The Myth of the American Dream: Reflections on Affluence, Autonomy, Safety, and Power

by D.L. Mayfield

Beguines, thirteenth-century female Christian mystics who started their own religious order after being denied access to worship God anywhere else. They were holy fools who were committed to paying attention in a society obsessed with hierarchy and economy. Writer Jesse van Eerdman says that these women were like newborn puppies with their eyes licked open by God.1 What a glorious thought: God is the one who opens us up to the blurry world with maternal devotion and a desire to see us truly, fully alive. These women looked very hard at the hand God had given them—a world full of suffering and crusades and wars, a world where, as single or widowed women, they were not valued in their society—and they found a good king and a good kingdom, one defined by love and service; God was present everywhere they looked. I