Et Dieu créa la femme - an amazing evening at feminist theology ...

It will take me about ten posts to begin to try to communicate the sheer joy and energy that I felt after last night's first feminist theology session of the new season.

Ria van Beek had the brilliant idea that we should invite Jacqueline Berenstein Wavre to speak to our group. A few years ago Jacqueline, a famous local Swiss politician and women's rights activist turned up to our group and we felt very honoured. She was genuinely interested in learning more about the faith into which she had been baptised and the idea of feminist theology was quite new to her when we began our francophone group about 5 years ago.
Anyway I shall begin with the ending, here is Jacqueline putting on her her coat at the end of the evening and showing us that even her coat has a feminist message - "And God created woman... " Et Dieu créa la femme - the infamous Brigitte Bardot movie!
"So, Jacqueline" I said - after teasing her for being a socialist and wearingis this designer model coat - "is this coat a few years old?" "oh a bit more than that - I inherited it from one of my sisters in law!" and then she proudly displayed the taped repairs she had made "about 10 years ago"! Twirling like a young woman at least 70 years younger as she did so.

I came home last night feeling truly privileged to have been able to listen in quite intimate circumstances to an extraordinary woman talk about her life and times, her convictions, questions and also of course her current campaigns.
Jacqueline is 89 years young, full of life and the most wonderful example of tenacity and vivacity. She also spoke extremely powerfully about faith and law and the Holy Spirit, more on that in another post very soon I promise.
Ah yes and Jacqueline in on Facebook and also has a blog!