My answer at the time was: Do I think God is a woman? No. And Yes, I believe God has feminine aspects we don't recognize in our patriarcal language. While that was a truthful answer, it goes much deeper than that. I was brought up on the standard King James Version of the Bible. It's beautiful and poetic language. There are many psalms that I still prefer in that language..."I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills... The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want...", etc. But the language is basically masculine when we speak of God: Lord, King, His imperial Rule.
Inclusive language in worship is a huge issue for some of us. While it really isn't that huge for me, I do know that God is bigger than that... and sadly, we have no suitable pronouns in English to describe Him (Her). "It" (which is neutral) certainly doesn't cut it; God is not a thing. In fact if I get right down to it, for me God is a verb... always moving, transforming, creating, encompassing, loving, compelling... a force so powerful and integral to my being that I sometimes forget Him/Her/It on a conscious level. Like breathing. Without breath I would die. Yet I don't think about breathing much of the time. When I do slow down enough to concentrate on my breathing (during meditation or in moments of crisis) I am grounded by it. Grounded in my physical body, grounded to the physical world I inhabit, yet linked inextricably to the spiritual dimension in which I encounter God. In those encounters I "get" (understand, know) the force that surrounds me, fills me, protects me, upholds me, in ways too large and too small to describe in words.
That's the trouble with pronouns.
3 comments:
In honor of your "rowdier" side, may I just say that I thought that post was fan-freakin'-tastic?
I don't care if God is a boy or a girl or both - but God as a VERB??? Oh be still my heart!!!
Thank you so much for this posting. Some of my friends and I have encountered huge opposition (and thus, enormous ongoing missing-of-the-spiritual-point)to our choice to refer to ultimate Divinity by way of the word God. Especially those of us who are female and, by some standards, apparently ought to 'know better'.
I, particularly, take heat since I'm not a practicing Christian. People ask me all the time why a buddhist would talk about "God."
Naturally, the perfect buddhist response to that is: what ELSE is there to talk about? I tweak at the patriarchal "godhead" sometimes by writing god/dess in lower case but in convo, prayers and lectures or poetry, it's always capital G-o-d. That's what feels right and resonates the most profoundly.
I'm so glad I know about you and this blog and that you're 'out there somewhere' talkin' and walkin' it.
Rock on, Sr. CLaire....ROCK ON!!!!
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