I remember being a girl, and beginning to menstruate and watching my breasts beginning to bud. I was in awe of my body operating without my volition to possibly prepare to have and feed babies, and I was being toughened by monthly inconvenience - wearing "pads" - and dealing with cramps and volcanic emotions.
The boys I knew didn't go through these things - monthly bleeding, fearing that I'd stain my clothing, fearing getting cramps in class. I was different. A girl. And a girl's prayers were often pleas for the pain to pass, and pleas for help if I'd forgotten to put "girl stuff" in my purse. Amazingly a girl friend often turned up with what I needed! Early on, I learned to surrender to a body beyond my conscious control, and to expect God to listen to prayers that weren't a duplicate of boy's prayers. Male and female, God had created us. If God had created me, a woman, God had to know how I felt. I could complain to God about what my body was doing to me!
To this day, I believe that that monthly experience with cramps and blood has stood me in good stead, helped to form me into a strong woman. Made me less afraid of pain. More ready to endure. To keep going during bodily discomfort. More ready to accept that my body can choose to "do" things without my knowing what they are. Maybe it's a realism. Or, deeper still, a wisdom that women learn early.
Later, once again, when I was pregnant, my body operated without my conscious direction, intuitively, amazingly, knowing how to create a child. I exulted in knowing that together God and I and my husband had co-created this child! Later, rocking our child, once again, I knew that God knew how I felt. Didn't the psalmist (Psalm 131) say he'd quieted his soul like a weaned child on its mother's lap? While I rocked and sang to my child, I could picture God my Mother rocking and singing to me, God's beloved child. God was and is mother and father to me.
I am also a woman with gifts. Gifts given to me by God's Holy Spirit. Gifts that stretched beyond my home. Gifts that yearned to grow and develop in the world of work. As a wife, mother, and working woman, I prayed often to God, asking God to help me find balance in all my tasks and relationships. I was especially concerned about my children. Fathers and mothers love their children equally well. But I still believe that a mother's relationship is unique because her child grew within her body. Her child knows her heartbeat from the time he or she grew in Mom's uterus. Does this give a different "quality" to her concerns? I believe so. "God," I prayed, "You know me, Father. You understand this bond because You created it. Give me wisdom, balance, loving care for all the people and tasks You have given me!"
God has also rocked me and soothed me with motherly gentleness when I have inwardly raged because of how historically men have defined women's gifts and worth solely by their bodies. Sexism is a sin dating back to the book of Genesis. How I raged and mourned when I learned that it was only recently in the history of America that women's minds were considered "strong" enough for higher schooling, that women had to stand up to terrible physical and mental violence in order to become Doctors and Lawyers, that men physically stood in their way when women wanted equality in being able to vote. Today there are still unspoken but real "glass ceilings" in so many professions. Still pay inequality. Still domestic violence. Still rape. Still pornography.
How often my prayer was, and is "God help me to forgive men - they don't know what they're doing! Father, help me forgive them as You have forgiven me."
How I have raged and mourned as I have grown in understanding that women do not yet have complete understanding, acceptance, and value within their churches. Once again, we are defined by our bodies instead of holistically by our bodies, our minds, our individual gifts, and our souls. God once again consoles me when I am overcome by anguish and frustration, reminding me that I am created in God's Image and Likeness, that I reflect God's face of love and mercy to the world as well as any man, yet in my own unique way as a woman and as an individual.
Jesus, God's Son and my friend and brother, has reminded me of my worth as a woman. He allowed Mary, Lazarus' sister, to sit learning at his feet, in the position of a student with a rabbi, a position only taken by men until that time. Martha is equal to Peter in making the great Christological announcement that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God. The risen Christ sent Mary of Magdala as apostle to the apostles, to announce the Good News that he was risen from the dead. Jesus has healed my troubled, angry heart and soul, reminding me that I am precious in his sight, that I am broken and in need of his redemptive love. That he wants me to use all my gifts to the best of my ability in service to my brothers and sisters. That I, who have felt so excluded, can use that pain to understand and feel compassion for others who feel excluded.
I am "just" a woman who prays. Yet God has taught me slowly and carefully - through my conversations with God, through Scripture, through life experiences, through insights brought to me through silence and stillness in God's sight - that I am NOT "just" a woman. I have a woman's body, which is a gift for me. But my soul is unique and "beyond sex." I am much-loved by God, in Whose Image and Likeness I am created, and Whose Image and Likeness I reveal to the world. God has created me as an eternal gift for His Son.
I am a woman, with a woman's body, a woman's unique insights, yet I am also more than a woman because in Christ we are neither male nor female. We are all priceless individuals with innate dignity, born to be valued as such. And sexism is a sin that society, - and the churches, so conditioned by society-, need to acknowledge within themselves and then relinquish. Because I fear that women, young and old, have left some Christian Churches because they do not feel either valued or understood. Some men, some churchmen, unfortunately still think of God as a Male. Only a Male. If this is so, how can women be created in God's Image and Likeness?
Until we understand that God is greater than and beyond human sexuality, that God equally values both male and female bodies, that God values both male and female minds and gifts, that all are equal in God's sight, our Churches' "faces" will not reflect the fullness of the Face of Christ, which is Love and Mercy. I am a woman. And so I pray: Show us the Beauty of Your Face, God: male, female, white, black, brown, yellow, red, a Face Whose eyes cannot comprehend exclusions, because all are Your children. Your Kingdom come. Your Will be done. Amen.