God of menopause

In 145 days, I turn 50. (I meant to start this chronicle at the 150-day countdown. Oh well.) It seems an experience best shared, so here goes. The thoughts and adventures of a somewhat bemused woman on the brink of her second half-century.

Yesterday I was lecturing about the ways in which Catholic and Protestant cultural identities diverged in the wake of the 16th-century Reformation. One of the main points was the greater physicality of Roman Catholicism--the emphasis on the beauty and ornateness of the church building; the centrality of the Mass as a physical, recurring act; the doctrine of transubstantiation with the actual transformation of bread into body; the role of images, etc. etc.--versus the Protestant emphasis on words, books, literacy. It was a very good session-- one of the best I've ever had in a large (150 student) lecture class with lots of student interest and engagement. . . . and yet. . . . Perhaps I'm just overly anxious, a practicing Protestant endeavoring to do right by Catholicism in a heavily Catholic area. But I did feel that the students made an utterly unconscious assumption: words/literacy = modern = good= right.

So that night, walking the dog, I found myself lecturing to an imaginary class, trying to explain what Protestantism had lost by chucking that physicality. "Think about it," I declaimed to phantom students. "Confession to a priest, the actual act of talking about where you've gone wrong with another human being. Psychologically sound, no matter how you regard the doctrinal underpinnings. And think about the core of Christianity. Incarnation. God made flesh. Flesh. Raw meat. Pretty physical stuff. A God who puked. Whose feet stank. Whose stomach growled. A God who knew about hair tangles and hang nails and belly button lint. And snot and pus and shit. And sticky menstrual blood--"

Whoops. And my fantasy class dissolved, as did my pedagogical concerns and any interest in the physicality of Roman Catholic religious culture. Instead, it was just me and God. Well, and the dog. But forget the dog--there I stood, confronting the limits of Christianity. Incarnation. God made flesh. But male flesh. God made male flesh. A God of sweat and nocturnal emissions and pissing games. But not of bras soaked with leaking breast milk or high-pitched giggles or yeast infections.

Or of hot flashes or bizarre chin hair or the inability to remember ordinary words or the punch in the gut when you realize no stranger will ever look at you that way ever again.

I think I need a menopausal God.