There is no question that my Angel Poppy is bringing me a spiritual message, even if I can’t grasp what it might be. A number of people wrote me yesterday asking me to take another photograph of the flower, even as it begins to die.

There is something spiritual happening, they wrote.

Judy Hubbard of Oregon wrote me this morning to see she thinks of the poppy angel “as a sacred message of peace and love,” a message our angry and divided country could really use.

The poppy brought me a message, both spiritual and sacred, and also a message of peace and love. it has to do with women’s place in our lives, souls, and world.

I was sad to learn of the decision of the Southern Baptists, voting overwhelmingly in the convention to forbid women from being pastors in their church. There are thousands of female posters now. They must, says the conversion, exist in the church only in service to men.

A bruising moment for me. Yesterday the news was especially upsetting for me.

The message for me is to honor and remember and spiritually support the thousands of Southern Baptist pastors and leaders who are in danger of being expelled by their church for being women.

Even the Southern Baptists have taken up the cause of hate, cruelly and brutally voting to expel two major churches for permitting women to be pastors.

Am I the only person who believes women hold a sacred position in our cultural and political life and are becoming more powerful – and sacred –  by the minute?

To me, women are so much closer to the Christian idea of Jesus and God and service and compassion than most of the men I know and read about.

How do they call themselves Christians worshipping in the name of Christ?

“No country can ever truly flourish if it stifles the potential of its women and deprives itself of the contributions of half of its citizens,” Michelle Obama. Neither can any church, as the Catholics have been learning for generations.

All over the world, churches, governments, and human beings are elevating women, not just trying to dominate and control. The church did itself no favor; the Southern Baptists are not the future but the dark side of the past.

All over America, young and old men, mostly white and allegedly Christian, fight day and night to control, suppress, and dominate women.

This is wrong.

This is the sacred message I was receiving today, and I am deeply touched by the persecuted female pastors holding up bibles and begging for fairness as the church convention told them they had no place leading men.

The extremist men cite this passage in the Bible to justify their hatred and bigotry: “Wives, submit to your own husbands, as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior. Now as the church submits to Christ, wives should also submit everything to their husbands.

The world is moving on. There are good parts of the Bible and bad ones. This is a bad one.

When the Bible was written, equality for men and women was not an idea even considered, let alone taken seriously. Men need women to work for them in order to keep their power. Those days are long gone.

But men have not changed as much as we might have thought.

Men are destroying the world all over, with their greed, violent nature, and dread of losing power. Women are the answer; they are rising higher and higher every day.

They are not going to be pushed back into that ancient bottle if you believe in God, then you might consider this is also his will, or it would not be happening.

It’s hard for me to imagine Jesus Christ urging a Church to persecute and demean women in this way.

Thanks, Judy, for jogging me into thinking about the meaning of this message. It came at the right time.

I have chosen the poppy as a reminder to me that women are the future and our best chance for survival, peace, and compassion. I’ll think of that whenever one poppy opens up in color, angel or not.