this keeps happening

I’ll be minding my own business, reading something — like now, Michael Crummey’s The Adversary — and some character will quote a line and indicate that it’s from the Bible. And I’ll think: that must be wrong. This time it was “The Jerusalem above is free,” in the mouth of one character, and an answering back from another: “And she is our mother.” I thought: that can’t be. Where is this beautiful enigma really from? Is that really in there? Reader, it is: in St Paul’s letter to the Galatians, which isn’t even an obscure part of the Bible. I must have seen it a dozen times growing up in the Bible belt. Seen it but never heard it, I guess.