Thanks Eve

I have discussed before my Community Group; a Bible study of girls my age that meets every Thursday night. I love it- it's a great opportunity both to learn about God and about my friends who share that time.

We did fun, social things over the summer since the teachers who get summers off were in and out on vacation, then met a few weeks ago to get back into a routine with the fall approaching and everyone back in school mode. I may not be in school, but I like when everyone settles back down, sharpens a few #2's and restores sanity to my mind so that I don't pop a blood vessel thinking about how everyone is having the time of their life while I'm at work.

That's a big fear of mine: missing out on fun.

So Thursday night rolled around last week (which was not spent blogging, I know) and as our friends dragged themselves into our house, we fed them semi-stale kettle corn and got into our discussion. Anyone who works or goes to school knows that Thursdays are a conundrum. You are happy that the week's almost over but completely exhausted from all of the working and the waking up early; you're happy to see your friends but your eyes are only half-open.

We all recognize this delirium and abate it as best we can during our hour and a half window of Community Group. This past Thursday we were in our discussion of the first chapter of Luke, one of the Gospels in the New Testament of the Bible, and we got to talking about Mary, who found out she would become pregnant with Jesus, and Zecheriah's wife Elizabeth when she found out after a lifetime of infertility woes that she too would have a child.

Elizabeth went into seclusion during her pregnancy, which segued into how awesome it would be to sit around for months and watch movies and read books while pregnant (unlike women today who work full-time until their water breaks). Since none of us can relate to pregnancy, we then detoured into talking about how women in Biblical times who were "incapacitated" could spend that week out of every month chilling out in the red tent. A better explanation might be that the red tent predated Midol.

What brilliance, we thought, to just let women go hang out together, be hormonal and eat chocolate in peace (or cocoa beans, as someone pointed out that Hershey's was not yet in business). And let's be honest; the ability to have a baby is an amazing gift, but it is a privilege that your body prepares for and recovers from for most of your life.

People paint the red tent to seem like women were shunned back in those days and had to hide out, but we thought it sounded kind of awesome... no complaining to the outside world that your abdomen is staging a coup on your body and affecting your ability to rationalize, no having to say "it's nothing" when someone male asks you why you are in a bad mood and/or crying. Throw in masseuses and central air conditioning and I think we could sell a lot of people on the idea.

Now to convince the outside world we need 4-5 days off every month... we'll have to discuss that at a later meeting.

If women are supposed to be less rational and more emotional at the beginning of our menstrual cycle when the female hormone is at its lowest level, then why isn't it logical to say that, in those few days, women behave the most like the way men behave all month long?

-Gloria Steinem