Kirkepiscatoid

Today’s readings are about female images of God and the repression of them in conventional Christianity. She postulates that suppressing female images of God is like suppressing half of God’s creation.

Reflection questions:

1. Meditate on how God celebrates differences in creation.

Well, the biggest thing I realize is that there are at least 70some ways in Hebrew, in the Old Testament, to describe or name God. Some of these are masculine, some feminine, some neuter. I believe there has always been a sense among people that God is both genderless and of all genders. However, societies tend to muck with this in their traditions and in how their rules of grammar work.

However, when you examine God’s creation, you realize it would not exist without the inclusiveness that both sexes in nature have to offer. It also becomes evident that so much of what we deem “masculine” or “feminine” in society has far less to do with biology than we’d like to believe. I have a feeling God worries far less about sex and gender than we do, because we are born a particular sex and dance through the intricacies of our own gender identities and sexual preferences. God, being all and neither at the same time, probably just doesn’t give a rip.

2. Write about the ways females and the feminine have been suppressed in your own life; in societies, religions, and nations.

This is tricky. I work in what still might be traditionally considered “a man’s world” because traits that we still mostly consider “masculine” are the “success traits” in my line of work, yet the ultimate job of my work (healing and health) are more “feminine” traits. To be really committed to a healing profession requires one to embrace the masculine “do something” notion of “healing someone” yet it also requires the female trait of “nurturing.” So we get so many mixed messages in my profession and I get many in my head.

Also, we all struggle with our own personal gender baggage. Mine is that I must have been hiding behind the barn smoking a corn silk cigarette when all the superficial traits of “traditional femininity” were being handed out. That has caused me to be marginalized by both men and women at times, but it really hurts when men do it. Men who “get to know me”, I think, learn that a huge nurturing heart beats in my chest, but it’s just not obvious on the surface and it’s just not packaged in a “sugar and spice” package.

But that feeling of marginalization is very very hard at times. I have always had a lot of male friends and have had good and close relationships with them, but even they, once in a while, can break my heart like that, because they are so used to interacting with me at one level they sort of forget that even the toughest of women, once in a while, needs to be nurtured like she’s a scared little girl. One of my best friends from about 20 years ago used to be just plain awful in his obliviousness about that, and he used to cut me to the quick over how he would be so gullible about “traditional feminine wiles” and my heart could be breaking over something and he was dumber than a rock over my distress because it wasn’t in a “sweet little package!” I can mostly laugh about it now, but I sure hate to think of all the tears I shed over his sorry oblivious ass when we weren’t even a romantic item!

Because it happens with human men, and we have this tendency to think of God as male even when we know “it ain’t exactly so,” it can make me feel that God could marginalize me in the same way. That is a thing I often have to overcome when I feel separated from God. In my most separated feelings from God, I feel like God is treating me like the ugly little fat girl who can’t get a date. This is odd, because I’m neither ugly nor fat, never have been, but I pick up on that level of pain and marginalization. It’s that feeling of “being picked last on the playground” with a gender twist added! I realize that is MY brain working overtime, not anything God is doing, but it’s funny how we can twist that stuff around.

This marginalization also occurs in the female sides of spirituality, also. God, in the bulk of American Christian mindsets, is decidedly male. We use “he” to talk about him. Even if we don’t really believe God is a “he” we are still forced to use “he” b/c of grammar rules and the common mindset. In moving from Hebrew to Greek to Latin we often took the female words for God and “neutered” them.

Some people like to use Paul’s letters as “proof” that women are not to lead in the church. Many conservative theologies limit the roles of women in religion. But the hardest thing for me to put up with is that 50% of humankind has to try to come to grips with God in the middle of the mindset that God is not the same gender as them. It puts up a wall at times to have a “total connection.” As we say in rural Missouri, “That just ain’t right.”

3. Contemplate your “degree of commitment to the emergence of feminist spirituality.”

I think the bulk of my commitment has been to be strongly aware of the sides of God that are expressed by female Hebrew words, like Shekinah, and Ruach. The part of God that resides in holy objects and the part of God that blows as the “divine wind” (the Holy Spirit?) I have spent the last two years getting more in touch with that side, which helps me realize the “paternal side of God” as we see God in society is mostly illusion...just as our own gender role expectations are mostly illusion. This has been a good help for me, because I could not become close to a paternal notion of God. Because I don’t know what a “loving father” is supposed to be like, identifying with that part of God is next to impossible. I am glad I have 70some or more notions of God to mix and match to see “one I can understand, and be drawn to in love!”