"Mackenzie, I am neither male nor female, even though both genders are derived from my nature. If I choose to appear to you either as a man or a woman, it's because I love you. For me to appear to you as a woman and suggest that you call me Papa is simply to mix metaphors, to help you from falling so easily back into your religious conditioning."After all, pastors do represent God in a special way to their flock - and they are perhaps the most prominent icons of God for those far away from the church. I think my familiarity w/ the "in persona Christi" doctrine of the Catholic church made me think about the quoted passage in relationship to women's ordination. There are plenty of people who find the idea of turning to a man for help / guidance a terrifying thing. (Although I've heard the counter-argument, "All the more reason for these hurt people to have interactions with male pastors that could be positive and healing.")
[...] She stopped talking, but only long enough to put away some seasonings into a spice rack on a ledge by the window and then turned to face him again. She looked at Mack intently. "Hasn't it always been a problem for you to embrace me as your father? And after what you've been through, you couldn't very well handle a father right now, could you?" (93)
12 years ago
3 comments:
olivia - i get highly ridiculed by close friends for what i am about to say to you: i, even as a man, consider myself a feminist. and the reason i consider myself a feminist is because i grew up in a southern baptist church where women were not allowed to speak without permission from men or without review from a male board of trustees. it was even controversial for girls in the youth group to speak from the podium in report of youth camps and mission trips. i watched my own mother - who loved the Lord intensely - cower before men, the church and God in a way that was demeaning and void of the freedom Christ gave through personal eye-contact with women in the gospels.
this especially bothers me when i recollect that i gained as much of God and God's character from women as i ever did from men. my wife speaks the Lord's heart over me in tremendously powerful ways on a near daily basis. it's bullshit to tell her to dial it down because she's a woman. she knows God, and God knows her, and God illuminates through every pore of her being in a way that transcends gender or our stupid-ass religious hierarchy systems of sex and education and financial status.
with that said, i would really like to hear more of your thoughts on women's ordination. i can see how this selection in the book is an argument for women's ordination, but i'd like to hear more of your own experience in the church - what you've experienced and witnessed as a woman believing that God the Father offers more volume to women's voices than most american churches would ever dream. this is a great conversation. shit. i wish we were drinking tea and chatting this up in a lame ass christian coffeeshop.
(ps. sorry about the language. well, no, i'm not sorry. this stuff really chaps my hide.)
(psps. how do coffeeshops become christians? i never understood the logic behind that.)
Hamster, I'm glad you asked. I'm going to have to save responding for much later - am away on an energy-draining research trip and this is a comment/post that will require much more reflection and energy than I have right now!
olivia - word.
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