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
for a male ‘God – He – has created like himself’

my fantasy and my feeling of wounded self-respect created 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 shows Herself present
hidden in plain day light
as a column of cloud
as a column of fire in the darkness of night

© Tina van Lieshout
translation John Wijngaards

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MEDITATIONS

  • the face of time

  • I accuse woman

  • past present future

  • phallus worship

  • my dream

—

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 a high-profile court case. 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.