Conversations with my Daughters
While reading a picture book about the “First Lord’s Supper” (a.k.a. Passover/The Last Supper — leave it to the conservative protestants to insist that the kid’s book has the “proper” name and a note on the back about not allowing the children to actually eat the bread and wine, but only to recieve a blessing from the pastor. But I digress…)
Cate (interrupting the story): Mommy! Why are there never any pictures of girls in these stories?!
Mommy: You’re right, Cate. This is a picture of Passover and there would have been lots of women and children in this picture…. Also, their skin would not be white.
Cate: Why aren’t they in there then?
Mommy: Because the artist was foolish and wrong.
Cate (after pausing a moment to think): Why are there never any stories about girls in the Bible?!
Mommy (not pausing to think at all and speaking a little too emphatically): Because men wrote the Bible, Cate, and they were selfish and didn’t include the women. They didn’t pay attention to the women and didn’t remember them. Also, they didn’t let women write stories. If they had, there would defintely be girls in these stories because girls and women were defintely there with Jesus.
Cate: silence.
Cate: silence
Cate (sadly): That’s really not fair. ….. Go ahead and finish the story anyway Mama.
Can I cry now?
sigh. this makes me so sad. el is only 6 mo and i’m trying to figure out how to broker these questions…
thanks, rachelle, for blogging about this.
great to see you in san diego! your seminar was such a highlight for me. inspired my imagination…
peace,
hol
Rachelle:
Great points. I would wish that we all did a better job of remembering the stories of women that ARE in the Bible, the ones that subvert even the male-dominated ways which seem so prevalent in the culture of that day. It’s why I love the surprising importance the narrative gives to a variety of females (not enough, perhaps, but still…)
I’ve always felt that’s one of the really subversive messages imbedded in Matthew’s geneology of Jesus. What’s up with all these women (Rahab, Tamar, Bathsheba, Ruth, … Mary?) jumpin in and messing up the nice tidy heroism of an Abraham-Jacob-David-Solomon dominated, male-only lineage? (How does one get a male-only lineage anyway?)
Hard to tell little girls how all that messy, sex-stuff fits into the nativity, I guess. But there’s definitely a story to be told there…about a God who consistently subverts all our expectations, about a God who values women — and all the marginalized people — even in cultures that supress their voices, especially(!) in cultures that supress their voices.
I’ll be crying with you, Rachelle.
Rachelle,
I’m researching the history of women at Briercrest College. The school was practically founded by women in 1935, but we never hear that. The man credited with being the founder had a failure of courage about starting the school, and if it hadn’t been for Annie Hillson and Isabel Whittaker, he wouldn’t have done it. But they challenged him: “Do you think you have the mind of the Lord in the matter?”
In the early days, they didn’t hire married women.
Now, 70 years later, it’s still often a strange place for women and singles (male & female) to work.
Last year, I discovered that this would be my research. I had hoped to find that women made informal contributions to the education and spiritual formation of Briercrest students. Sadly, in my first 5 interviews, I realized that this was a wish-dream and that women in the early decades were distinctly separate fromt he men, mostly hidden.
Last October when I called three octagenarian women and one 60-something to arrange interviews, each one said, in so many words, “Oh, I don’t think I have much to say.” These are the voices I want us to hear.
I don’t think the men are always malicious in leaving the women out. Often, I suspect they are oblivious. Not sins of comission but omission.
Colleen
[…] The idea of my spiritual ancestors preserving the stories women told, giving account to the happenings of their world through a woman’s eyes , has changed my understanding of my God, my vocation and my holy text. I wrote some about it here, and there’s a peek at my reaction here. If something in you is hungry for your great mother’s tales, spend some time in the The Red Tent. Today’s Flavor: exotic and holy. […]
[…] The idea of my spiritual ancestors preserving the stories women told, giving account to the happenings of their world through a woman’s eyes , has changed my understanding of my God, my vocation and my holy text. I wrote some about it here, and there’s a peek at my reaction here. If something in you is hungry for your great mother’s tales, spend some time in the The Red Tent. Today’s Flavor: exotic and holy. […]