Defining "femininity"

quote from Ruby Slippers* by Jonalyn Fincher


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is femininity just too difficult to nail down?

How Philosophers Help Women

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Philosophers define such slippery things using family resemblance, a list of the many ways things resemble each other. Family resemblances are a list of common but not required characteristics. We know and accept that some members do not have all resemblances. They are still "in" the group because they have enough on the list. As a philosopher, I think this approach works well with femininity.

Family resemblance helps us explain femininity because it keeps our notions of femininity clear yet flexible. We can come up with a list of recurring resemblances that many, though not all, women have. Some items on this list will be characteristic of many women, but all together they may nor be true of every woman. The key is that all women will enjoy at least one of these family characteristics. One is sufficient for a woman to be feminine...

A person has a woman's soul by having the first characteristic. The first family resemblance is something essential to all women. The rest are more commonalities that more women than men share, hence family resemblance.

~~~~Family Resemblance~~~~~~~~~~Description

1. Female body---------> A soul interwoven into a female body
2. Vulnerability--------->In body and soul
3. Interdependence----->Identity emerges from intimacy
4. Sensitive awareness-->Soul radar for others and ourselves
5. Emotional intelligence-> Experience in management of intense emotions
6. Cultivation------------> Ability to tend others, ourselves, and the world

These are just the beginning of a list of natural feminine resemblances- there may be more. These qualities, as gifts from God may come more easily yo us. These are not things we should have to try to do as much as they will be part of who we are....

Natural femininity is the way we live with our female body and the way we use our soul for vulnerability, interdependence, sensitive awareness, emotional intelligence, and cultivation. The latter five characteristics are not requirements for all women. A man may be sensitive, vulnerable, or a cultivator, but that doesn't make him feminine. A man can never be feminine in his soul because he doesn't have the essential ingredient: a female body. (clips from pages 101-106)
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* FINCHER, JONALYN. Ruby Slippers : How the Soul of a Woman Brings Her Home. Grand Rapids, Mich. Zondervan, 2007, pages 101-106.

Re-Thinking Eve...

Quotes from Captivating by John and Stasi Eldredge

When God creates Eve, he calls her an ezer kenegdo. “It is not good for the man to be alone, I shall make him [an ezer kenegdo]” (Gen 2:18 Alter). Hebrew scholar Robert Alter, who has spent years translating the book of Genesis, says that this phrase is “notoriously difficult to translate”. The various attempts we have in English are “helper” or “companion” or the notorious “help meet”. Why are these translations so incredibly wimpy, boring, flat... disappointing? What is a help meet, anyway? What little girl dances through the house singing “One day I shall be a help meet?” Companion? A dog can be a companion. Helper? Sounds like Hamburger Helper. Alter is getting close when he translates it “sustainer beside him.”

The word ezer is used only twenty other places in the entire Old Testament. And in every other instance the person being described is God himself, when you need him to come through for you desperately.

Most of the contexts are life and death, by the way, and God is your only hope. Your ezer. If he were not there beside you... you are dead. A better translation of ezer would be “lifesaver”. Kenegdo means alongside, or opposite to, a counterpart.

quote:

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Your feminine heart has been created with the greatest of all possible dignities- as a reflection of God’s own heart...

...the story of Eve... We clearly haven’t learned its lessons- for if we had, men would treat women much much differently, and women would view themselves in a far better light...

Adam steps forth, the image of God. Nothing in creation even comes close. Picture Michelangelo’s David. He is... magnificent. Truly the masterpiece seems complete. And yet, the Master says that something is not good, not right. Something in missing... and that something is Eve...

She is the crescendo, the final astonishing work of God. Woman. In one least flourish creation comes to a finish not with Adam, but with Eve. She is the Master’s finishing touch... His piece de resistance. She fills a place in the world nothing and no one else can fill... (Ladies) Look out across the earth and say to yourselves, “The whole, vast world is incomplete without me. Creation reached its zenith in me.”

And she, too, bears the image of God but in a way that only the feminine can speak. What can we learn from her? God wanted to reveal something about Himself, so he gave us Eve... Eve is created because things were not right without her. Something was not good. ...Something is missing? What could it possibly be? Eve. Woman. Femininity. Wow. Talk about significance.

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quote:

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Back in Genesis when God sets his image bearers on the earth, he gives them their mission:
Gen 1:26-28.

Call it the Human Mission- to be all and do all God sent us here to do. And notice- the mission to be fruitful and conquer and hold sway is given both to Adam and to Eve. “And God said to them...” Eve is standing right there when God gives the world over to us. She has a vital role to play; she is partner in this great adventure. All that human beings were intended to do here on earth- all the creativity and exploration, all the battle and rescue and nurture- we were intended to do together. In fact, not only is Eve needed, but she is desperately needed.

When God creates Eve, he calls her an ezer kenegdo. “It is not good for the man to be alone, I shall make him [an ezer kenegdo]” (Gen 2:18 Alter). Hebrew scholar Robert Alter, who has spent years translating the book of Genesis, says that this phrase is “notoriously difficult to translate”. The various attempts we have in English are “helper” or “companion” or the notorious “help meet”. Why are these translations so incredibly wimpy, boring, flat... disappointing? What is a help meet, anyway? What little girl dances through the house singing “One day I shall be a help meet?” Companion? A dog can be a companion. Helper? Sounds like Hamburger Helper. Alter is getting close when he translates it “sustainer beside him.”

The word ezer is used only twenty other places in the entire Old Testament. And in every other instance the person being described is God himself, when you need him to come through for you desperately.

Most of the contexts are life and death, by the way, and God is your only hope. Your ezer. If he were not there beside you... you are dead. A better translation of ezer would be “lifesaver”. Kenegdo means alongside, or opposite to, a counterpart. Pg 31-32

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clips from pages 82-85
The story of the treatment of women down through the ages is not a noble history. It has noble moments, to be sure, but taken as a whole, women have endured what seems to be a special hatred ever since we left Eden. ...

You might know that through the thousands of years of Jewish history recorded in the Old Testament, Jewish women were considered property with no legal rights (as they were and are in many cultures). They were not allowed to study the Law, nor to formally educate their children. They had a segregated place in the synagogue. It was common practice for a Jewish man to add to his morning prayers, “Thank you, God, for not making me a Gentile, a woman, or a slave.”

...
The assault on femininity- its long history, its utter viciousness- cannot be understood apart from the spiritual forces of evil we are warned against in the Scriptures. That is not to say that men (and women, for they, too, assault women) have no accountability in their treatment of women. Not at all. It is simply to say that no explanation for the assault upon Eve and her daughters is sufficient unless it opens our eyes to the Prince of Darkness and his special hatred of femininity.
...
Satan fell because of his beauty. Now his heart for revenge is to assault beauty... he hates Eve.
Because she is captivating, uniquely glorious, and he cannot be.

Eve is his greatest human threat, for she brings life. She is a lifesaver and a life giver. Eve means “life” or “life producer”...

Put those two things together- that Eve incarnates the Beauty of God and she gives life to the world. Satan’s bitter heart cannot bear it. He assaults her with a special hatred. History removes any doubt about this....

The message of our wounds nearly always is, “This is because of you. This is what you deserve.” It changes things to realize that, no, it is because you are glorious that these things happened. It is because you are a major threat to the kingdom of darkness. Because you uniquely carry the glory of God to the world.
You are hated because of your beauty and power.

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Pg 91
You really won’t understand your life as a woman until you understand this:

You are passionately loved by the God of the universe.
You are passionately hated by his Enemy.

And so, dear heart, it is time for your restoration. For there is One greater than your Enemy. One who has sought you out from the beginning of time. He has come to heal your broken heart and restore your feminine soul.

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Sex is a "type" of heaven

from "Sex God" by Rob Bell

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If marriage is meant to show people what the oneness of God is like, what happens when everybody is one in the presence of God?

If marriage is a picture of something else, what would happen to marriage if we found ourselves living in the midst of that something else?

Is sex in its greatest, purest, most joyful and honest expression a glimpse of forever?

Are these brief moments of abandon and oneness and ecstasy just a couple of seconds or minutes of how things will be forever?

Is sex a picture of heaven?...

Maybe Jesus knew what was coming and knew that whatever we experience here will pale compared with what awaits everyone.

Do you long for that?

Because that's the center of Jesus' message.

An invitation.

To trust that it's true,

to trust that it's real,

to trust that God is actually going to make all things new.
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