Julie Clawson

When Abby Kelley, a 19th-century abolitionist, expressed a desire to address the Connecticut Anti-Slavery Society, this is how a local minister argued against her right to do so: No woman will speak or vote where I am moderator. It is enough for a woman to rule at home… she has no business to come into this meeting and by speaking and voting lord it over men. Where woman’s enticing eloquence is heard, men are incapable of right and efficient action. She beguiles and binds men by her smiles and her bland winning voice… I will not sit in a meeting where the sorcery of a woman’s tongue is thrown around my heart. I will not submit to PETTICOAT GOVERNMENT. No woman shall ever lord it over me. I am Major-Domo in my own house.

I’m taking a class on the Gospel of Luke this semester, and one of my assignments is to engage in an ongoing spiritual practice related to that particular Gospel. So for the entire semester I am reading the Magnificat daily. It’s a passage that I’ve been drawn to in recent years, but it has been particularly illuminating to be dwelling on it during Lent this year, since it is typically confined to the Advent season. Somehow the triumphal language of the justice that God has already accomplished fits with the modern treatment of Advent as a celebratory season. But Lent is a season of penance, which puts an entirely different spin on the text.

I was watching one of those competitive cooking shows the other night with my six year old daughter Emma. The challenge in that particular episode involved taking the chefs out to (as they called it) “the middle of nowhere” and having them butcher a pig and cook it over a fire they built from wood they gathered.

Since starting seminary I've had the opportunity to read through the Old Testament with a thoroughness I haven't used since my...