Reading

I've finally gotten around to starting a couple of the books on my to-read list.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A year of food life, by Barbara Kingsolver
"We're raising our children on the definition of promiscuity if we feed them a casual, indiscriminate mingling of foods from every season plucked from the supermarket, ignoring how our  sustenance is cheapened by wholesale desires."

Episcopal Women: Gender, spirituality and commitment in an American mainline denomination, edited by Catherine M. Prelinger.
"Religion, in every important respect, is a game for men, and men make the rules. Changes in perceived power have to do with power shifts among white men. What is suspect here is not simply the exclusion of white women, and minority women and men, but the conflation of leadership with the entirety of the church. Conclusions are drawn, which indeed may be accurately inferred from the leadership, but say very little about the power and preference of those in the pews. . . .
What is ...surprising are the many instances of vibrant denominational loyalty among women who either feel they do not recognize the church of their youth, or who feel abandoned by new directions in the contemporary church. They would neither join a different denomination,nor leave the church altogether.... Denominational loyalty has often been achieved through a kind of ironic accommodation on the part of women, a conscious willingness to shut their eyes and ears to certain aspects of church life that men dominate, and to develop their own forms of institutional expression, confident, rightly or wrongly that they represent the church in fact if not instrumentally."

I have a sneaking suspicion that what draws me to both books is the same thing, though I'm not quite sure what words to put on it.Unrest? Dissatisfaction? Ecofeminism? Justice (social or environmental?) Hope? Ambition? Audacity?Abundance? And, given the second excerpt, it seems worth pointing out that I am not (and doubt that I will ever) considering leaving the Church of England, either for Rome or Protestantism. The via media may be overgrown and filled with treacherous steppingstones, but I am still certain it is the best way. Though, given the large splinters in Anglicanism in the US,(and the surrounding hostility) perhaps the most confusing and dangerous path.

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