Repression in the Name of God is Repression in the Name of Fear

It's about 3:45 in the morning. It is completely unnatural that I should be awake at this hour. David is on the sofa because he has a meeting in the morning and I can't stop flopping around. It's very bright outside here. We visited David's parents this weekend in their little Tennessee town. Everything there gets dark at night. I think it makes you more human to be able to sleep in the absolute dark. (I have a vision of living on a little farm near David's little Tennessee home. It's beautiful country and blessed by God.) Corduroy Dog is sleeping on her pillow out on the sunporch with me. I think it's amazing that so many hurts can be healed by the friendly greeting of one four-legged animal. She has a place in God's creation.

At night, we confront the myths we believe about ourselves. At night, the shroud is stripped away and we either see things more clearly or see things twisted by the way our minds crawl around inside our otherwise empty skulls.

Over the course of a year, I've encountered some of the most disagreeable humans I could ever imagine. They've all been men and they've all be Christians. I'm of the opinion that a Christian man with a divine charter is one of the strongest forces on the planet, so this isn't going to be a treatise on the evils of repressed males in the Church. I guess this is more of an observation.

Everywhere I look, I can see evidence of Evil's desire to destroy the souls of women, especially the elect that God loves.

It's time for me to draw Evil's lies into the light so the Holy Spirit and I can look at them together and vanquish them one by one.

Our church gives cowards a cave in which to hide and a defenseless person to attack by the way we interpret Scriptures. I wrote this today and as I've considered it, I've believed it more: Orthodoxy is judged by the way a church allocates (or fails to allocate) power to women..

Consider the implications of this. Where women with power are a symbol of a disrespect for scripture, women don't even have a voice. We've believed that this is as it should be. We've internalized it. We've stopped talking because we think it's God's will and we want to please Him. Tonight, as I lie awake struggling with this, it becomes clear to me that this isn't his will at all. What a travesty and a perversion of the beautiful and significant differences between woman and man!

Suddenly, images of women in church, heads bowed eyes closed not caring because they can't care, not speaking because they can't speak. Repression in the name of God, is repression in the name of fear. We waste our time trying to secure the ordination of women, but the issue is the responsibility of every woman to reflect her Creator in strength, dignity and tenacity. This is harder to define, I suppose, and we're left diffused and rebutted by the Scripture that should befriend us. We're back at the start. The ordination of women is a red herring flung before us to divert us from our goal: to be what and who God created.

All of these musings must come to a point. All of this theory must come to a cogent action. What must it be? I resolve to embrace what I know to be true of me without pandering to the movement of the Feminists or the Fundamentalists. I resolve to silence the fear I have of being "unfeminine", opinionated, and shrill. I resolve to expect God to show up and defend me. I resolve to be patient only with the process, but not with its commencement.

I think I can sleep now.


Su.