Rachel Held Evans

View Original

A Cloth of Many Colors

See this content in the original post

I thought this was beautiful: 

Out of the leftovers of the fabric of history, women will make a cloth of many colors. This cloth will force both church and society to notice the variety of ways there are to be women. Women will demonstrate that the wonderful diversity of human character, accepted in the case of men, also exists among women. All women are not from one mold. Women do not have a common eye or voice or language. Out of the poverty of women’s presence in history many creative portraits of women’s history are coming alive…” 
“…Power sharing is a prerequisite for the realization of co-responsibility. Created equally human, God made women and men stewards of creation and gave us authority to jointly fill the earth and manage it. The present state of the partnership of men and women in all cultures, on all continents, and in all churches, is in a state of sin. The one-sided development of the source of human authority has reduced stewardship to dominion, husbanding to control, and complementarity to the paternal determining the scope of being for the maternal. Patriarchy has distorted partnership…” 
“…Women’s struggle for presence has gone on for centuries. Now the churches are being called to participate in the endeavor….The churches will show their solidarity with women when they demonstrate a new understanding of power and their willingness to share its exercise with the whole community of people. “ 

- Mercy Amba Oduyoye

Discovered in Mystics, Visionaries, and Prophets: A Historical ​Anthology of Women's Spiritual Writingsedited by Shawn Madigan

Read anything beautiful lately? Feel free to share!