Paradoxically, given the fact that I've spent my entire academic life thinking about the Virgin Mary, I very rarely say anything directly about gender. You'd think I should, right? Most people do--think that I should, that is. Because, of course, most people who have written about Mary in the past thirty or so years have. Marina Warner, Mary Daly, Elizabeth Schussler Fiorenza, Rosemary Radford Reuther: how well I remember reading their work while I was in college and being swept up into the debate on the feminine image of the divine. Reading Andrew Greeley's The Mary Myth (1977) is bringing it all back to me, and not in a good way. I'm discouraged, because I was really enjoying his treatment of Jesus and Sinai . Now, however, I am beset with sentences such as these: "I will contend that Mary is a symbol of the feminine component of the deity. She represents the human insight that the Ultimate is passionately tender, seductively attractive, irresistibly insp...
thanks for writing!
ReplyDeleteI believe it is we who should be thanking you, FB, for sharing so much in a thoughtful and engaging style. In particular, you capture the struggle for discerning worth and gaining satisfaction in a way that resonates with, well, me, at any rate.
ReplyDeleteUltimately I believe even our restlessness will be redeemed; or, rather, we shall behold that for which we were yearning without having been able to describe it. In the meantime, the manner in which we handle our doubts and disappointments--how we struggle with whether we are, in fact, the people we should be--has a very large part in shaping our characters. The daily plodding of life 'counts.'
Your open, indeed, vulnerable recounting of how you approach that daily challenge has been instructive and encouraging to me, and, I suspect, many others as well. There's also a fun side to the FB, which is why it is always eminently worthwhile visiting here time and again. Best wishes for your continued success (yes, success).
[Big grin] It's been a pleasure, really, and an honor having readers like you. Fencing Bear is very much looking forward to sharing her further adventures with you this next year!
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