Liberation Theology And The Church in Africa


would have been a miracle! But still, it seems like common sense to me that God would choose a woman, so that didn't prove anything to me, anything at all; certainly, it didn't take away the sting from certain Scriptures that indicated my lesser status in the Kingdom of God.

I sat in my chair after the speaker had finished, and I let everyone leave, and then I started to weep. I wept and wept and wept in that room, alone, in southeastern Australia, I wept while the snot and tears pooled on the desk in front of me and I didn't wipe it up because I was that sad. I so desperately wanted to find my place, I so desperately didn't want to be a second-class citizen, I so desperately wanted everyone to understand that I was of equal value as a woman and that I was smarter and more adept and better equipped to take on the challenges of life than many men I knew and why in the year of grace 1995 I should still be questioning my status as a woman was beyond me. I started to hate Christianity that day.

But I did what I did in those days when I was suffering-I prayed. (These days, I write in my journal, or I write an essay. These, too, are acts of faith and of prayer, but they are not necessarily recognized by formal religion.) And I did, I swear I did, I had a vision. I don't know how to explain these things now, now in my agnostic who-the-hell-knows-who-God-is days, but I had a vision. I was a child in my vision, sitting on someone's lap, and this someone was trying very hard to put his arms around me and I was beating, beating, beating at him with my fists so that there was no way he could embrace me. The violence and ferocity with which I beat was in direct proportion to my inner turmoil and pain.

I suppose if I were an Orthodox Christian, I would recognize that as a vision of my relationship with God, and I would point out that I am the one at fault, and that maybe things didn't need to be so difficult, that he/she was trying to love me and I wouldn't let him/her. But no, I do not see it that way. What I see is that I was

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