amitymamaThe Attachment Parenting Community

Candace · 04-19-2005, 12:27 AM

This is something that has been gnawing at me over the last year or so. I was raised in fundamentalist church where the last thing anyone would EVER acknowledge would be the exisence of a Divine Feminine. It takes a lot of soul-searching to get over ideas that you grow up with, and even though my initial instinct is to cry "blasphemy!" I actually am more and more drawn to the idea of a Divine Feminine. I'm hungry for a mother God who can relate to me (or to whom I can relate) on a feminine level. At the very least, I acknowledge that God must encompass both male and female traits, though it is extremely hard for me to get over God being a "He" and "Father" so maybe there is another face? Some say Mary, others say the Holy Spirit. I know that God could not create females and feminine thoughts, feeling, emotions, etc. without fully being able to understand them. How could you create something of which you had no personal knowledge? So to that extent, God must encompass both male and female, IMO. I have read, also, that the Hebrew texts refer to God with a male word that has a feminine ending (or is it vice versa?) in order to not confine God to the male gender.

Anyone have any good books on the subject? Any beliefs you care to share?

Sabra · 04-19-2005, 07:26 AM

I am honestly not sure. I am still researching it myself. I had honestly not heard before the concept that the Holy Spirit is specifically feminine, but I'm finding some interesting info on that theory.

Here's some online info...

http://www.pantheon.org/articles/s/shekhina.html

Quote:

From the first covenant, Yahweh presented an image of a harsh, daunting God. His character almost demanded the birth of an entity like Shekhina. Also, He could not be seen by human eyes, and only a few prophets heard His voice. Yet almost every religion shows that human nature seeks intimacy with a deity. The manifestation of a loving maternal entity, ready to defend her people even from God Himself, brings a feeling of comfort that a paternal, invisible entity like Yahweh cannot bestow upon His worshipers. Shekhina represented compassion in its purest form, and despite being, officially, the female side of God, she was visible and audible as a feminine entity in her own right. A beautiful being of light, whose most important function was to intercede with God on behalf of her children. Such an entity had to come into being to soften the harshness of the original Judaism.

http://www.wheeloftheyear.com/reference/shekhina.htm

Quote:

The Shekhina (also Shekhinah or Shekina), means in Hebrew "Divine Manifestation," "Divine Presence," "Divine Power," "Glory," and "Grace." (Shekhina is a feminine word in Hebrew.) It is the Talmudic term for the visible and audible manifestation of Deity's presence on Earth. The Shekhina is considered so large that She overshadows the world (i.e., is transcendent), but so small She can dwell in the Temple and in each aspect of creation (i.e., is immanent).

Now, what I am working on myself is a greater understanding of the importance of Biblical female figures, like Mary Magdalene. Peter (I believe it was he) called her "the Apostle of the Apostles" & she wrote a Gospel, but for some reason little details like that failed to make it into "official" Scripture.

The Gospel According to Mary Magdalene

Quote:

8) But if the Savior made her worthy, who are you indeed to reject her? Surely the Savior knows her very well.

9) That is why He loved her more than us.

Here's a page of Prayers to Mary (you have to be sure to look at this in the Catholic way: you're not praying to her instead of God, you're asking her to intercede on your behalf with God).

Quote:

Our Lady Magdalene, holy and complete,
your mysteries are many,
Apostle of the Apostles,
blessed among women,
kindle in me the spark of wisdom
which guides from darkness into light.

More on "Christian Goddesses"

http://northernway.org/goddess.html

Quote:

The Holy Spirit is possibly a Christian Goddess, not a mysterious invisible member of an all-male Trinity "club." Or more provocatively, maybe there is a Feminine Trinity of God-the-Mother (Sophia and Mary?), God-the-Daughter (Mary Magdalene) and Goddess-the-Spirit-Presence (Shekinah, Ruah). The Holy Spirit appears at Yeshua's baptism in the form of a dove. The dove has long been a symbol of the Goddess in the Ancient Near East, and was never used to symbolize any male Being or God.

http://www.spiritbride.com/index1.html

Quote:

ermetic writings from the first century AD reveal that the first century Christians used the symbols of both male and female to express the 'light and the life' within God. In the Aramaic roots of The Lord's Prayer. Jesus's original language, The words Jesus used to address God are "Aboon Debashmaya.(Abwoon d'bwashmaya,)" It means, the birther, the bearer, the breather/bringer of life and light. It means both Mother and Father. Also, Jesus spoke of Wisdom as female; ( Matthew 11:19; Luke 7:35)

Now, this is a pretty mainstream church that offers a Goddess Rosary:
http://www.herchurch.org/id8.html

Quote:

The incarnated Word in Jesus and the scriptures makes clear the certainty that God/dess resides with the oppressed. And so must we. Exclusively male God-language undermines human dignity for woman, and ultimately men as well. The result is a fractured community.

(Now, I don't believe that using the masculine gender for God leads to an oppression of women, as this link seems to think. But hey, they're working with Lutherans here, that's the most mainstream I've come across so far.)

Most of this theology is brand-new to me, honestly. I have always believed God to be above petty concerns like gender. It is true that the masculine pronoun has been used almost exclusively in the history of the Church, but to call this anti-female is a bit of a stretch. While English does have a neuter pronoun (it), we tend to get a bit bent out of shape when anything human is referred to as it. The truth is, throughout most of our history with this language, use of the male pronoun has been understood to include both male and female. That's why mankind includes women as well, and why chairman was once understood to apply just as well to a female chair. Demanding the addition of feminine and/or gender-neutral versions of all these formerly masculine words is a pretty new phenomenon. (But that's the linguist in me speaking, not the theologan.)

A God who is neither male nor female (or who is both at once with deference to neither gender) has always made perfect sense to me. God made Man (there's that masculine-as-inclusive thing again) in His image...but he created them male and female, and that just goes to show that God is either both genders or neither.

jeni · 04-19-2005, 10:39 AM

I am not sure any human can really know God or understand God in any way, but only in the way He reveals himself to us. He did this with Jesus, who called God "Father". This may have been done in part to teach us how to relate to God. But to put any human ideas on God, to me, is just strange because we can only really know what has been revealed. I saw God in the beauty of the sunrise this morning, just as I was begining to feel like Eurydice (sp?) (many friends and family members are very ill). This was a revelation, but neither feminine nor masculine. Does this make any sense?

dreamseeds · 04-19-2005, 05:07 PM

I often feel the same thing Candace. I need a God mother...soemthing that can understand the she in me

I do nto have a good relationship with my bio mother..dont know her real well... so I wondered if that was why I longed for feminine divine.
But as I grow older I wonder if god is both. I cant really explain what I mean.

And I too look at the beauty of nature and feel and see God.
When I looked upon the hills of the ozarks, with a bright blue sky....a huge yellow/red sun, a few clouds dancing in the sky, and lime green new growth upon thousands of old oaks, how could I not sense the divine was right there!

Momof6 · 04-21-2005, 11:40 AM

Candace,

Books:

*When God was a Woman*

*A God Who Looks Like Me*

Those are pretty mild and you may enjoy reading them. There are more radical books out there about the feminine face of Divinity and also on Goddess practice/worship.

I still belong to and am active in a women only spiritual Order. Have been for six years now and that is where I'll get my ordination as a interfaith minister. (if I ever finsih!!! *lol*) It is a very broad group and you will find women of many faiths there, but the common thread is that we all acknowledge the Divine Feminine. There are many links and things to read at the website for free (rather than buying the books above) so here is a link:

http://www.thewhitemoon.com

I personally am in a time of great transition of my belief system. I do firmly believe in a divine feminine but am not going to even try to touch on what form or how this is. I don't know for sure myself anymore to be honest, but I do believe it and it is working out in the church I've been attending. (Episcopal)

When I went through a huge rebellion stage and healing stage in my life after some nasty stuff happening in a church I use to be involved in, I was strictly Goddess in focus. I think I must have needed to do that for a few years (five) to help facilitate my own healing and to open myself up to truly seeking, like I currently am.

I am not sure if any of this made sense. Much of what you will find out there on the Goddess and Goddess worship is very superficial, to be honest. I myself had a difficult time "connecting" when I was Goddess-ONLY in focus.

Michelle

~MamaCharly~ · 05-16-2005, 07:27 AM

Please don't get too upset by this question, but what's all the fuss about having a devine feminine? why does there need to be one? I've always accepted God for what he is and the thought of there being a woman involved in the whole scheme of things has never even popped into my head. There is a reason for everything in this world and God either or not creating a woman to run the world with him is up to him and all part of his devine plan so I don't see a need to question it. Does that make sense?
So I guess my question is, why are people searching for this?

Rebecca · 05-16-2005, 10:10 AM

I'm Pagan, so I have no issue with experiencing the Divine as both masculine as well as feminine. I worship both male Gods and female Goddesses.

anise · 05-16-2005, 02:10 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ~MamaCharly~

Please don't get too upset by this question, but what's all the fuss about having a devine feminine? why does there need to be one? I've always accepted God for what he is and the thought of there being a woman involved in the whole scheme of things has never even popped into my head. There is a reason for everything in this world and God either or not creating a woman to run the world with him is up to him and all part of his devine plan so I don't see a need to question it. Does that make sense?
So I guess my question is, why are people searching for this?

Because whenever God is presented as either one gender or the other, God becomes becomes little more than our projections about the gender, only extremely amplified. If God is presented as solely masculine or solely feminine, then we simltaneously deify masculine or feminine aspects, the result of which is fairly debilitating. A male god elevates above all else maleness. A female god elevates above all else femaleness. It also encourages polarization in thought and philosophy. A God encompassing male and female encourages more holistic theology.

So the issue isn't really the need fo ra divine feminine so much as it is, in my opinion, the need for the degenderization (i think i just made up a word) of God. Rid God of necessarily masculine or feminine traits and you amplify the mystery of God and at the same time you neither glorify nor profane males nor females. The recognition of God as something beyond gender would push mainstream religion a long way towards breaking down the barrriers that traditionally patriarchal society has put in place.

Empathic~Heart · 05-20-2005, 03:31 AM

Goddesses in Every Woman by Bolen and The Feminine Face of God by Anderson & Hopkins are also good reads.

LovelyMama · 05-21-2005, 10:15 PM

God is a completer. He is so much more than masculine or feminine. Look to scripture and you'll see he portrays the characteristics of a loving father, a nuturing mother and a passionate spouse. Why else do (otherwise homophobic) men write love songs about Him?

dreamseeds · 05-22-2005, 01:38 AM

One thing I must say as I read this thread is that most people are stuck on God being ~HE~

I refer to God and He too, my father is how I see it becuase that is what I ahve been taught all my life.. But in all honesty, God has to be more than just HE because there are SHE's.

Nobody could truly prove God is Male. No one has seen God. Basically it is beleived By Faith.

As a Christian who has studied things, mostly by observing the past few years, I feel strongly that patriachy AND matriarchy are both unhealthy.

There has to be a balance in God...The God surely must encompass everything and understand every aspect of feminine and masculine. My theory of the day

Candace · 05-22-2005, 08:46 PM

Charlotte, don't worry. It's not upsetting. I love being able to discuss this stuff.

I never used to need a Feminine face on the Divine. I was happy acctepting things as I'd been raised and never going deeper. But now I'm at a point in my life where I'm looking to deepen my spiritual understanding and connect on another level with God, and I find that I just cannot do that when God is only HE. Part of this is because, as a human, I have only human experiences of men, and in my expereince, men will NEVER be able to think like women. As much as I love my dh, and as much as he is my best friend in the whole world, there are some ways in which only women can connect. (I'm sure there are other ways in which only men can connect, but that's not my issue.

) I want to connect with God in an "all of me" sort of way and to feel that God can understand me as a woman, and with my human experiences of men, that's just not possible. So I'm exploring the Feminine face of God to help ME understand God better, and to help myself feel that God really can understand me coming from a woman's standpoint.

If you know the God of the Bible, you pretty much get just a stern father POV on "Him," and there's also a "women are just bystanders" mentality presented, not by God, but by the male writers through whom God's words were filtered at the time of writing. So it can be really hard to feel like I can relate to God in any way without some kind of Feminine aspect to which I can relate. I'm not saying I don't need the male part of God. I will always need the caring "Daddy" aspect of God, too. But I'm finding these days that I need the mother part of God as well.

Thanks, everyone, for your recommendations! I'll check them out!!

norasmama · 05-22-2005, 08:54 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by anise

Rid God of necessarily masculine or feminine traits and you amplify the mystery of God and at the same time you neither glorify nor profane males nor females. The recognition of God as something beyond gender would push mainstream religion a long way towards breaking down the barrriers that traditionally patriarchal society has put in place.

Once again, Anise has already made my point.

God with any human traits, IMO, is much less "powerful."

Natalia · 05-29-2005, 12:46 AM

Why are we searching for this (divine feminie)? Because we are searching for wholeness, for better understanding, for a (new? beter?) way to relate to God.

God is beyond our comprehension. So we create ways to connect.

>Mary as the Mother of All
>
>"Mary is increasingly being recognized, not merely as the Mother of
>God or as supreme intercessor between humankind and the Father, but as
>the Divine Mother herself, with the full powers of the Divine Mother.
>What my long journey into the sacred feminine has taught me and what
>my own inner experience of the grace of Mary, has confirmed in me is
>that Mary is the Mother of the universe, the divine and human mother
>of us all. I believe that until the full majesty and grandeur of
>Mary's presence in the Christian realization is understood and
>embraced, the full force of the Christian vision of Love-in-Action
>cannot be released....
>
>All of the powers of all the world's Mothers--Tara, Durga, and Kali,
>of the Tao--are in Mary. She has Tara's sublime protectiveness
>towards all creation; Durga's (the Fortress's) inaccessible, silent
>face, the grandeur and terribleness of Kali; the infinite awareness of
>balance of the Tao.... We have a complete image of the Divine
>Feminine, an image at once transcendent and immanent, otherworldly,
>mystical and practical.
>
>It in this full and complete Mary that seekers of all kinds are
>turning to at this late and terrible moment to help transform their
>own lives and the world itself into a living mirror of the Love and
>Justice of the Mother."
>
>Andrew Harvey and Eryk Hanut Mary's Vineyard: Daily Meditation,
>Readings and Revelations

Natalia

Astoria · 06-15-2005, 11:53 PM

I'm a Christian. I used to not worry about this at all. Though when I first became a Christian I heard a sermon by a pastor who mentioned that God is obviously not gendered but transcends gender and is the author and creator of both genders and that "man and woman, he made them in his image" (in the Hebrew there are not gendered "he" pronouns in that verse either by the way). So I always believed that, but I knew that we all tend to think of Yahweh as male. El Shaddai has a female ending by the way and literally means god of the mountain or god of breasts (used something like 371 times in the Old Testament to refer to God). Ruah (spelling) is the Hebrew word for Holy Spirit in the Old Testament its a female word. Wisdom (Sophia) is personified in the Old Testament as either God or the first-born daughter of God, clearly female, associated with the Word and later, in the New Testament, the incarnate Christ. Anyhow, back to my story, when I was pregnant with my second son at a really difficult time in my life, I felt so mad at God for putting me through the pregnancy, I felt really dependent and vulnerable like I was about to loose everything and was afraid of what would happen to me, my one year old and this new baby. I had nearly died in childbirth with my first and I was terrified of having another birth. Basically I was so mad at God and desperate. It never dawned on me in that time that God was really anything other than fully male. God was like my husband, uncaring, unconnected to labor birth, motherhood, the desperate need to protect my children, the feelings of having a being inside my body that I was ambivalent about. After he was born a lot of things fell apart, it was a very dark time. Later I felt deep love and consolation in God and felt deeply and truly that God was the God of my womb, of nursing, of childbirth, of my female soul, the author of it all, the One who knit together that child in my womb, the One who made my body and made me female in the first place, I was derived from God and God was truly and utterly my Mother and totally fully female in the same ways as male, which is to say, neither really, but both. I thought, oh wow, if someone, anyone, could have just told me I was allowed to pray to my Mother God, I could have had so much consolation adn comfort in that pregnancy -- if God could have been a part of that, instead on a non-understanding male presence for me in that time, it would have changed everything. I've never looked back. I read Dance of the Dissident Daughter soon after. I'm still a Christian and still believe the Bible is central to my faith, Sue Monk Kidd, the author, is a Southern Baptist who ends up leaving Christianity to follow a goddess-spiritual path. That's really foreign and uncomfortable to me, but the book was still so helpful and wonderful. She just gets you thinking about what it all means. I'd definitely recommend that book to anyone who wants to think through the Divine Feminine, even if you are uncomfortable about where it led her.

Astoria