[Dialogue] Shocked

[LAURELCG at aol.com]

This conversation has reminded me of a time when I was listening in awe to 
JWM speak about some particular strategy he was proposing, I think for local 
churches in North America.  I was sitting close to the front of the Lumumba room, 
definitely in Joe's huge energy field.  He had a diagram on the board, and as 
he punched the various points he had been laying out, he said something like, 
"If we do this, this, this and this, we'll RAPE (big gesture!) the whole 
country!"  As if that would be a good thing.  Contemplating the memory can still 
evoke a very deeply felt emotion in me, something like shame, and bring tears.  
It really was a shock, as if I'd been struck.  It was not a new feeling, 
having grown up in a church where I "got" that to be female was not to be fully 
human, and with an alcoholic father who was less than sensitive with his 
language.  The shock was to hear this in the Order, where I could speak, and had 
taken refuge from the "women are to keep silent in the church" theology.  Thank 
goodness that where sin abounds, grace abounds more!

Thanks, Margaret, for not keeping silent.

Love and blessings,
Jann McGuire

    
In a message dated 10/10/07 3:23:16 PM, aiseayew at netins.net writes:

<< Randy, I appreciate your words from one perspective, but. . .

The point is not missed.  The comment is to point out that a point can be 
obliterated by such insensitivity and trying to recouch it in personal particular 
historical moral justification does nothing for women today who are still 
having to put up with it.  That what I was shocked by was not clear and obvious 
is even more disturbing and belies the entire onslaught of justifications.  
Margaret >>

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