Home » Blog

Tina meditation and God saw that it was very good

and God saw that it was very good

NEW WOMAN – ME!  no 16

 

God – They – created our world
made it purposeful and perfect
and moulded human beings,
woman and man
in Their image
God – They – delegated part of Their own task
to the image

God entrusted to human beings
the option to act
the option to omit
and human beings were crowned
to be king and queen of the earth
“..and God saw that it was very good” (Genesis 1,31)

© Tina van Lieshout
translation John Wijngaards

MEDITATIONS

Tina van Lieshout was a Dutch Catholic woman who felt called to the priesthood. Her diocese refused her admission to the priestly formation programme which she challenged in high-profile court cases. She lost. Being both a gifted artist and poet, she described her despair in a series of paintings and meditations. But she also expressed through them her determination to realise her potential as a free and equal person.  Her work was published in the Dutch book Ook in de Naam van de Moeder en de Dochter [= ‘Also in the Name of the Mother and the Daughter’], Wilco, Amersfoort 2000. She died in 2010.

Tina meditation I accuse man

I accuse men

NEW WOMAN – ME!  no 12

 

we allowed it to happen that male domination
degenerated into avarice and abuse of power,
that the Tyrant could exploit people unhindered,
that an economy of destructive ways of life
was justified

we allowed the male human to abuse
his creative energy for destruction
we allowed him to plunder the earth until it was empty
to oppress his own kith and kin

but the commission we received
has never been withdrawn
we, women and men, have to take charge
in order to protect and maintain
the earth that was entrusted to both of us

© Tina van Lieshout
translation John Wijngaards

MEDITATIONS

Tina van Lieshout was a Dutch Catholic woman who felt called to the priesthood. Her diocese refused her admission to the priestly formation programme which she challenged in high-profile court cases. She lost. Being both a gifted artist and poet, she described her despair in a series of paintings and meditations. But she also expressed through them her determination to realise her potential as a free and equal person.  Her work was published in the Dutch book Ook in de Naam van de Moeder en de Dochter [= ‘Also in the Name of the Mother and the Daughter’], Wilco, Amersfoort 2000. She died in 2010.

Tina meditation my inner struggle

my inner struggle

NEW WOMAN – ME!  no 13

caught up as I am
in the maelstrom of events,
an as yet undecided
head-on collision
of conflicting emotions
is erupting in me —
the force of the fire which is the source
of the struggle for my basic rights
also feeds the asphyxiating smoke
of hate and aggression

helped by the chill
of indifference in me
my passion to survive whole and intact
is fighting
to control the fire

as long as there remains
a sufficiently warming
spark of love in me
I will not give a chance
to the asphyxiating smoke
of lethal aggression

© Tina van Lieshout
translation John Wijngaards

MEDITATIONS

Tina van Lieshout was a Dutch Catholic woman who felt called to the priesthood. Her diocese refused her admission to the priestly formation programme which she challenged in high-profile court cases. She lost. Being both a gifted artist and poet, she described her despair in a series of paintings and meditations. But she also expressed through them her determination to realise her potential as a free and equal person.  Her work was published in the Dutch book Ook in de Naam van de Moeder en de Dochter [= ‘Also in the Name of the Mother and the Daughter’], Wilco, Amersfoort 2000. She died in 2010.

tina meditation women carry the church

women carry the church

NEW WOMAN – ME!  no 9

 

“handling the heavy body of the church”, the bishop’s vicar general said,
“is a man’s job;
you may pray”

“the priesthood”, the vicar general told me,
“is a man’s job;
you serve God in a different way
you protect young life and nourish it
you see to it that all is ready on the table
that everything is whole and tidy
you maintain and clean the church
but being a priest is a man’s job”

but we, women of this time,
we spread our frozen wings
the one after the other we will fly away
and the heavy body will in the course of time
feel no ground under its heavy feet

© Tina van Lieshout
translation John Wijngaards

Historical note: Remember Tina belonged to a farming community. In this painting Tina portrays the Church as a bull. Bulls are notoriously heavy, fierce and unpredictable. Only the strongest farmhands can handle them.

MEDITATIONS

  • the force of time
  • I accuse women
  • I accuse men
  • my inner struggle
  • past present future
  • my dream
  • and God saw that it was very good
  • phallus worship
  • on the way

Tina van Lieshout was a Dutch Catholic woman who felt called to the priesthood. Her diocese refused her admission to the priestly formation programme which she challenged in high-profile court cases. She lost. Being both a gifted artist and poet, she described her despair in a series of paintings and meditations. But she also expressed through them her determination to realise her potential as a free and equal person.  Her work was published in the Dutch book Ook in de Naam van de Moeder en de Dochter [= ‘Also in the Name of the Mother and the Daughter’], Wilco, Amersfoort 2000. She died in 2010.

Tina meditation the money dragon and the religion dragon

the dragon of money and the dragon of religion

NEW WOMAN – ME!  no 7

for so long I lived in credulous naivety
I trusted people blindly
especially those I had been taught
to look up to —
respect for traditions and rules
were a part of my inner constitution
of my social ordering
that blinded the normal logics
of my powers of assessment

now, having finally regained my sight
I am disturbed by the dreadful overwhelming power
of a banking system without love
through which people are paralysed and exploited

now, having finally regained my sight,
I am disturbed by the dreadful and colossal power
with which religions
wielding false arguments about God’s will
and God’s revenge
keep people imprisoned —
I see it all and I feel powerless

© Tina van Lieshout
translation John Wijngaards

MEDITATIONS

  • the force of time
  • I accuse women
  • I accuse men
  • my inner struggle
  • past present future
  • my dream
  • and God saw that it was very good
  • phallus worship
  • on the way

Tina van Lieshout was a Dutch Catholic woman who felt called to the priesthood. Her diocese refused her admission to the priestly formation programme which she challenged in high-profile court cases. She lost. Being both a gifted artist and poet, she described her despair in a series of paintings and meditations. But she also expressed through them her determination to realise her potential as a free and equal person.  Her work was published in the Dutch book Ook in de Naam van de Moeder en de Dochter [= ‘Also in the Name of the Mother and the Daughter’], Wilco, Amersfoort 2000. She died in 2010.

tina-med

MEDITATIONS
  1. desert journey
  2. three selves in me
  3. me broken in pieces
  4. male and female
  5. my choice
  6. irrepressible energy
  7. the money dragon and the religion dragon
  8. evolving identity
  9. women carry the church
  10. the force of time
  11. I accuse woman
  12. I accuse man
  13. my inner struggle
  14. past present future
  15. my dream
  16. and God saw that it was very good
  17. phallus worship
  18. on the way

tina meditation my choice

my choice

NEW WOMAN – ME!  no 5

I am a free woman
even though I have made my choice
nothing has been decided by me – has it?
I could still say “no”….
disappear from the limelight
into an eternal forgetting

however, I myself
have already been chosen,
my destiny has been decided
I must keep saying “yes”,
for all to see and in the limelight
to shoulder the task entrusted to me

© Tina van Lieshout
translation John Wijngaards

Historical note:  Tina came from a simple farmer’s family in Brabant. I believe that Tina wrote this poem when she finally decided to take the Church to court, first before a county magistrate, then on national level in the Netherlands, and finally at the European Court of Human Rights.  John Wijngaards

MEDITATIONS

  • the force of time
  • I accuse women
  • I accuse men
  • my inner struggle
  • past present future
  • my dream
  • and God saw that it was very good
  • phallus worship
  • on the way

Tina van Lieshout was a Dutch Catholic woman who felt called to the priesthood. Her diocese refused her admission to the priestly formation programme which she challenged in high-profile court cases. She lost. Being both a gifted artist and poet, she described her despair in a series of paintings and meditations. But she also expressed through them her determination to realise her potential as a free and equal person.  Her work was published in the Dutch book Ook in de Naam van de Moeder en de Dochter [= ‘Also in the Name of the Mother and the Daughter’], Wilco, Amersfoort 2000. She died in 2010.

tina meditation three selves in me

three selves in me

NEW WOMAN – ME!  no 2

 

in me lives a hunger for higher things
for belonging and infinity
in me I experience, in spite of my humanness,
the warmth of an attentive power
in mutual connectedness

in me rise feelings and values that struggle
with norms and rules of tradition and law
I note in myself, born from growing self-respect,
rebellion and aggression about my womanhood
denied by male distrust

in me grows hope–filled confidence
that the human spirit will prevail
I see my changed mentality
as basis of an equal future for women and men
and mutual respect

© Tina van Lieshout
translation John Wijngaards

MEDITATIONS

  • the force of time
  • I accuse women
  • I accuse men
  • my inner struggle
  • past present future
  • my dream
  • and God saw that it was very good
  • phallus worship
  • on the way

Tina van Lieshout was a Dutch Catholic woman who felt called to the priesthood. Her diocese refused her admission to the priestly formation programme which she challenged in high-profile court cases. She lost. Being both a gifted artist and poet, she described her despair in a series of paintings and meditations. But she also expressed through them her determination to realise her potential as a free and equal person.  Her work was published in the Dutch book Ook in de Naam van de Moeder en de Dochter [= ‘Also in the Name of the Mother and the Daughter’], Wilco, Amersfoort 2000. She died in 2010.

tina meditation my dream

my dream

NEW WOMAN – ME!  no 15

the woman fled to the desert
where she finds a place prepared for her by God
to be nourished there
for twelve hundred and sixty days (Revelation 12,6)
words from a far past, so often heard
so frequently read
as if it were a different reality
until I suddenly see how the present,
in spite of all misery and powerlessness,
is growing into this apocalypse

and it seems that now the counting of times in revelation
has come to pass,
that if we women want to free ourselves
from our life in the desert
we will have to find our own way
with creativity and dynamic energy
to a new personal experience of God
after ‘one time and two times and a half time’ (Revelation 12,14b)

as for me, that moment has come

© Tina van Lieshout
translation John Wijngaards

Note – Chapter 12 in the book of Revelations describes the struggle between the woman and the dragon, a struggle during which the woman eventually escapes from the dragon. Tina obviously applies this to herself.

Revelation 12,5-6 reads: “The woman gave birth to a son, a male child, who ‘will rule all the nations with an iron sceptre.’ And her child was snatched up to God and to his throne. The woman fled into the wilderness to a place prepared for her by God, where she might be taken care of for 1,260 days.”

The text in Revelations 12,13-14 reads: “When the dragon saw that he had been hurled to the earth, he pursued the woman who had given birth to the male child. The woman was given the two wings of a great eagle, so that she might fly to the place prepared for her in the wilderness, where she would be taken care of for a time, two times and half a time, out of the serpent’s reach.”

MEDITATIONS

Tina van Lieshout was a Dutch Catholic woman who felt called to the priesthood. Her diocese refused her admission to the priestly formation programme which she challenged in high-profile court cases. She lost. Being both a gifted artist and poet, she described her despair in a series of paintings and meditations. But she also expressed through them her determination to realise her potential as a free and equal person.  Her work was published in the Dutch book Ook in de Naam van de Moeder en de Dochter [= ‘Also in the Name of the Mother and the Daughter’], Wilco, Amersfoort 2000. She died in 2010.

Tina meditation phallus worship

phallus worship

NEW WOMAN – ME!  no 17

every time again confused spirals of thought
from a complacent church leadership
collide ferociously against my indignant soul
deeming themselves infallible and showing no scruples
this leadership announces God’s predilection for the male
a male ‘God has created like himself’

my fantasy and my feeling of wounded self-respect create an image
— in analogy to the biblical golden calf —
of the pope devoutly kneeling before the gilded phallus
as counter pole I see my own experience of God
it rehabilitates my relationship to ‘God–with-us’

in creative freedom I picture to myself from biblical texts
how God’s presence shows itself
hidden at plain day light in a column of cloud
as a column of fire in the darkness of night

© Tina van Lieshout
translation John Wijngaards

Biblical Note 

God led his people out of Egypt through the desert: “The LORD went before them by day in a pillar of a cloud to lead them the way; and by night in a pillar of fire, to give them light; to go by day and night. He did not deprive his people from the pillar of the cloud by day, nor the pillar of fire by night.” (Exodus 13,21-22)

But Aaron made a golden calf for the people. “The Lord said to Moses, ‘Your people, whom you brought up out of Egypt, have become corrupt. They have made themselves an idol cast in the shape of a calf. They bow down to it and sacrifice to it and say, ‘This is your god, Israel, who brought you up out of Egypt’.” (Exodus 32,7-8)

MEDITATIONS

Tina van Lieshout was a Dutch Catholic woman who felt called to the priesthood. Her diocese refused her admission to the priestly formation programme which she challenged in high-profile court cases. She lost. Being both a gifted artist and poet, she described her despair in a series of paintings and meditations. But she also expressed through them her determination to realise her potential as a free and equal person.  Her work was published in the Dutch book Ook in de Naam van de Moeder en de Dochter [= ‘Also in the Name of the Mother and the Daughter’], Wilco, Amersfoort 2000. She died in 2010.