Original Date Written: August 2012.
I remember the first time – at least consciously – I saw someone call God a “she”. I was reading a new Christian writer I had been turned onto by a friend – a male friend nonetheless. The author? Anne Lamott. The Time? Just a few short months ago…like just back in February of this year (2012).
I would like to tell you that I felt excited to read this – liberated and enthused. I had come to the conclusion last Spring when studying the scriptures that God was the first feminist. I had written all these posts last Fall about how I no longer believed in Complementarism and the gender roles being God-ordained. I had come to the point in my walk where I was starting to wake up to the fact that yes, I have a call on my life from God and that my call was equal to a man’s call on his life. So, I would like to tell you that reading about God as a “She” was liberating and exciting and freeing.
However, I can tell you no such thing. For it seems that old thought patterns die hard…and therefore, I will tell you that my reaction to seeing God portrayed as a “She” was exactly the opposite of liberating.
I remember reading right over it at first….until I realized Anne was talking about God. About the God I thought we both knew and loved…about the one that I find in the Bible. “Oh, no,” I thought to myself, “she is one of those EXTREMELY LEFT WING LIBERALS…how can I be reading her? Her writings are so real and honest and real – and I identify with them…but I am not comfortable with her feminizing my God. Well, she is from NorCal, Marin County to be exact. And I know what my aunt says about us California Christians…we are the land of the fruits and the nuts. And Anne didn’t come to God until her adult years…so maybe this FEMINISM is just working itself out. I guess, I guess I can try not to judge her…I guess I can give her some grace and continue to read.”
I know a thousand other thoughts about Ms. Lamott raced through my head as I “struggled” through her writings about this God in the feminine. I’ve spoken about them before – her writings and how they moved me to tears – how her mourning of Pammy – a dear friend who had died – had helped me realize what I needed to do in my own grieving process. Yet, I felt odd – thinking back now about it – because while I believed she knew the same God I knew…I didn’t understand how she could feminize a “him”. I wasn’t comfortable with it…and perhaps that is because I didn’t know Him in His fullest essence…because now that I take a step back – I realize He is really both a He and a She.
IS GOD…FEMININE?
As I seek to uncover these compensations, I am doing my best to include others in this journey. I am seeking out women pastors at my church; a spiritual director; women that have graduated from seminary and are entering “a man’s world” of the Church; women outside the Christian faith. I am listening to the book How I Changed My Mind About Women in Leadership and making notes of other books to add to the reading list. I plan on reading more books as they are being added daily to the wish list.
Yet, in most of the material I am coming across – save Sue’s book – I am still noticing the masculinity of God is the prevalent theme. Sure these richly endowed servants of the Most High are speaking up and speaking out against the evils of oppressing women – comparing it time and time again to the Church’s stance and support of slavery. However, I get this sense that there is something more that we – those that are in the movement to release women from their oppression – that we are still missing something quite big.
I get this sense that this movement to free women from oppression isn’t just a movement for women. Yes, we are definitely the direct obvious benefactors of this movement. However, there is something so much more that I keep being led back to: that this movement is for ALL of us – men and women alike. For when someone around us receives freedom to be who they are, we indirectly also receive freedom to be who we are. That if women are freed from traditional gender roles – so are men. And if men are relieved of their traditional gender roles – then so is God relieved of “His” traditional view by humans as being JUST masculine.
Reading and pushing up against my engrained patriarchal roots – the one the that hit me last night as I was reading Sue’s book, as she pointed out that the Bible and Christian Tradition (2 separate yet intertwined matters) were no strangers to Patriarchy – was this: What if Anne Lamott was right? What if God is both He and She? What if we have been missing…for almost all of human life…the essence of the Feminine Divine in our world? Would our world look different? If so, what would it look like?
AWAKENING
As I seek to uncover my compensations and write my own critique of my life – I am trying to do my best to not stop the questions, the anger, the “How could You let this happen?” shouts at God work themselves out. I know there is anger there…yet I have to be honest – I am still having a hard time letting it surface.
I know from my own journey, from those around me, and from reading books like Insurrection that letting these questions, these doubts surface is part of the process. Letting things bubble to the surface and not fester within the body, within the soul is the only way to truly heal…to truly feel whole and at One with our Creator. So, I am doing my best to uncover this anger, to process it and …well and to do whatever else I need to do…
As I continue my journey of AWAKENING, I find myself excited to uncover and unleash what lies ahead. I know it might be a painful road, that more earthquakes most certainly lie ahead, and that I have not shed my last tears. However, I guess once you realize that your pain -much like an untreated infection – will ONLY kill you if you do not face it – I embrace the pain as a way of realizing I am entering a new season of my life. One in which I will only become more healthy, more free…and much more the person I was created to be. One in which I will finally come out from underneath the water that distorts my view – one in which I am birthed into a new reality, a new view…one in which I can see clearly now – and not only be fully awake in this reality – but fully participate as well.
I still for some reason am clinging to this notion that I know God is a Just God, a Loving God that does work everything together for the good of those that Love Her/Him. I still have this deep down spark of hope in God that S/He isn’t fully reflected in the Bible…that S/He is still writing Her/His story through all of us.
