"He humbled you, causing you to hunger, and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your fathers had known, to teach you that man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord." (Deut 8:3)
Thank you, LORD, for the daily feeding regimen. When I depart from it, I hunger! The Living Water feeds us such that we will never be thirsty again, yet we hunger and thirst for righteousness. Filled and hungry at the same time.
"Everywhere and in all things I have learned both to be full and to be hungry..." (Phil 4:12)
My son spoke to me of an unexpected ministry that has sprung up for him and for my lovely daughter-in-law. They say grace before their meals. When they eat in the company of their peers, friends, colleagues, this becomes remarkable since most of their generation do not revere God. So to witness this Godly couple in their midst gives them pause, first to reexamine their idea of what a Christian looks like, and second to become aware of the presence of God.
On one occasion, my son was at lunch with a friend. The friend was paying, so my son did not consider it his place to take authority at the table and say grace. He may have done so inwardly, but just dove in to his meal. The friend was shocked, stopped him and asked, perplexed, "Aren't you going to do that grace thing?" This precious soul had already developed a hunger for worship, just from seeing the example of it in giving thanks for food.
The word "feminism" ceased to be palatable to me after I realized that I had been lied to regarding my so called "right to an abortion", which turned out to be a doorway to all ugliness, an invitation from the culture of death to worship more deeply and more closely at the altar of the one whose aim is to destroy all of God's creation. My divorce from feminism was final and without regrets.
Being a wife only served to confirm how feminism handicaps women in relationships, as wives and mothers, with its insistence on the self-aggrandisement of the woman, the habitual stamping of the foot for "what I deserve!". The one single ingredient that made my marriage finally begin to work is anathema to feminism - that was humility. I have never needed the "f" word to define my strength, independence or achievement, and I have done what I could to warn off the young women in my arena to the hazards of feminism's braggadocio.
I am curious to read this from the critical liberal pen of Camille Paglia, who has been tracking the "f" movement and its weaknesses as it has morphed over the generations. Perhaps she sees in Sarah Palin a new way of understanding how women are achieving some of feminism's goals wholly outside of the "feminist movement". Here is Paglia:
"The next phase of feminism must circle back and reappropriate the ancient persona of the mother -- without losing career ambition or power of assertion. Betty Friedan, who had first attacked the cult of postwar domesticity, had long warned second-wave feminists such as Gloria Steinem about the damaging exclusion of homemakers from their value system. The animus of liberal feminists toward religion must also end (I am speaking as an atheist). Feminism must reexamine all of its assumptions, including its death grip on abortion, if it wishes to survive."
To read the whole piece, go to http://www.salon.com/opinion/paglia/2008/10/08/palin/index1.html.
