What is it, to be a feminine soul in search of a God who is ever painted as male? Who is strong, bearded, muscular? Who, if He had a body, would never know a monthly moon cycle, the sensation of a suckling child, the fear of the tall stranger?
What is it, to be a girl in a church where your gender is silenced? Where you are instructed to “keep still,” to “get to the kitchen,” to “tend to the nursery,” when what you really ache to do is speak truth as you comprehend it? Sometimes trivial, other times profound. But words yet to be spoken that must be muffled? The silent dictate may be circumvented with an anonymous pen, or perhaps by credited words read aloud by an accommodating man.
What is it to be a woman who discovers that she most often meets the Divine One not within brick-and-mortar walls constructed by men, but among the trees of the forest, the sands near the ocean, the waters of the lake? Who knows God intimately in music?
What is it to know deeply in the turbulent center of a woman’s body that the Divine One is feminine as much as masculine? That God is Goddess. Father and Mother. Sun and Moon. Birth. Death. And yet to know no safe place to speak it. Not as a child. Not as an adolescent. Not as a young mother, nor as a fresh grandmother. No, instead to understand that there are and have ever been men who hold the keys to the kingdom, women who must allow it, and generation upon generation of girls tucked into the shadows underneath the wings of their oppressors.
For that is what it is. Oppression. Perhaps stemming from a place of genuine belief that God’s will is understood. Perhaps not. The oppression may be violent, greedy, loud. But more often, it is masked in the smiles and benign pats on the back of church elders, pastors, deacons, Sunday School teachers. The oppression may even be gentle, cloaked in the deep and true love of husband, father.
Unless… unless a woman breaks free. She must speak the truth she knows, the verity. The revelation. She may be reprimanded, shunned, put back in her place; destined to feel incomplete and imbalanced in her relationship to the people of The Way and the God they allow.
But if she is blessed, Oh the Joy! Those around her, including the men, will welcome the truth and discover within it a freedom. The chance to understand a Divine One who is incredibly complex and yet miraculously simple.
Inexplicable.
Wondrous.
Father. Brother
Mother. Sister.
Heaven.
Here’s a more informative approach to the concept of God as feminine:
https://globaltheology.org/biblical-maternal-images-for-god/
Kimberly Bryant, MA 