Posts Tagged ‘Jesus’
Women Who Followed Jesus
Posted by: Shirley Paulson in General on March 20th, 2011
About a year ago I started noticing an extraordinary parallel between women throughout the past two millennia who devoted their lives to following Jesus. They lived with total conviction in their God-given worth, and they held their ground against society’s opposition to it. Whether they were born in the first, 10th, or 20th century, they lived with unselfish courage and have left their mark in my heart.
I decided to find a way to tell their stories, and recently produced a first-person presentation of 14 of these extraordinary women. Here’s a brief video clip from a live presentation:
Two of the women from the Bible identified Jesus in his unique roles before his male disciples did – as the Messiah and the fact of his resurrection. It is odd that men get the credit for these “firsts” in the Bible, and the women’s stories are usually forgotten. But of even more interest is an observation on society’s perpetual belittling of women from Mechthilde of the Middle Ages. She noted that women were less tempted by worldly power, and because they were not able to please the powers of the Church, they were freer to nurture their natural affinity for the “love relations with God.”
Her comment provokes a powerful question for all of us, men and women, to ponder: What are those “love relations with God?” Must women always endure shame and persecution in exchange for the gift of this natural affinity? Or, must men always be blocked off, because they are privileged in society?
The full Women Who Followed Jesus presentation is available for rent on DVD. Make check out to and mail $5.98 to “Spirituality and Christianity,” c/o Heather Sholeen, 437 Washington, Barrington, IL 60010. Re line: Women Who Followed Jesus
S+C | Jesus and miracles
Posted by: Shirley Paulson in Podcast on January 24th, 2009
Episode #16 is Part II of our discussion about Jesus and his ministry. Barbara Zeman and I picked up where we left off last time, exploring the meaning of the extraordinary things Jesus did. Healing diseases, restoring dead people to life, walking on water, and even … the fig tree.
We searched for an understanding of the term “miracle” that doesn’t dismiss the heavenly good within the rest of us who experience the same earth that Jesus did. In my Christian Science practice, we tend to avoid the use of the term “miracle” in reference to Jesus’ works, because it tends to dilute our expectancy of divine power in our own lives. Barbara notes that children had access to the goodness and power Jesus brought about — perhaps especially so because they were children. They are not jaded, and they may anticipate the divine power as natural phenomena.
It became clear to us that the best way to understand those miracles is not through human analysis of a physical event, but rather through the realization of the same divine power within each of us, in all human history. We still have questions about the fig tree.
Listen in, and let us know if you have some ideas to offer. Be sure to leave your comments here at the end of the show notes on Spirituality and Christianity.com.
Here are some links related to our discussion: