Here come the girls...1 Timothy

1Timothy 2:11 A woman[a] should learn in quietness and full submission. 12 I do not permit a woman to teach or to assume authority over a man;[b] she must be quiet. 13 For Adam was formed first, then Eve. 14 And Adam was not the one deceived; it was the woman who was deceived and became a sinner. 15 But women[c] will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety.

I'm reading 1 Timothy for RBT- again. 

Again- but different. 

For example how could a woman learn apart from in quietness and full submission?
Otherwise it would be a bit like trying to teach a tigress after taking her young.
I don't know what other conditions I am able to learn in...
I need to be quiet, I need to submit to the teaching, the learning- otherwise I'm just going to be making wet-paper pea-shooters at the back whilst pushing quiet people off their chairs...I already have a whole school career,the majority of which took place outside the class room in the corridor or stood up at my desk, to prove this point. Should I ever need further reminding, there's always training days where I happily revert to the worst pupil in the room.

I am reading 1 Timothy in the light of my own church experience where I am invited to share and express myself so much that I often find, I have not much to say-
I do not feel marginalised or left out.
I do feel loved, protected, enjoyed...cherished...valued.

Okay,now myself I have to ask has ever trying to teach a man ever worked? 

Ever?

Never by telling a man the entire contents of my head have I ever, ever had any success what so ever.  In fact my own principle has long been to save my jaw muscles and rather adopting the principle of 'show don't tell.' 
If you don't learn that after three brothers and two sons, there's probably no hope.

Then we get to Eve, in the garden everything is great, everything is amazing and perfect and then Eve...inexplicably listens to the devil, and I don't know any woman I've ever met who couldn't relate to that.

Similarly I don't know any woman without sin.

I do however know loads of women, myself included who have been saved through child rearing, whose babies and children have brought out a strength and love from in them.Whose lives, out look, behaviour have all been changed by their arrival, their needs, the exercising of sacrificial love.

So I'm finding myself less, and less up set by 1 Timothy,I'm thinking reading in between the lines he's having a bit of a hard time in his new ministry. I'm thinking Paul's trying to give him some short cuts. I'm thinking church needs to be a place where the sexes are different - yet the same, where each is catered for and nurtured, I'm thinking of my own experience.

Would I want church to be different? Where I love to go to be with the people I love and feel safe, where my children feel safe, where we belong?

I'm thinking all this then I start reading Pilgrim's Progress,  right there in the author's apology (because people used to apologise for writing and having their writing published?) is this ...

"Truth, although in swaddling clouts, I find informs the judgement, rectifies the mind; pleases the understanding, makes the will submit;
the memory too it doth fill with what doth our imagination please; likewise it tends our troubles to appease.
Sound words, I know, Timothy is to use, and old wives' fables he is to refuse; but yet grave Paul him nowhere doth forbid the use of parables: in which lay hid that gold, those pearls, and precious stones that were worth digging for, and that with the greatest care."

Now on the one hand he is excusing his allegory and confirming its biblical route, on the other hand he is illuminating the above passage from 1 Timothy because I don't know about you but I've never been big on old wives tales and superstition.He is speaking of women or rather truth as a woman, allegory as a woman. There is so much love and kindness in Christianity to women, if that's been misconstrued, dragged backwards...disregarded...lost...that is not just the fault of men.

In my church on Sunday I loved being with my girls; age range probably baby- 80+, I love nothing better.I love them,they love me. But I also had at least three awesome and informative conversations with my brothers...really helpful...not in the slightest patronising or oppressive or weird or anything other than super helpful and encouraging and lovely. I also love that. I do.