this is dredging up the past and i'm not sure why i woke up this morning thinking of this

but i remember the summer of 2005, in steven's place, at a bible study
and the topic for that day was finding your masculine or feminine identity in God. (or something to that effect)

and my initial reaction was one of recoil. i didn't want someone to prescribe to me what my feminine identity in God should be. it offended my sensibilities, it was the kind of thing i would rebel against, because in my mind, how could anyone describe to you a feminine or masculine identity in God when

1. the words feminine and masculine are socially constructed and are dependent on the societies/context we find ourselves in. doesn't each society prescribe roles we already somewhat subconsciously subscribe to?

2. isn't it putting God in a box again and trying to scan and categorize the mind of God when He is just beyond us.

and so, i reacted. and i remember just ripping into salene's study for that day and tearing it to pieces.

there was so little grace on my part. i sought only to push my own intellectual understandings, and i left no room for dialogue, for love, for grace.
i made the bible study pretty much inconducive for further discussion, and left the air hanging in the room with a sense of agitation, the molecules and particles excited, disturbed.

and nothing. only a clashing cymbal and resounding gong.

i don't know what the feminine and masculine identity of God are, they probably do exist because we are made so very differently physically in the first place. but in my fear of confusing and misplacing our human ideas to be God's truths, i shut my ears from the start and never found out what she had to say.

defensiveness is stupid. and i'm sorry.