Words To Live By 3

"You're only young once, but you can be immature forever."  I first encountered this pithy little gem in 1989 on a lapel button which I bought and proudly wore till it vanished somewhere into the great lapel button unknown.  I was thirty-three, dirt poor and, well, a bit immature for my age I'd say, though to give me a bit of slack it could reasonably be said that almost all men under forty, or perhaps even under fifty when you factor in midlife crisis are at least a bit immature.  It worked for me given that as I was taking on the leadership and direction of a new and emerging Christian community I really did not have a clue what I was getting into and had I any idea at the time I likely would have run the other way fast, screaming.  I also didn't realize until long after becoming acquainted with dear Uncle Google that this was a quote of one of my heroes: the Great Germaine Greer. 
     Now, some of you might be wondering what's a nice Christian like me doing admiring a woman like her?  I read the Female Eunuch, Ms. Greer's breakthrough work in 1979 some nine years after it was published in 1970.  I would have been fourteen when I first saw it on the shelves and I have to say I was quite non-plussed by the cover. It's from a painting by artist John Holmes, of whom I know nothing so I will leave it for my dear readers to let their fingers do the walking

Being fourteen I thought it might be about sex and possibly was porn but the image was so bizarre and disturbing that I really did not know what to make of it.  It haunted me for years.

I got around to reading the Female Eunuch as I was discovering feminism since I was worshipping Sundays with a radical Mennonite house church that was exploring Christian feminism (not the contradiction in terms that some of you might think) as well as being friends with a radical lesbian feminist. 

Germaine still resonates with me with her incisive way of nailing it, for example the way she described women who dress up and wear make-up as female drag queens and the submissive woman, wife or girlfriend as a female faggot.

I particularly liked her way of  breathing fire onto the dead coals and in her decidedly incendiary style of writing and speaking breathing empowerment onto anyone, female or male reading her words or hearing her speak.

There was an inner essential fire to her that put blaze to everything she touched, like an untameable genie that would grant you your three wishes then rub your nose in the consequences of your ill thought out wish-making.

Yes, there is in this a sense of youth, perhaps of immaturity.  But what fire, what power and what brilliance.

I am older now, moving towards sixty and I still feel that fire raging within me, or in the words of the Upanishads:

"What is this fire, love, that burns inside?  I bear it as I can.  Some say love is a boon.  Love is disquieting."