Women are buffalo

I read this incredibly confronting book on the life of a young Thai woman in the sex trade, called Only 13.  From the age of 14, she had spent ten years of her life as a sex worker, hating what she had to do but did it because she was poor and uneducated with a financial duty to fulfill towards her family. 

It was confronting because her account was so honest.  She named a key basis for her being led to this trade not of her choice - it was how women are devalued within her culture.  She cited an ancient Thai maxim that she experienced as still being current in 21st century Thailand - Women are buffalo, men are human. 

Yesterday, we celebrated Assumption at the cathedral.  I shared how can we glorify the strength and beauty of Mary, when we don't glorify the strength and beauty of all women?  I shared what I had read in a book that touched me. 

Good theology is lived and where it is lacking, it challenges us.  Mary was no wilting wallflower.  Neither are we called to be, if we are to be good theologians.  So the feast of the Assumption challenges us as theologians to see that all women are valued as equal human beings and not just in Thailand but everywhere for this story of the young Thai woman is replicated in the life of so many women throughout the whole world.  It is not just Thailand. 

Then after mass, I talked with a young Thai woman whose story was so like the story of the one in the book.  There she was before me so grateful to be at church with her husband, to hear her story shared and respected, to experience Jesus with her in her pain, to know a life that is much more than what she had hoped for in her previous life.  I can't express the experience adequately as it was so powerful and I won't betray any confidences.  I will say that it left me teary, knowing that if today was for no one else, it was for this woman before me.  I thought - Thanks mum as you helped bring me to this today. 

Then what did I see on my facebook today? 
"Do what you feel in your heart to be right - for you'll be criticized anyway."
Who wrote it?
Eleanor Roosevelt. 

Strong women - so many of them - have taught me so much and inculcated in me a faith that is real and alive.  They have given me so much.  It is from them that I get my love of Mary.  I am thankful for strong women in my life and for what they give our world.