Saints, Sinners, and Unexpected Sisterhood
What two seemingly opposite women taught me this week
This week, I’ve been immersed in an unlikely conversation.
Still drawn to theater (though this time from the playwright perspective), I’m drafting a short play about two historical women who never met in life: Wu Zhou, the only female emperor in Chinese history, and Edith Stein, a philosopher-turned-Catholic nun who was killed at Auschwitz and later canonized as a saint.
One ruled through a political brilliance that many called ruthless. The other wrote about empathy and died with quiet spiritual courage.
In my imagination, they meet after death and immediately begin competing in answer to the life review questions posed to them:
- Whose legacy endured longer?
- Whose transformation was more complete?
- Who sacrificed more?
- Who was more justified?
It’s easy to cast them as opposites — sinner and saint, ruthlessness and selflessness, ambition and surrender.
But as I consider their dialogue, contrasts start to converge in unexpected ways:
- Both were called traitors.
- Both shattered ceilings no one believed could be broken.
- Both paid immense personal cost.
- Both would do it again.
What begins as an argument turns into recognition and starts to form an odd sisterhood between sinner and saint.
I find myself wondering how often we do this in our own minds — sorting people (and sometimes ourselves) into neat moral categories. Hero or villain. Strong or weak. Right or wrong. It’s tidy and efficient. Our brains love the structure and organization of it! And yet, it’s rarely the whole truth.
In my mindfulness class this month, we’re exploring the habit of aversion — the quick tightening that happens when we don’t like what we see or feel. The mind wants to judge, push away, pronounce verdicts.
But what if transformation isn’t purely heroic or villainous?
What if letting go of anger doesn’t mean denying harm — but loosening our grip on black and white stories?
Through Wu and Edith, I’m discovering that when opposites not only share but listen, the arguments fall away and something more nuanced— and truer — appears.
Perhaps that is the deeper habit swap.
- From judgment to curiosity.
- From opposition to open-mindedness.
- From certainty to connection.
Here’s to seeing beyond the obvious labels — and growing wise enough to hold the whole story.
