Women of Faith and Determination

¶ … personal recitation of faith and the struggles that come with it. The latter of those two starts on page nine of the book. One thing that jumps out is when the narrator presents to her father that she is a Christian. His reaction is so visceral and borderline violent so as to be appalling. He simply tries to scare his daughter but his reaction is jarring nonetheless. Her feelings about the matter are quite notable as well given that she conflates both his influence on her as it pertains to counteracting the Christian faith and that of Satan doing the same. There is then a shift back to the historical support or persecution (usually the latter) of Christians. Indeed, Christians (and Jews for that matter) have been persecuted a great deal over the years. There were other times where one might say that Christians were doing the persecuting (e.g. the Crusades). Even so, the struggles that exist relating to religion and just how far people will go when others don't see the world in the same way vis-a-vis who created it and who is in charge. Indeed, Jews and Christians diverge on a few notable things and the emergence of Islam in the 600's AD aggravated that further (Madigan, 1998).

Reflection -- Leviticus Chapter 15:19-33

The passage noted in the header is obviously about a woman's monthly period that is experienced when she does not get pregnant during a given month. The passage is fairly clear that anything touched at that time is unclean and that no man should have sex with a woman that is having their monthly period. The passage even goes so far as to talk about rituals and such surrounding the same. Such rituals are obviously not followed today and suggesting them to anyone would probably elicit ridicule or even laughter. Even so, there is the assertion that a husband should not have sex with his wife while on her period. That being said, so many people nowadays are having sex outside of marriage and some of them even do it when a woman is menstruating. To cite another passage, 1st Corinthians 7 notes that immorality with sex happened even then and it was encouraged that husbands and wives be intimate.

Mystics -- Chapter 6, 7, 8 & 11

The four chapters for this part of the reflection relate to Hildegard of Bingen, Heloise, Mechthild of Magdeburg and Catherine of Siena. The last of those four actually achieved rather high status given that she was a woman. No less than the Pope himself named her a doctor of the church per page 214 of the Madigan text. She even got a festival in her honor and it is celebrated on April 29th. Heloise was also a ground-breaker as she was the first abbess (as opposed to abbot ... the male form) of the Paraclete. This lead to many other women being attracted to the monastery so it was very much a game changer for women of faith. Hildegard of Bingen made her path by writing books. Despite being born into a noble family, this was notable given the overall status of women at that time. Mechthild of Magdeburg was also a writer. These four women were all women of faith who broke the traditional mold of what women were commonly doing (or allowed to do) in that day (Madigan, 1998).

Reflection -- Mystics Chapter 16 & 19