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This writing is in honor of all females and, also, all those who have struggled against cultural and religious prejudices to restore the rightful place of the feminine in Church, Christian Theology, and society. May this encourage you who are seeking a God, Goddess, Father, Mother, Spirit, Love, … more free of cultural limitations and one-sidedness and more as Jesus said, “Spirit.” I write in the humble spirit of recognition that this Divine One, My Mother, My Father, My Friend, … is neither confined in nor limited by either feminine or masculine language and imagery, and, thus, one arguing for only one aspect of God is in an extreme and needs to recognize that God is the Wholeness of both masculine and feminine, while transcending both in God as Wholeness Itself. Also, one need not point out to me the extremes of matriarchal religion, for the masculine religions can match that and, possibly, more with the violence enacted in the name of the masculine god. And, this writing is not in support of feminism, either, that goes to the opposite extreme and views the male as the supreme corrupter of religion and culture and inferior to the feminine. Pointing out the extremes of any way does not in itself justify its exclusion or the superiority of another way. Such extremism is not the Path to Peace and Honoring the One Creator. May this writing in some small way be a seed of Peace and a comfort to the females among us, our dear wives, mothers, sisters, … Amen. In the name of Christ.
Opening Reflection
Genesis 1 tells us that God created “man [generic, inclusive of male and female]” or “humankind,” the Hebrew word meaning “male and female,” not just “male,” after the Image of God. Therefore, the Creator in Genesis is not a male-only Being. How does this passage show God as neither just male nor female, but male and female equally reflecting God, the Creator? How does this influence our perception of the role and rights of women in religion, imaging of God in religion and personal devotion, the home, the workplace, and society at large?
Opening Prayers
Prayer of Brian K. Wilcox
My Father and my Mother,
My Brother and my Sister,
My Friend, my Love and Beloved,
My All, my Everything,
Grace me with Your Grace,
Make my Body a vein of Your Life,
Consume my pride in the Flame of Your Presence,
Save me from myself that insists on living for myself,
Unite me to Yourself in living for You.
In Christ, Amen.
Prayer of Lucinda Vardey
Our Mother,
Who creates and sustains us,
Wisdom is your name.
Your blessings come,
Your will be done on Earth, as it is in heaven.
Give us this day our sense of One,
And forgive those of us who trespass against You,
And lead us to honor Your gifts of the Earth,
And bestow on us Your protection and peace.
(The Flowering of the Soul)
Quote
Patriarchy has so swamped our civilizations, East and West, over the past forty-five hundred years that we have almost blotted out an entire side to Divinity: the Feminine side. This was not always the case, this ignoring of the Divine Feminine, but it has served political interests and gender interests (which can be highly political) to limit our God-language to the masculine and to exclude the feminine in our collective imaginations no less than in our religious leadership. … If Meister Eckhart is correct that “all names we give to God come from an understanding of our own souls,” then we clearly distort ourselves, our souls, our culture, and our God by insisting on calling God masculine and avoiding the feminine. By praying to God as “Father” and never as “Mother.” By repressing the Wisdom and Sophia traditions of the Bible in exclusive favor of the God of judgment and revenge and war. … The feminine insists on being heard today. Again.
(Matthew Fox, One River, Many Wells)
Comments
Julian of Norwich, 14th Century, spoke of God as Father and God as Mother. This teaching of God encompassing Mother and Father qualities is based on her deep appreciation of the unity between the Creating One and each of us:
It is a lofty understanding inwardly to see and to know that God, who is our maker, dwells in our soul, and it is a still loftier and greater understanding inwardly to see and to know that our soul, which is created, dwells in God's substance. From this substance we are what we are, by God.
Therefore, as noted by Julian, we dwell in God and God dwells in us. We are, indeed, only what we are because of this mutual indwelling of substance and substance. This is the Image of God, and, therefore, the Divine substance must entail masculine and feminine, even as male and female include male and female traits. Even physically, we share like traits, and psychologically, too. Even secular psychology recognizes the healthiness of the integrated person, rather than the male over-male-ed or the female over-female-ed. To grow into Christian perfection is to move toward wholeness, an integration of the strengths, in one person, of male and female. To be perfect as God is perfect, as taught by Jesus Christ, entails such integration.
Julian proceeds to integrate this union with the metaphors of “Father” and “Mother,” showing that the Divine is neither, but both, and showing that her teaching is grounded in the Mystery of Triune Being and Its differentiated functions:
I saw no difference between God and our substance, but saw it as if it were all God. And yet my understanding accepted the fact that our substance is in God; that is to say that God is God and our substance is a creature in God. For the Almighty Truth of the Trinity is our Father, for he made us and preserves us in himself; the deep wisdom [Sophia] of the Trinity is our mother, in whom we are enclosed; the lofty goodness of the Trinity is our Lord, and in him we are enclosed and he in us.
We are enclosed in the Father, we are enclosed in the Son, and we are enclosed in the Holy Spirit. The Father is enclosed in us - All-power, All-wisdom, and All-goodness: one God, one Lord.
Julian identifies Jesus Christ, the Second Person of the Trinity, as being Mother to us, as she writes:
And thus in our creation God Almighty is our natural father, and God all-wisdom [the Word, Jesus Christ] is our natural mother, with the love and goodness of the Holy Spirit. These are all one God, one Lord. In the knitting and joining he is our real, true spouse and we are his loved wife and his fair maiden.
In the Second Person we have our preservation, in wit and wisdom, as far as our sensuality [physicality; in the time of Catherine the soul was believed to come from the father, the flesh from the mother], our restoring and our saving are concerned. For he is our mother, brother and saviour [Christ includes feminine and masculine].
The Second, most precious, Person, who is our substantial mother [as of the Trinity in eternity] has now become our sensual mother [as Jesus Christ in time], for we are double by God's making, that is to say, substantial and sensual [soul and spirit]. Our substance is the higher part that we have in our father, God Almighty.
The Second Person of the Trinity is our mother in nature, in our substantial making. In him we are grounded and rooted, and he is our mother by mercy in our sensuality, by taking flesh.
Thus our mother, Christ, in whom our parts are kept unseparated, works in us in various ways. For in our mother, Christ, we profit and increase, and in mercy he reforms and restores us, and by virtue of his passion, death, and resurrection joins us to our substance. This is how our mother, Christ, works in mercy in all his beloved children who are submissive and obedient to him….
[Christ] Our natural mother, our gracious mother, because he willed to become our mother in everything, took the ground for his work most humbly and most mildly in the maiden's womb…. Our high God, the sovereign wisdom of all, arrayed himself in this low place and made himself entirely ready in our poor flesh in order to do the service and the office of motherhood himself in all things.
A mother can give her child milk to suck, but our precious mother, Jesus, can feed us with himself. He does so most courteously and most tenderly, with the Blessed Sacrament, which is the precious food of true life. With all the sweet sacraments he sustains us most mercifully and graciously. That is what he meant in these blessed words, where he said, “I am that which holy Church preaches and teaches you,” that is to say, “All the health and life of the sacraments, all the virtue and grace of my word, all the goodness that is ordained for you in holy Church, that I am."
To motherhood as properties belong natural love, wisdom and knowledge - and this is God. For though it is true that our bodily bringing forth is very little, low, and simple compared to our spiritual bringing forth, yet it is he who does the mothering in the creatures by whom it is done.
The natural loving mother, who recognises and knows the need of her child, takes care of it most tenderly, as the nature and condition of motherhood will do. And continually, as the child grows in age and size, she changes what she does, but not her love. When the child has grown older, she allows it to be punished, breaking down vices to enable the child to receive virtues and grace.
This work, with all that is fair and good, our Lord does in those by whom it is done. Thus he is our mother in nature, by the working of grace in the lower part of love for the higher. And he wills that we know it, for he wills to have all our love fastened to him.
In this I saw that all the debts we owe, by God's command, to fatherhood and motherhood by reason of God's fatherhood and motherhood, are repaid in the true loving of God. This blessed love Christ works in us. And this was showed in everything, especially in the noble, plenteous words, where he says, “I am what you love."
(Revelations of Divine Love of Juliana of Norwich. Trans. Del Mastro, M. L.)
Therefore, Mother honors both genders in the Fullness of the Divine, rather than making idolatry out of masculinity in regard to God. And it honors the person and role of Christ.
Yet, how did this dominance of masculinity come to religion, long before Christianity (this means that the dominance of the masculine in regard to God and church derive from pre-Judeo Christian times, which is of utmost significance in the political shaping of Judaism, Christianity, and the Scripture, as well as Western Culture, by patriarchy who politically and religiously suppressed and suppress, even now, the feminine)? One cultural shift occurred with the invasion of peoples by masculine warring deities. Afterward, the Divine feminine came to be suppressed in favor of patriarchy. Therefore, this shift was not simply a religious matter, but it was, also, a cultural matter.
Now, let us consider the Substance of the Divine, as given by Jesus. In St. John 4.24, Jesus speaks to the woman at a well, saying that “God is Spirit,” or “God is spirit,” or “God is a Spirit,” or “God is a spirit.” This spirit or Spirit is pneuma, and it derives from the feminine Hebrew ruach in the Judeo-Christian tradition. Jesus lifts even the One he calls Father beyond Father and Mother, to Spirit. Jesus recognizes this Mystery, the Divine, his Father, in substance is Spirit, encompassing all positive qualities, and, thus, absolutely neither Father nor Mother. Rather, this Spirit is relatively Father or Mother as expressing, from the Fullness of the Trinity, fatherly and motherly traits in their perfection within God in God: that is, God before God manifests in Creation through the Divine Energies, or Creative Potencies of the Trinity.
Therefore, we enlarge our appreciation and worship of the Divine by synthesizing fatherly and motherly in our lives and churches. But, this raises a question: Why such resistance to addressing and recognizing the motherly and Mother, as is common in almost all Christianity?
What we can call bibliolatry and, also, biblical literalism (an aspect of bibliolatry) is one aspect of the fear and resistance related to celebrating God as Father and Mother, but more deeply rooted is the still and oft-unconscious prejudice that God being only Father indicates superiority and, thus, God as being Mother too would be a diminution of the Being of God. This means, that while the crass literalism of Scripture, which itself robs Scripture of its richly inspired metaphoricity, is a factor in rejecting the Divine feminine, the deeply inbred and socialized belief, held unconsciously by many, is still that woman is wonderful but, somehow, not adequate to be like God to the extent man is like God. Of course, the literalist would never admit such, but just look at the relegation of women to inferior roles in much of the conservative church, and the continued lack of equal pay in the larger society. Thus, in such prejudice, social and cultural norms shape God language, and despite all common sense. For, there is no common sense in rejecting the Divine feminine, and no other sources I can find to do so except two: prejudice, biblical literalism.
What is the significance of this integration of masculine and feminine on life and worship? I quote Marija Gimbutas, in The Language of the Goddess, as to the role of the Feminine, “The Goddess in all her manifestations was a symbol of the unity of all life in Nature.” That is, the feminine is, socially and psychologically, integrative, unifying, and communal. The priority of masculinity, socially and psychologically, is agency: that is, accomplishment, production, getting things done. Contrast this with the feminine, whose priority is community, nurture, harmony, and loving.
Reflections
How might the adoption of the masculine war god motif, as a primary theme, in Jewish, Christian, and Muslim cultures and religion have contributed to all three faiths being warring faiths? How might recognition of this help these faiths and cultures seek peace in more peaceful ways than warring?
How has Scripture been used to justify the war god and war?
How does religion conform to the gender prejudices in society? How does religion validate and contribute back to the unjustness of gender prejudice in society?
Agree or disagree with the following, and explain your response: Gender inclusion or exclusion in religion is a matter of biblical justice.
Do you integrate into your worship and experience of the Divine both feminine and masculine addresses and images? Why? Why not?
What in the above writing did you find encouraging? What challenged you to reexamine your previous assumptions on the Divine and gender? What did you disagree with? Explain.
Do you think it is right to raise children with a male-only imaging of God? Explain your response.
Please return to the opening reflection to reconsider the questions and your response.
Spiritual Exercise
Write your own prayer to God as Mother or Christ as Mother. Pray it several times. What is the experience like for you?
Go to www.compassion.net to read about sponsoring, in the name of Jesus, children living in poverty, by means of Compassion International. Thanks! Brian K. Wilcox
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