“This is woman’s hour, in all the good tendencies, charities, and reforms of to-day.”
– Mary Baker Eddy, Miscellaneous Writings, p 245
This month is Women’s History Month, and today is International Women’s Day. So I thought I’d use my blog to talk about women today – the concept of “womanhood”; my mom – one of the greatest women I’ve ever known; and the surge in support I’ve seen towards women’s equality.
In the Christian Science textbook, Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy writes: “Man and woman as coexistent and eternal with God forever reflect, in glorified quality, the infinite Father-Mother God… The ideal man corresponds to creation, to intelligence, and to Truth. The ideal woman corresponds to Life and to Love. In divine Science, we have not as much authority for considering God masculine, as we have for considering Him feminine, for Love imparts the clearest idea of Deity.” (p. 517)
My mother was a wonderful expression of God’s motherhood. She was born at the end of 1927 – just seven years after women got the right to vote in this country. There were certain expectations from society for women of her time, but she never accepted the limitations that society might have tried to foist on her: She ran on the women’s track team in college; graduated college with a four-year degree; worked outside the home; and proudly voted in every election – all things that women in some countries are still fighting for the right to do.
When Mom learned that I was planning to march in the 2017 Women’s March, Mom proudly conveyed this news to her friends in the assisted living place where she and Dad lived. One of her friends knitted a pink pussy hat for me, and I proudly wore that hat in the march. I’m so glad Mom got to see me in that pink hat before she died, a month later.
Women from all over the world participated in the 2017 Women’s March. It’s estimated that over five million people (of all genders) might have participated in the march in the United States. It’s estimated there were 6,000 people in the march that I walked in, in Bellingham, Washington. I can still remember the power I felt in the people around me that day, and the joy. People of every gender and race, both young and old, participated in the march that day – all coming together in support of women. That felt good. At the end of the march I thanked the police officers who had supported us, and said to one of the officers, “We did good, didn’t we?” He smiled and said, “Yes, you did!”
Today we’re seeing support for women’s equality everywhere – in Iran, where men and women fill the streets to protest the death of Mahsa Amini; in the United States, where people of every gender protest for the rights of women to have control over their own bodies; in the Green Wave movement in Latin America; and in those heroes who work to bring education to the girls of Afghanistan.
As manifestations of God, we will not be oppressed, and we will not allow the oppression of others.
-Karen Molenaar Terrell
“Learn to do good. Seek justice: help the oppressed; defend the orphan; plead for the widow.”
-Isaiah 1:17
“Lord, you listen to the desires of those who suffer. You steady their hearts; you listen closely to them, to establish justic for the orphan and the oppressed, so that people of the land will never again be terrified.”
-Psalms 10:17-18
“There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for ye are all one and the same in Christ Jesus.“
– Galatians 3:28
“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.”
-Genesis 1:27
Here are some photos from the 2017 Women’s March…
Adventures of the Madcap Christian Scientist 