Coffee and Mama God — God Is Better Than We Think She Is, Part 4
Where does femininity come from, if not from God?
By Anni Ponder
“Until God can be pictured, imagined, preached, taught, and honored as Mother and as She, we will be leaving out a crucial aspect of the Divine, limiting the holy mystery, and contributing to a society in which women and girls are seen as less than. Feminine God-language is liberating for us all.”
Let’s say you and I made a plan to continue our conversation from a few blogs ago (here, here, and here). Maybe we’d meet up for a hot beverage in a cozy cafe on a drizzly afternoon. By now we’re getting to know one another, and we are perhaps finding some points of symmetry, as well as the inevitable differing perspectives that make us unique. Likely, we will discover, this is because we have different genetics, histories, and value systems. It would make sense that given these variances, we have come to different conclusions about many things.
By this point in our developing friendship, you’ll be well aware of my love for Jesus, my frustration and disappointment with so much of Christianity, and my passion for the femininity of the Holy Spirit. And I’ll be learning about the things that drive and enliven you, so no doubt we’ll have a lot to explore together.
As we take our first sips, I might ask you how you feel about addressing God as Mother. Chances are, you’ve been expecting this, since I usually find a way to work Her into almost every encounter I have these days.
Let’s assume, for the sake of this imagined exchange, that you come from a background of traditional Christianity.
“Well,” perhaps you will reply, “I don’t know. For one thing, the Bible has always held that God is our Father. It seems so odd—heretical, even—to think of God as Mother.”
“Ah, yes,” I would say. “I used to think so also. I grew up revering God as my Father, and Jesus as my Brother. Then there was this Holy Spirit, whom I never really understood. We always used masculine pronouns when discussing the Spirit, so I just assumed He was another male part of the Trinity. You know, lots of ‘The Spirit will speak to you in His own way,’ etc. But then I wondered about the feminine references to the Spirit, both in the original gendered language referring to Her, and also in the many metaphors about Her, and things changed for me. I now see Her so clearly as my Mother, and I feel so much more aligned with who I am and who God is. It has made everything better.”
“But, didn’t Jesus just talk about His Father?” you might press. “Where are the references to God’s femininity you’re talking about?”
I’d stir my coffee a minute while gathering my thoughts. I could give you a list of resources on the topic, but for me, information isn’t all that transformative—at least, not at first. What really opens me up is asking questions. So that’s where I would probably start.
“How about this? Let me ask you something, and if you still want some evidence about God’s femininity, I’ll point you to some resources.”
If you’ve read the Bible much, this might remind you of how Jesus often answers questions with questions of His own, and now I bet you’re thinking I’m trying to be sneaky like Him. I’ll take that as a compliment.
“OK, fire away.” I can see you’re sort of intrigued, but ready to remind me about the infallibility and inerrancy of Scripture if I get too far out of my lane.
“Have you ever known a father to birth a child? In nature, I mean.”
You might furrow your brow. “Well . . . no, but . . .”
“Hang on. Never, as far as you’re aware, has a male ever creature given birth? Not in the history of Earth?”
I’m sure you know right where I’m headed. “Well, no, but God is above our nature,” you’ll likely point out. “God isn’t bound by our experience.”
“Agreed,” I’ll say. “Probably everything we believe about God is only a small glimpse of reality. How could we possibly conceive of the totality of a Perfect Being outside of time?”
“Right. But Jesus talked about His Father and the Spirit in masculine terms. So we have that to guide us.”
"Well, let’s stay with the question of birth for a minute. It seems if Jesus uses the Father metaphor, we should press in. What I’m wondering is, since our experience of bringing children into the world is that it always requires a father and mother, then who is Jesus’ Mother?”
“Have you forgotten about Mary?” you might ask.
“No, certainly not. Mary plays a crucial role in bringing Jesus to life here on Earth. But Christian thought holds that Jesus existed as God’s Son long before Genesis. Remember how the book of John starts out?”
I’m sure you’ll know the text: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” I could also point to the most quoted verse of all, John 3:16, about Jesus as God’s only begotten Son.
If we’re not careful, we could get sidelined here into a theological word-study. But that’s not really my jam, so at some point I’d bring it back to the question. “So then, if God the Father begat Jesus, where is the Mother? Fathers don’t beget without mothers.”
You might squint at me. “Well, God doesn’t need to follow the laws of our nature. He transcends nature.”
“Maybe,” I’d say. “But there’s that point in the creation poem in Genesis about God making us, male and female, in God’s image. Doesn’t that make you wonder? I mean, if God made us in God’s image and we all turned out male, then that would be one thing. But femininity, it turns out, is derived from God just as much as masculinity. We really can’t have one without the other.”
“So, then . . . you’re implying that the Holy Spirit is the Mother? That seems like such a theological stretch.”
“I know, like I said earlier, that seemed way out there to me at first. But the longer I’ve looked at it, the more I’ve realized I have a lot to learn.”
Right here, I’d probably ask if you’d be interested in a podcast I recently created where I share my journey learning about Mama God, the Holy Spirit. I might also point you to blogs 1, 2, and 3 in this series, where I offer a lot of resources that helped me find my way to God my Mother. Or if you’d rather start with someone else’s work, I’d point you to Daneen Akers’ article “God in Feminine Form.”
“One more question,” I’d say as we stand up to bus our table. “Why couldn’t the Spirit be feminine? What inherently prohibits femininity from the Godhead?”
Perhaps you’d shake your head and tell me I’m a heretic. But maybe, just maybe, you’d give that question some more thought and ask if we could meet up again in a few weeks.
“One hundred percent, yes,” I’d say, holding the door for you. “I can hardly wait.”
