incarnate fear

"It is Christianity which invests women anew with frightening prestige: fear of the other sex is one of the forms assumed by the anguish of man's uneasy conscience. The Christian is divided within himself; the separation of body and soul, of life and spirit, is complete; original sin makes of the body the enemy of the soul; all the ties of the flesh seem evil... since woman remains always the Other, it is not held that reciprocally male and female are both flesh: the flesh that is for the Christian the hostile Other is precisely the woman. In her the Christian finds incarnated the temptations of the world, the flesh and the devil."
(Simone de Beauvoir in The Second Sex)

unexplored places

"Through the same opening that is her danger, she comes out of herself to go to the other, a traveller in unexplored places; she does not refuse, she approaches, not do away with the space between but to see it, to experience what she is not, what she is, what she can be." (helene cixous)

Helene Cixous is a French feminist, writer, poet, and rhetorician heavily influenced by writers such as Freud, Lacan, and Derrida. She never fails to blow my mind. I came across this quote as I was doing research on medieval female mystics as the author tried to explain how visions were a source of power for women living in a 'man's world.'

What does this say to us about the opportunities that lay behind closed doors, doors that seek to keep us out rather than let us in? Doors that pose threat instead of welcome? What unexplored places have yet to transform us?

This brings to mind the wasness, isness and oughtness of God and of humanity, reminding us that in every situation, we are being called to asses what we are not, who we are, and to see our potential. This requires learning in all instances.

Refuse not, press on, seek knowledge.