As the final day in our series dedicated to International Women’s Day and Daughters in My Kingdom, we find this Sunday, 17 March 2013, is the 171st anniversary of the establishment of the Relief Society.  Last January, we made a common-sense suggestion to invite all to celebrate the Relief Society anniversary by asking your ward or branch to host a sacrament meeting dedicated to women (not necessarily mothers) and the Relief Society with all talks given by women, and flanked with hymns written by and for women. After all, Mother’s Day is for mothers, so it makes sense to have a meeting aimed at celebrating the accomplishments, testimony and dedication of biblical and Mormon women, if only to displace some church traditions which exclude women as final speakers in sacrament meeting.

So- what happened in your ward or branch today? Did you have a meeting all about women? or was it all about motherhood, disguised as women? Or something else? Share!

I like honey. I remember peanut butter and honey sandwiches that my grandmother used to make me when we visited her in summertime. I recalled when my aunt taught me to substitute honey for the small amount of sugar in bread-making, and thinking it made all of the difference in the world to the taste of fresh bread, especially when topped with creamed honey butter. A childhood facisnation with Egypt that still resonates with me has me seek for honey and bee symbolism in Egyptian hieroglyphics.  When my throat or mouth is sore, I am drawn to Mānuka honey.It is a staple in my food storage, and a sweet Asian variety was a treasured gift from a visiting Korean exchange student when he stayed with us years ago.

But that is not all. I also love Deborah, the righteous judge and prophetess. In Hebrew, her name, דְּבוֹרָה, translates as “bee”. How can I not think of her when I think of honey and beehives?

I love that the Church has a variety of images available to help supplement lessons. Whether it be Gospel Doctrine or Primary, I want to make sure the whole class gets to see a woman and hear her story every Sunday I teach, so these pictures of Eve, Miriam, Mary (any Mary), Ruth or Esther* feel like old friends to me.

Because of the Church’s copyrights for these pieces of art, I can’t put them in this post, but I hope you’ll take moment and look at them. (Maybe open each one in a new tab as you read this blog post.)

By having a variety of women depicted from all four sacred books of scripture, LDS.org’s Gospel Art section is making an important statement: women matter and are a part of our religious history. And, every time I check back, the overall collection grows as do the pieces that showcase women. But, when I look at this collection as a whole, I see some damaging messages being sent. One of concern is the narrow range of emotions women express in these paintings. We see women looking unsure, confused or in the depths of despair. In fact, the only times women look happy, content or confident is when they are embodying traditional gender roles.

This was originally published at www.eurekastreet.com.au, and is reproduced with permission.  Dorothy A. Lee is is Woods Distinguished Lecturer and teaches in New Testament at Trinity College Theological School, Melbourne, Australia. This article is an excerpt from her essay ‘Versions of the birth’, also published in Eureka Street, December 1998.

Feminist biblical scholars ask two fundamental questions of the [birth narrative] myths. First of all, they ask the literary question of how female characters are portrayed in the stories: where they are present and where absent, whether they are marginalised or diminished by the text, how seriously they are taken as human beings, as disciples, as leaders of early Christian communities.

Secondly, women ask how these biblical myths can be reinterpreted in a woman-friendly (rather than misogynist) way, regardless of how we may define the original author’s or community’s intentions. This may involve sometimes reading ‘against the grain’ in order to address directly women’s concerns that are ignored or even downplayed by the narrative.

It is worth examining the birth narratives of Matthew and Luke with these questions in mind.

Symbolism is an important part of religion. As Latter-day Saints, we are well familiar that the Bridegroom is the biblical term that symbolises Christ; The Bride is symbolic of His church, (Isa. 54:5; Jer. 3:14; Jer. 31:32) and the Marriage is symbolic of the Second Coming (D&C 45:56; D&C 63:54). There is no mistake in the use of symbolism, we do not believe that the sacrament bread and water literally turns into the flesh and blood of Christ, and there are repeated reminders of symbolism with countless use of symbols in the temple ceremony. I enjoy the symbolism, it allows me to apply new applications of symbolic biblical teachings.

The problem for me is when the symbolism stops, and becomes literal.

The “F” word. Few words cause as much passion, angst, anger, joy or otherwise. Yet in the church, we proclaim the “F” word almost constantly as a part of doctrine. It is a loaded gun for good and for bad. It is something we all talk about, we all want and at some time, we all do.  Yes, I am talking about…. Family. Family is a rubbery term at best; even within the church, the definition of family comes in varied terms of a mortal family, an eternal family, a heavenly family, a ward family (wherein the bishop is the father of a ward) and for those in University wards, you may get “assigned” membership in FHE family groups. Even at work or in sports, a branch or a team can be described as a family unit. In consideration of this, you can see why I prefer the mathematical definition of the term “family”: a group of curves whose equations differ from a given equation in the values assigned to constraints in each curve.