THE WOMAN WHO LOOKED BOTH WAYS
Storyteller: Julie Berrow
St Barnabas – 17 August
This is a story of departure under pressure. The city is about to fall. The messengers are urgent, the commands are non-negotiable. There is no time to gather belongings, no space for farewells. Just go — now — and do not look back.
Lot hesitates. His wife says nothing. There is almost no dialogue in the flight from Sodom — only actions. The urgency of the moment suppresses speech. What could be said that would not be face-threatening in every direction?
The woman’s turning is brief, and final. No reason is given. It is not clear whether she is disobedient, grieving, or simply human. But the consequence is immediate: she becomes fixed, literal salt — an image that cannot move forward or return. Her gesture, possibly reflexive, becomes a permanent breach.
In this story, face is not managed through words but through posture, movement, and the impossibility of standing in two places at once. It is about what happens when departure costs more than obedience allows space to acknowledge.
Read the story in full — Genesis 19
The story of Lot’s wife is only a moment long—just a glance—but it echoes with sorrow and stillness. This setting of O Vos Omnes by Carlo Gesualdo gives voice to that kind of grief: a turning back, a life halted, a loss without repair. As you listen, hold in mind the salt pillar on the plain—the sorrow that looks back, and the silence that follows.
O Vos Omnes
Responsory for Holy Saturday, from Lamentations 1:12
Latin:
O vos omnes qui transitis per viam, attendite et videte
si est dolor similis sicut dolor meus.
English:
O all you who pass by on the road, attend and see
if there be any sorrow like my sorrow.
FOR REFLECTION
She only turned, a moment in the dust,
A backward glance, the echo of a home,
The scent of bread, the heat, the tender crust—
All swallowed by the fire that bid her roam.
What voice had warned her? Angels in the night,
Too swift, too strange, too bright to comprehend.
She followed, yes, but left her heart in flight
Where every path must break, and cannot bend.
No name is given her—no mourning psalm—
Just salt, still standing, bleached by sun and air,
A testament to how we crave the calm
Of ruin, more than trust the mercy there.
O Lord, preserve us when the sirens call—
To choose the road ahead, and not the fall.