I kneel in prayer without words, blankly looking at and seeing nothing. There. The patterns and wrinkles of the sheets stare, wonderingly, at me who cannot say, "I came to do your will" because it will be a lie. I can muster only, "I long to do your will" because I know my sin, my weakness, my failures which throw any promise to You back into my face, regretfully.  So, I kneel in silence, espying nothing, perhaps looking for You before I'm jolted by my inactivity to say something banal and common, trite and memorized because my words are still as my heart is searching.  To be loyal to You is my desire in spite of the lies of my life. I know what I want, perhaps, even what You want but I fail in the execution and, hence, am silenced and kneel down this way.

* Can Jesus, a male, be a savior for females?  Is the Christ figure a valid symbol  for women, fostering in them a healthy integration of personality and acting as their chief help in experiences of God?  Or has Christianity so identified the maleness of the historical Jesus with normative humanity that femaleness automatically falls to second-class citizenship in the community of God, a status we have seen historically translated as barring women from priestly office and power?  Have women by virtue of their sex alone been excluded from full

 representation in Christ's ministry, a sex that is somehow less important than the male in creation and redemption?  Is Jesus' maleness so precisely identified with the divine Logos that femaleness is excluded from divine status and participation?

-Ann Belford Ulanov

 *Hatch

what 

the winged life

wants

is 

to be

outside

in the open

commerce

of hearts

where 

nothing

is

bought

or 

sold

-Jerry Schroeder, Cap.