Eve's Revenge:Women and a Spirituality of the Body by Lilian Calles Barger
Chasing Sophia: Reclaiming the Lost Wisdom of Jesus by Lilian Calles Barger, NEW!Check out this story about the abuse of a domestic servant. This a why we need to know who is in the country. We can’t protect people we don’t know are here. Women, I suspect, are more hidden than the day laborers standing on the street corner.
Is it race, gender, class or religion that will persuade you to vote for a particular candidate? Oprah Winfrey, the queen of women’s empowerment is learning a hard lesson. See this story (apparently this link is off line right now, here is another.)of the tough time Oprah is having with her audience. After endorsing Barack Obama, Oprah finds she has angered many of her female viewers. Their message? How dare she endorse a black man over a woman, Hillary Clinton. The problem with identity politics is that nobody wins.
In the case of Oprah, I believe many white women don’t see her as black at all. They also don’t see that above all Oprah is a media business woman. Everything she does is calculated to promote her own name and pocket book. There is a reason why her magazine has featured her on every cover. Nobody is perfect. This time she may betting on the wrong thing.
What gets lost in all this are the issues of experience, character, and policy viewpoints. Sometimes one’s best ally may be an unlikely one. Sometimes those who you expect to share your viewpoints actually diverge radically. In politics, like in life, it’s hard to know who your friends are. It’s better to take people as they come than to read too much into the unchosen particularities of their birth.
Here is a Time magazine story about girls in Afghanistan. Only 30% of eligible girls are enrolled in school. This is due to social and economic factors. Why does this matter?
“The stakes for Afghan society are high. Every social and economic index shows that countries with a higher percentage of women with a high school education also have better overall health, a more functional democracy and increased economic performance. “
The education of girls matter because any hope for global peace needs them to be educated. Educated women train their children and create a more educated society with all its resultant benefits. Afghanistan will not emerge from its poverty and political precarious position unless women can fully participate. Education makes that possible.
Here is a link for a book review in First Things now online.
Another story in the New York Times about surrogate mothers. This time it’s poor Indian women earning their living by renting their wombs to affluent westerners. The industrialization of human reproduction dehumanizes everyone involved. Talk of rights, choice, and economic necessity are code words that the affluent use to exploit the weakest members of the human race, poor women and children. The view of women in many third world regions allows them to be thought of as little more than a communally owned natural resource. The dignity of all people remains in peril. Yes, it’s dismaying and depressing to think that we live in this kind of world.
To start the new year fresh we need the gift of forgetting. We all know that it’s hard to go on if you keep reliving the past. The admonishment to forget contradicts every thing else we are told. We are reminded to remember where we came from, to remember those fallen in battle, and to remember the holocaust. We set aside special days just to remember. You have heard it a million times. Those who forget history are doomed to repeat it. Middle-aged people worry that they are forgetting too much, too soon, and seek memory enhancing solutions. Even God instructed Israel to remember their deliverance from Egypt through a ritual feast. Jesus instructed his disciples to remember him perpetually in the holy meal. There is no doubt that remembering and memory play an important role in our lives.
This New Year’s morning I woke up to discouraging global news, which reminded me that most of the world’s troubles are due to our inability to forgive, much less forget. Regional conflicts are plagued by decades, if not centuries, of wrongs done and relived. Recognizing the importance of memory, we need to understand the value of forgetting. Imagine if you remembered every pain and sorrow you have ever experienced. You would be overwhelmed with grief. Thank God for the gift of forgetting. However, God has gone further. God has promised, not only to forgive our sins, failures, and foibles, but to forget them. That also means he is willing to forgive those who have wronged us. The promise of the future is that God will wipe away the tears and finally make all things new. The world’s pain, mourning, and sorrow cast into the sea of forgetfulness forever. Only then will we have a truly fresh beginning with our selves and with each other.
To read more about healing memories and forgetting, check out Miroslav Volf’s The End of Memory:Remembering Rightly in a Violent World.