Break Forth Like the Dawn

Currently I am reading a benchmark book in the women's movement by bell hooks, Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center. This book aimed to shape feminism from being exclusively from and for white, educated, middle to upper class women to being for all women.  There was a lot of criticism at the time it was written about feminism going bourgeois, and simply being a vehicle to elevate individual women's social status to being equal to men of their class, and not a radical wiping out of systems of dominance.

Isn't that always a danger in pursuing something beyond status quo? That we end up settling for something safer and more personally palatable?  As hooks put it, "struggle is rarely safe or pleasurable." Or as Jesus put it, "Take up your cross and follow Me."

There is a passage of Scripture that whenever I encounter it, I am absolutely enveloped by its power. It found its way to me yesterday again, by divine appointment I believe, and I think I'm supposed to share it with you. It speaks to marginalizing people, about taking the easier way out.  It concerns Daughters and by Tavi.  My friend Cathy said something this week I think I should share with you as well, and I paraphrase it to this question: if we all saw all children as God's, as ours to care for and nurture, what would happen to child prostitution and child abuse and child trafficking? We go through the motions of our life, trying to protect ourselves or promote ourselves and wonder where God is.  The answer:


 ⁶ “Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:
to loose the chains of injustice
   and untie the cords of the yoke,
to set the oppressed free
   and break every yoke?
⁷ Is it not to share your food with the hungry
   and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—
when you see the naked, to clothe them,
   and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?
⁸ Then your light will break forth like the dawn,
   and your healing will quickly appear;
then your righteous One will go before you,
   and the glory of the LORD will be your rear guard.
⁹ Then you will call, and the LORD will answer;
   you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I.
   “If you do away with the yoke of oppression,
   with the pointing finger and malicious talk,
¹⁰ and if you spend yourselves in behalf of the hungry
   and satisfy the needs of the oppressed,
then your light will rise in the darkness,
   and your night will become like the noonday.
¹¹ The LORD will guide you always;
   he will satisfy your needs in a sun-scorched land
   and will strengthen your frame.
You will be like a well-watered garden,
   like a spring whose waters never fail.

Isaiah 58:6-11