes to women have changed over time — and how far we still sometimes have to go. In so many ancient stories, women appear as shadows beside the men who define them. Yet if you look closely, you often find moments of courage, love, and sacrifice shining quietly through the gaps.

We live in a different age now, one where those silenced voices are being heard again — and reinterpreted with empathy instead of judgement. Edith’s story becomes not one of disobedience, but of love; not punishment, but remembrance.

And perhaps there’s a lesson in that for all of us. It’s easy to look back to the past — to moments of loss, regret, or nostalgia — and to feel the pull of what’s gone. But if we dwell there too long, we risk becoming like Edith, frozen in time, looking backward instead of moving forward.

At the same time, living only in the future can rob us of life too — always planning, never quite arriving. The truth, I think, lies somewhere in between. It’s good to honour the past and to dream for the future, but the only place we can truly live, love, and create is here — in the present moment.

The Sufi poet Rumi wrote, “Do not be satisfied with stories, how things have gone with others. Unfold your own myth.”The past gives us stories, and the future offers dreams — but it is in this moment, breathing and aware, that our own myth begins to unfold.

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