Anne Lastman
The moment woman symbolically “burned her bra” (1968) she said, “I will not give hospitality to this stranger in my body.” That moment also became the moment that she opened the door for the demon lust to enter into her being. Promiscuity became constant companion and in time she began to lose her own sense of uniqueness. She changed her design, which is like a fine-tuned musical instrument, which had been refined through the many generations to one unrecognizable. From this time on, changes in her beliefs about sexuality, her difference in her sexuality, and body design which had been a masterpiece, became weakened. Her feminine genius was left behind for the new self-created “her.”
It has been said that male and female are different, but the same, and indeed this is so, but there is that very miniscule difference which is the divine spark and which we have understood and names life. The difference is not in the physicality but that which has been written in her sexuality. Her way of being woman. Of being the first of her kind. A word which did not appear in the dialogue between God and the male and female. That word was “woman” “helper.” it was to this creation that Yahweh God spoke for the first-time about children she will bear. (you will bear your children Gn 3:16). To her he spoke those words that whilst bearing the child would cause pain it was through her that he would fill the earth. It was a salvific moment. She would receive both from male and God the greater task of “filling the earth.” His (Adam’s) task was to engender that new creation whilst hers was to be forever the bearer of human life. In all of creation and creatures it is the female who receives and passes on the mandate of continuing what she began, and to woman in particular, she passes on the knowledge that though there is pain in birth the moment her child is born and in her arms the pain would be forgotten in her enchantment with her child. The one she has carried, nourished, spoken with, loved, felt moving in her body during its time with her, and then her guidance until it was time to let go, and permit him or her to fulfil its own mandate to grow and continue the mandate of filling the earth as was declared by their creator God.
It was written within her self-instruction that she would give the new one the best home {womb} her best food [milk from her own body) whilst her child would honour her as “mother.” The burning of the “bra” in the 1960’s was symbolic that she now understood better [or so she thought] and wanted different from what her design had inscribed within it. She wanted her freedom from restrictions and to be her own deity. Her own god with no one to dominate, control, depend on her except she herself. She no longer wanted slavery to a child. Her body was hers alone. Further, she would exercise her right to know the differences and outcomes between right and wrong and be free to choose. It would be her choice. A decision that her body belonged to her alone and in her control and thus the home she had previously been her honour to prepare for her child was now rejected.
However, the freedom given to her by her divine creator was not withdrawn from her (that her begetting would be for woman her reversal of her No to her mandate) and began to make “choices” very unlike her original design thus leading those in her own design to reach a place of much suffering. After rejection of the divine protection, she slowly began losing her knowledge of right and wrong and indeed the wrong led to her own new type of suffering. She became the instrument for “use” of her feminine where in the past this was not so. Those who previously had respected her feminine genius, knowing her charism to fill the earth, by bringing forth new life, was slowly forgotten. She became one of “them” one who could also use and abuse.
With this new freedom came previously unknown thinking. Unimagined thinking. Thinking which was not in her being. The new thinking slowly emerged, developed, strengthened and with each generation her thinking (own choice, own body) expanded leaving past knowledge behind and with the new knowledge a new learning very unlike the original.
The new thinking brought with it removal of restrictions of past “good” and opening up the new thinking, beginning with removal from the bedroom its altar of honour, one of the three altars of honour which are to underpin each family.
The altars being altar of Sacrifice, the altar of the bed and the altar of the family table. The removal of the restrictions against use and abuse of sexuality, the altar of the bed became stained and desecrated. When woman took control of her body, her sexuality, and demanded freedom to experience as she wanted, then to the altar of the bed where life came into being, she invited all strangers, intruders, violators, murderers to desacralize and dirty that place which should have remained holy because that’s where life was conceived. Her husband was not to be the one to enter into (Let us be glad and rejoice and give him glory, for the marriage of the lamb has come, and his wife has made herself ready” (Rev19:7-9) woman’s new freedom to choose led to fornication, adultery, abuse, abortion, crawled onto that altar which then led to further abuse and death of the child/ren which were created. Children were to be disposed of unless her choice was to have that child. If child interfered with a different intention in her life, then the child, her child, could not be given life.
The countless millions of babies who have been intentionally killed only by abortion (not counting infants who’ve starved, been traded, brutalised, rejected, abandoned,) is staggering. Always, innocence and voiceless have been ones which woman has refused to carry and feed. Why? A thought might be because she herself had been brutalised first by the slithering one and down through the ages the word, a fulfilment of God’s word that “Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you” (Gen 3:16) has been fulfilled. Her now many “partners” override her choice and demand the death of her child and still “he will rule over you” The children, born out of fornication, can be God’s language of love for life he created or the reality that he didn’t look away from the violation of that sacred altar (bed) with the blood sprinkled in remembrance of those offered in sacrifice to a false god Moloch. The blood of the innocents sprinkled would in time heal that altar which had been desecrated.
Further, onto this altar of the bed intruded a previously unknown entity. Contraception. A new and more refined instrument for death of children an active and conscious rejection of children. Rejection by contraception, refusal of child, led to woman demanding and insisting that sexuality and life be her decision, her domain. (be like God? (Gen 3:15) Contraception was to be her decision and any unwanted children would also be her decision whether she accepts them to be hers or continue with further desecration, the intentional killing of her own child. To this stage, the Altars of life, Eucharistic altar, Table of home altar, and altar of bed have been desacralized.
There is a significance from this journey from a holy body to one which has lost Its original design, now so muddied and dirty. Abandonment of the altar of the sacred, sexuality and its life-giving element. Saying no to the creator and demanding control over her life and the life of another who had been entrusted to her. This then led to desecration.
In time, the Altar of the family table also became desacralized. With desacralisation of life, the family began to also become wounded. This altar of the family table, where husband and wife and children share their prayers, blessings, meals and feasts, and banquets, would also become different. No longer in the manner of family. A gathering of the household an image of divine household, came together to pray, feast, bless and be with each other and learn about their creator also slowly disintegrated. When children were rejected with the decision made to intercept their desire to be born to the family, something changed. Something “different” entered the home and someone left the table and the home. The Old Testament has words written which show the beauty which God intended and meant for all life and families. “Sons are a heritage from the lord. Children a reward from him. Like arrows in the hands of a warrior are sons born in one’s youth. Blessed is the man whose quiver is full of them. They will not be put to shame when they contend with their enemies “(Ps 127:5) Contraception desecrated, the altar of the family table by rejection of sons and daughters who were also members of those who sat at the table and made up the blessing of the man with a quiver full of children.
In our time and generations, the honour given to family table, (altar) has been so diminished. The children and parents do not say the blessed words of Grace. There is no blessing for the food given and prepared. The blessing of the hands who prepared this feast. No blessing of those sitting and praying together and with the words of the Lord echoing around them. The children’s understanding that they are precious in their family. The altar and idol of this present era is “Pizza and coke” in front of television or other screen isolated in another room with the company of a virtual other or others. There’s no blessing. An absent honour, not given to household, its family, the children, the family high priest (father), the preparer of the banquet, mother, who is also the lighter of the family candle, and the children’s Amen. The desecration of this altar of honour, the table, leads to another.
And so, we come to the third Altar of Honour. The altar where daily and weekly we gather to receive Our Lord. This altar has been so precious to all who go to worship, receive his precious body and blood or simply just sit there with him. The altar where Eucharistic Body of Christ, the greatest and most sublime gift given to the people of God. It’s the altar where the “high Priest” (our priest) offers to God the creator the body of his crucified son in reparation for the “sin” of the world. This, through the gracious and grace of one who invokes the Lord to come and feed us as he promised (unless you eat of the flesh of the son of man and drink his blood and drink the blood of the son of man you will have no life in you Jn.6:53) Jesus through the medium of bread and wine gives Himself – all of Himself so that those of us who did not walk with Him in Galilee eat with him at first new Passover or stood with Him beneath the Cross have the same opportunity of knowing and experiencing Him. To really believe that the same Jesus who walked on water, entered through locked doors, fed thousands with only meagre supplies, played with children, and laughed with the women and the marginalized is the same Jesus who does the same today can only be understood through God’s own testimony. We can only believe this because He told us so and His word is truth. And yet this altar of Honour has also been desecrated through the cruelty of humanity to one another. The slaughter of human beings through abortion, euthanasia, murder, violence, wars, and loss of sense of our innocence with divine origins. Loss of sense that the other who is intentionally slaughtered is my brother or sister. We have eaten from the same loaf. We are closer in our relationship than our human relations because we have all received the same divine food, which works to transform us into a closer likeness to Jesus. And yet this altar is dishonoured by absence of care for those who suffer.
As I reminisce, I’m in awe. On this Altar of Honour, the God son comes to heal, feed, look at us and we at him, and to plead to his father to forgives us our many desecrations. Our sins of murder, like the first sin of murder it continues just the same. Our abandonment, our neglect of his and our brothers and sisters, of our loss of respect for the creation created for us. Our desecration of our family home with its altar. Our “grace of space”
As I walk around the Altar and around where the altars are, I seem to sense the presence of millions of prayers that have gone up around altars. Conversations, pleas, supplications and thanksgiving. The main altar and side altars at Cathedrals have brought the saviour to us and yet desecration in the form of abandonment. Of not recognizing the Lord’s living presence sees him alone. Sleep on for the time has come. His own home, the altar where we have been invited to. His graciousness as a host and our own neglect and forgetfulness to go and be with him. This abandonment of our Lord we echo with our brothers and sisters. We remain silent when we should speak. We remain silent when our voice is needed to give voice to those who have no voice. When we do not feed a hungry one. We do not visit the sick, or those in need.
I read a few short words, indeed a sentence many years ago which have moved me “”The secret and the sacred are sisters” When the secret is not respected, the sacred vanishes I believe upon this Sacred Altar Jesus comes and takes our pains and secrets and returns to us a new holiness. Enough to keep going. I can imagine the myriads of secrets, pains, sorrows, shared with the Lord especially in this place with an Altar of Honour yet all these secrets have been kept by Him for whom there are no secrets. Why? because the sacred remained strong, throughout time and through all sufferings, pain, desecrations, abandonment, the sacred has not left.
The Altars of Honour are sacred because it’s the place where we bring all that we are and have including our shame, mistakes, regrets, failures and know that He will hold us. Like Job, the Desecrated Altar of the Bed can be forgiven, and new life renews all. The desecrated altar of the table renewed because The Lord shows us his own table and blesses all families and tables and new life returns. And Altar of Honour where the Lord comes to us to feed us also is the altar which forgives because God has shown us forgiveness beginning from the beginning when he promised us a saviour and prepared an Altar for him.
