And the litany of names of women writers who have significantly influenced my life—who have made me the person I am, for weal or for woe—continues in my head: Sigrid Undset, Jane Smiley, Flannery O'Connor, Denis Levertov, Elizabeth Bishop, Mavis Gallant, Alice Munro, Ellen Glasgow, Marilynne Robinson, Eudora Welty, Annie Proulx, Shirley Jackson, Doris Lessing, Anne Frank, Sylvia Plath, Julia Esquivel, Eavan Boland, Gladys Taber, Lois Lenski, Sor Juana Ines de la Cruz . . . .If women’s interpretation of the holy books carried the gravitas of any man’s word about them, and if women had significant influence on the process by which the rules are made, the world would be a very different place, I believe. Benedict may be pope, but he’s wrong, my soul tells me, to bank everything on patriarchy, and to welcome with such vigor those groups within the Christian churches who are most resistant to women’s voices. This is an unwise move, a move against the most powerful currents of hope in the world today. And a move against the Spirit’s tug.
The graphic is a Russian icon showing Sophia with Faith, Hope, and Love.
