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Some of us who were attending the conference—not just the evangelical Christians, but possibly also the Buddhist nun in her habit, and the Muslim women in their veils—see things differently. We believe that we are inheritors of a faith tradition that is coherent, rich, and profound. We have no desire to tamper with it. Instead, we want to listen attentively to it and learn.

These ancient faiths, because of their continuity over centuries, possess a multicultural validation that is worth weighing. Communities widely separated by geography as well as time have lived their lives exploring these beliefs, and found in them cause for awe. This cumulative wisdom is something that no single one of us, trapped as we are in our own cultures and wearing our own blinders, is smart enough to second-guess. We might explain our disagreement with the "buffet" school of spirituality, then, by saying that we respect the witness of generations of women and men before us, and come to our faiths as followers and disciples, not as critics or shoppers.

But Gloria was on an entirely different track, one which seemed the broadly-accepted starting point of her audience. She is still very striking: tall, slim, and dressed that evening in form-fitting red. Everything about her is long, even the palms of her large hands; her very long fingers were accentuated by a coiled-snake ring. She stood behind the podium at ease, enjoying herself, offering an analysis of religious themes and trends in an amused tone. The audience adored her.

There I was, sitting front-row-center, my knees about six feet from the podium. I noticed after a while that I was gradually feeling more and more besieged. I felt slyly insulted; things I held dear were being sneered at. I slumped down and leaned toward Lilian. My mind wasn't quick enough to come up with responses and explanations for everything Gloria was saying. Her comments were being received enthusiastically. I felt very lonely.

About this time we hit the low point of the evening. Gloria began describing an interpretation of church architecture that she had read, which drew parallels between the various structural elements and female reproductive anatomy. You can imagine what the church door and narthex and center aisle represented. This, I thought, was just silly. Then she completed the analogy by saying that the altar was the womb, "the site where childbirth takes place."

I felt slapped, and then quickly felt very, very sad. Lilian must have had the same reaction, because she threw her arm around my shoulder and held on like she was drowning.

Why did this image wound me, when so much of the rest could be dismissed with, "Oh well, she just doesn't understand"? Never mind that the idea was illogical; as an old natural-childbirth teacher, I'm pretty sure the birth itself would transpire on the church steps. The problem with the analogy was not its confused view of female anatomy, but its obliviousness to the original, deeper meaning of the altar. Ignorant, cavalier, it didn't care to listen to what the altar meant to the people who built it, or those worshiped there for millennia.

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April (Web-only) 2000, Vol. 44