Episode 5 - Carol Lynn Pearson and the Inevitability of Partnership

Beloved author, poet, playwright, and activist Carol Lynn Pearson talks about moving from the “rocky plains of patriarchy into the promised land of partnership” and revering Mother God as well as the Father and Jesus.

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Transcript

Hello! Welcome to Barely Christian, Fully Christian. This is Anni Ponder. This podcast explores loving Jesus being repulsed by much of Christianity and relating to the Holy Spirit as the divine feminine, or as I prefer to call Her, Mama God.

Today I welcome the beloved author, poet, playwright, and activist, Carol Lynn Pearson, to talk about the inevitability of partnership and our incontrovertible Mother God. Welcome. Hello, Carol Lynn Pearson.

Welcome. Hello to you, Anni. Wonderful to see you, to meet you, to be with you, to talk with you, to walk with you. Let's go. All of the above. Absolutely. I'm just so, so thankful you're here. Well, just so anybody listening or reading can get a little bit of information about who you are, in case there's someone who doesn't know about you.

I don't know. Maybe just a couple of people left on this planet. Let me read your bio here. This is Carol Lynn Pearson, prize -winning author, playwright, performer, speaker. She began her writing career with a book of poetry, Beginnings, which ultimately sold over 125 ,000 copies.

One of her best -known books is Goodbye I Love You, the story of her marriage to a gay man, their four children, divorce, ongoing friendship, and her caring for him in her home as he died of AIDS. This work put her on the Oprah Winfrey show and Good Morning America, with a feature in People magazine.

A one -woman play she wrote and performed over 300 times, Mother Wove the Morning, dramatizes the story of 16 women throughout history in search of the female face of God. The play received an award from booklist as one of the top 25 videos of the year.

A recent book is Finding Mother God, Poems to Heal the World, which by the way, that's the book that introduced me to this wonderful woman. She is also the author of six holiday books, notably A Stranger for Christmas, which I have on order by the way.

A lifelong study of consciousness, spirituality, and synchronicity led Carol Lynn to write such works as Embracing Coincidence, The Lesson, and now, The Love Map, Saving Your Relationship and Incidentally, Saving the World.

She has a Master of Arts in Theater, is the mother of four grown children, and lives in Walnut Creek, California. Learn more about her at carollynpearson .com Carol Lynn, welcome, as I told you, I think this intro just barely scratches the surface and you know I would have you venerated as a saint, the matron saint of all those with hard questions and a desire to live authentically and love with their whole hearts.

And so, yeah, we're just going to leave it at that. There's more to say, but welcome, welcome. I'm so glad you're here. You are way too good to me, Anni, but we're supposed to be good. Oh, I can't fault you too much.

Okay. Okay, okay. Fair enough. I'm sure that your own work, I think you're going to be doing some magnificent things here. Well, I am hoping to continue what you have begun as and you're not even done.

And so let's just start right there with your latest project. You want to talk about Diary of a Mormon Feminist. Oh. Oh, you want me to just introduce that? Yes, however you would like to share what that work is all about because it gives a segue into what I really want to talk about today, which is Mother God.

Well, you see, I became addicted to diary keeping when I was a senior in high school and that was back, are you sitting down in 1956. And I just have a box of all of these handwritten diaries because that was the place for me to put my thoughts, a place to put my words.

So I just was so devoted to doing that. And I think it was useful to me ultimately in so, so many, many ways. But there's really hardly anything significant that has happened to me or anything major that I've thought about that is not recorded in those books.

And of course, I switched over. to typewriting because it takes such a long time to write out in longhand. So I have these thousands and thousands of pages that I thought, oh, after I die, there will be some historian, some dusty historian that I might want to see you about.

Because I recorded a bunch of interesting stuff religiously, of course, in my own life. But it occurred to me last year, maybe, wow, maybe, maybe I should be the one to do that. And so I felt really called to do that.

So I have been skimming through all of the diaries. And I had just a book in mind, but it's becoming larger than that. I don't know what it'll be. a multi -volume thing or maybe just an archival piece that will be available somewhere.

I don't know at any rate. The title of it is The Diary of a Mormon Feminist Subtitle, My 65 -Year Frontline Mission to Convert Patriarchy to Partnership. I'm just so excited about, you know, I can't make myself get up from my desk.

I just think, oh, let me just do another 20 minutes and because it is so fascinating to me. And so anyway, that's that. You take it from there. Well, that's that. And that's a great introduction. And I have been so delighted you've invited me to be a fly on the wall as you're writing this and listen in from a perspective not being a member of the, you prefer the title Latter -day Saints today, right?

Although you call it Mormon in the book because that's what... All three at the time that I was writing it, you know, if everybody knew this as the Mormon Church, in the last couple of years, there's been a strong emphasis to try to change this in people's perception and in that of the members to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter -day Saints.

Okay, right. Thank you. So we'll try to stick with that. I like to know what people and entities like to be called. So, but as somebody not from that faith listening in and occasionally offering insights, I have been so delighted to go along with you and your journey.

And right now, what is it? We're up to 1994, I think. We just finished 1994. Whoa. Whoa. And what a journey I am. witnessing. It has been thus far and I am sure it will not disappoint as you continue to unfold the next steps.

You talk and write and speak and live. The search for partnership, the divine partnership, instead of the the dominator model and borrowing language here from, is it Ryan Eisler of the chalice in the play.

She's famous for using that language. Yes, yes, and I've learned about her through you and so I've read her works and I understand you've met her and YouTube had some conversation. Yes, she came to see my play.

That's right, she did. First international partnership conference on Crete. So yes, Ryan is one of the... Yes. Yeah. Absolutely, that's right. I'm remembering that now. And so what her work has been about is certainly very parallel to what your work is about, which is helping the world rebalance in partnership instead of Dominator Model.

Is that a good summary, would you say? Does that hit the mark? Yes. Yes. And you're doing this from your corner of the world and the light that you have shined so far, reaches all the way around the globe as far as I know.

So I'm just really thrilled that you're there doing that work. And so what I've written that I really want to get to in this conversation is, overall, the 30 ,000 -foot view, can you summarize for us what happens when the feminine and let the listener understand we're not really talking about biology here.

We're talking about the grander themes here, femininity and masculinity. So what happens when the feminine comes into equal partnership in power and worth and regard? What do we see in the world, in our own lives, in our relationships, when there is that partnership balance instead of the Dominator Model?

Well, we sort of have to conjecture. We have certain things in history that point to what it should feel like and what it does look like. And at the very beginning, of course, the human race viewed whatever deity there was as female because that's what they saw.

They saw women bearing life. So of course, the great bearer of life is female. And then there came, you know, really the patriarchal overthrow. And boy, I remember, and I have this little place in my diary, I was at the Jerusalem Museum when the director pointed out an artifact under glass thing.

And this is the remnant of the the divine mother. And this is why the Old Testament is so hard against women to replace the female deity with the male deity. And that's one of the first things that just really seared into my mind.

And then, you know, for centuries, of course, we have the patriarch, often at its worst possible permutation. of all of the horrors, all of the wars, all the witch burnings. And then started the women's movement way back a few, a couple of centuries ago.

Things started to move. And so here we are now not having, not really having an idyllic picture of what used to be the weekend reclaim. Because I think it hasn't happened quite yet. We have seen, and in Inrian's book she talks about a partnership society that for a time seemed to be evidenced on Crete, where the graves were equally honored and men and women together participating in civilization.

But we don't, we're the ones who have to create what it's going to look like when we have real partnership. And all I know for sure, listen, I'm not sure what it will look like, but I know truly what it will feel like.

It will feel like little girls growing up, not ever having the question, why are boys more important than girls? We'll go to church, never with the question, how can we worship, how come God is just a man, a man?

And of course, as Catholic theologian Mary Daly famously said, if God is male, then the male is God. See, when we get to wherever we're going, that will be part of history. And in my mind we won't, men and women won't necessarily do the same kinds of things and do them equally.

We will bring our best gifts to the table. If there are gifts that do have kind of a masculine ring to them, and I'm not against that. And if there are gifts that have more of a feminine touch to them, I hope we don't erase gender altogether.

I really do. So what I'm looking toward ultimately in a partnership society is that all of us together bring our best gifts. And gender is no longer a criterion as to whose gifts are most valued. You know, that's a very important point of distinction, I think, that I end up needing to clarify in many conversations.

people ask, okay, so are you just saying that that means that there is no such thing as gender or that men and women can, you know, are you trying to say that women can do everything that men can do?

And so I've needed to say, well, that's not what we're asking for. Also, clarifying, we're not asking for matriarchy where the women are the more superior or authoritative beings. We're asking for partnership where everybody's gifts are welcome at the table.

Not that I can do everything that my husband can do or some such thing like that, but that we are equal in worth and power, that we get the same sway, that we are regarded as equally important. Right.

And, Anni, can we even just begin to imagine what today's world would look like if women had a seat at the table where all major decisions are being made? What would the Middle East look like at this moment?

We can only imagine. Yes. But it could not look any worse. You know, the worst of matriarchy is so horrendous. We can hardly even speak of it. We can hardly even. And that's what I've been thinking about so much lately.

We have got to find our way back to balance and harmony and invite in the feminine in all forms. Right. Or we're just going to destroy our whole selves, our planet, our selves, everyone. Right. One question.

Go ahead. I mentioned it as you did about destroying our planet. There's nothing to the fact that we have, you know, when we call it Mother Earth, it sort of presents itself as a positive compliment to the Earth.

earth. But in another way, men have, and mostly men, have utilized the earth as their object. They have objectified the earth. As often women are objectified. It's there for their use. Right. You even hear terms about raping the earth, just taking all of the resources out of the soil and not replenishing and not going about it in a sustainable way.

Yeah. That's really where, that's what's gotten us to the place we're in. I was thinking about, and I want to have you read some of your poems that so artfully describe what we're talking about. As I was thinking about how you're right, we can only conjecture, we can only imagine what it looks like for that.

for the feminine to come fully into view here and now and what that will do for our world. But you pointed out in our mother in the movies, you made this beautiful point about the absence of the feminine and what happens to imbalanced patriarchy when she walks on the stage and comes in with her gifts to offer.

Would you read from our mother in the movies? It's right there on page 28. Oh, I love that. You know, this is one of the longer narrative poems here, but I think it does really tell the story. Yes. Of the story.

Yes, absolutely. Our mother in the movies. Surely you must have noticed in Disney movies along with the catchy songs all the dead mothers, mother of Ariel killed by pirates, mother of Bambi shot by hunter, mother of Belle died from plague, mother of Nemo eaten by barracuda, mother of Charzan killed by leopard, mother of Quasimodo killed protecting her son, mother of Cinderella dead, mother of Pocahontas dead, mother of Snow White dead.

Suspicious, don't you think? There's such a stunningly high rate of maternal mortality in one subdivision. It cries out for an investigation, which is why I did one and here are my findings. We are the guilty party.

You and I and our ancestors way back before a camera was even a flash in someone's dream. The storyteller of the tribe is a medicine man to our psyches and knows the substratotism terrors and our needs and draws them into words.

And sometimes if we are lucky, brings remedies. As in this case, the tale of the missing mother and the miserable patriarchal family. Here we are in the dark, popcorn in hand, gathered before the large and flickering fire we call a screen, ready for a brilliant show and tell.

Actually, two stories to tell today, the better to demonstrate, my dear, this pandemic malady of ours on a split screen, which you can do because this is the movies and which I can do because this is a poem.

Shhh, act one, the motherless house. Shhh. Screen one. Captain Von Trapp. Military man Austria keeps order with whistle. Mother dead. Seven children. Good little soldiers. Sad. Sad. Sad. Screen two. Mr.

Banks. Agent of Fidelity Fiduciary, Lord of his castle. Mother out marching for votes for women. Two children. Jane and Michael. Sad. Sad. Sad. What can help? But heaven. And heaven opens. Excuse me.

Holy name of Maria. Sent by God and the mother Abbas to set the family right. And simultaneously. Down from the London sky by umbrella comes the woman of magic with the holy name of Mary sent by God and the East wind to set the family right.

I know. For a minute there I was believing that Julie Andrews was actually our heavenly mother. But no, just one of her beautiful daughters who got two fabulous roles. Act two. The woman turns things upside down.

The Von Trapp children climb trees. Verily the tree of life and warmth and music return to the home and a smile to the lips of the captain. How do you solve the problem like the goddess? You marry her in a great grand cathedral blessed by nuns and bring healing to the family, mortal and divine.

And she fortifies the captain in his courage to say no to the fatherland, no to the motherless house, to the ultra patriarchal brown shirt, Nazis. And simultaneously, Poppins unleashes her magic, a lullaby, a spoonful of sugar, and a trip to make -believe where we levitate and love to laugh and step in time with chimney sweeps and see that every day and in every way.

And we want to feed the birds with our tuppence rather than invest it in incorporations, amalgamations of the highly patriarchal fidelity fiduciary bank. Act three. The healed family rises. And now in this dark theater we celebrate as we see our way, feel our way with the family Vantrap, stumbling and rising, climbing, climbing the high green mountain up, up, closer, ever closer to heaven.

And look, the bank's family, flying the kite repaired by father's own hands and trailing in mother's votes for women banner, useless now, except as a tale to stabilize the kite as it rises up, up into the blue and white sky.

And our communal psyche stirred by the storyteller of the tribe, whispers to the full theater, yes, yes, something holy just happened here. Holiness and holiness happened here. And that's true, you know, that is.

So true. I just have full body chills and goosebumps every time I hear your voice with your poems, but that one particularly speaks to me. Just being witness to these stories that we've long loved, but maybe not realized what they were really here to show us.

Maybe some of us didn't pick that up until now. Yeah. The man without the woman, the male without the female, the God without the goddess, is just wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. Wrong. Yes. So I have another question.

As I'm learning to have these conversations with folks who come from different perspectives and maybe don't agree with me about the need for the feminine, or maybe haven't come to that conclusion. yet something I'm learning to do is to highlight first of all before we get into where we see the real problem is to celebrate what progress has been made so far.

And so I would love to hear from you having the the vantage point that I do reading your diary literally reading your diary from the from the time you start sharing until uh well who knows where maybe it will come up to a present day by the time you're all done.

What progress have you seen in your lifetime? What good things have changed that have allowed more space for the divine feminine so far? Oh whoa well you know out in the world of course we have seen doors opening for women that have not happened before and we see a variety of of religions trying to find some place for the concept of a mother god you know each is doing it sort of on their own terms but there are there are a lot of religious organizations you know and not not just the pagans that you know that worship that totally the female but ordinary religions that find language to bring in the concept of the feminine divine.

Now extraordinarily patriarchal religions like perhaps Catholicism and Mormonism. are not quick to do this. And I'm pleased to see the little steps that I see in the news of the Catholic Church, of the Pope saying, you know, we're going to do this, we're having a council about this, we're creating this thing, specifically to invite the women down here at the bottom to participate more.

And I remember one place in my diary I wrote and the Catholic women are now allowed to assist, I think, with the sacrament. There was something very much like that. Now, as you can guess in my own religion, there's a lot.

You know, see, down here at the bottom, I know plenty of marriages of good people in my church where there is excellent partnership, excellent reverencing of the wife as well as the husband. But organizationally, there has not been very much that has happened.

And in terms of what we're speaking about here of the mother God, see, there's this odd thing in Mormonism that the founder of the church, Joseph Smith, spoke of their being not only a father, but a mother in heaven.

How could there be a father, he said, without there being a mother? So that seed was planted and that seed developed in some ways so that there was more and more hunger for that. And in the last few decades, there have been a lot of movement down here at the bottom of women like me writing poems, women like me doing that play Mother of the Morning, looking at the whole history.

But there also is a movement opposite to make sure that the construct of the patriarchy, as it is now constituted, there are no inroads coming into that. And certainly that's a theme that you explore.

in your diary and then in the notes about it, what you have come up against personally and also corporately within your faith, this sort of stranglehold that we find across the globe, unfortunately. And I would agree that we have seen in the last, well, I'm not a historian, but certainly over the course of my lifetime, we've seen progress in many areas.

I think you mentioned this in one poem. I remember the line, women now put men behind bars for things that used to be male privilege. I think I'm messing that up. Do you remember which one I'm talking about?

I know the line. Yeah. Yeah. So certainly there has been progress, perhaps more in the secular world than within some faith communities. Would you think that's accurate? I would say that that is accurate.

Yeah, and we have a long way to go. Indeed, we do. But you see, it's inevitable. And in my mind, what I see, and I like to rise up above the territory in what I call my spiritual helicopter and look down and see where we are.

And of course, I see not perfectly. I admit this right off the bat. There's nothing that I am seeing or saying that is absolutely perfect. It is coming from one woman's experience. But I know that many women have the same kind of experience that I do.

So what I am seeing, looking down, is, you know, here's this dark history way over here. Well, supposedly, a goddess centered early, early civilization, then we see the Old Testament, and then we see Jesus, who was a radical, totally a radical, wanting to do, I think, one of the things that maybe got him in trouble, probably, was his bringing women into society, into religious society, the way that they were not used to.

And then we see Christianity kind of moving into the dark ages, which indeed were dark. And so we see all that. And then we see, you know, moving out of the dark ages into what we call the enlightenment, which, and I believe that humanity is on generally a road upward, upward, upward, in consciousness.

And I think today, even with all the horrors that there are, we are at a higher consciousness because we are aware of it. More people in the world I think are aware of the awfulness as it happens. So here we are now in a place that I think similarly to how the Dark Ages absolutely had to move forward into the Enlightenment.

In the words that we're using right now, I think we're in a place where patriarchy as we have known it. Absolutely and we, you and I and everybody who has a touch of this consciousness, it is up to us to move across the rocky plains of patriarchy into the promised land of partnership.

I think that is a historical necessity. Thank you. And I believe we see it happening now and it will continue to happen because we will not go backwards. We will do this weird dance of back and forth, but it will be generally moving forward.

And so indeed, indeed we are bound, bound into the right direction to get to the land of partnership. You know, I feel that very strongly also. Just everywhere I see there, there does seem to be an elevated consciousness of this and not that humans are any less cruel or that we have closed the gap, but there is a greater awareness than perhaps ever before.

And that's really encouraging. It is. Yep. So I was reading, I think I may have told you this before, Caroline, I was reading in your diary, an entry that you wrote in the month that I was born in October of 1979.

You were writing and right then you were in the middle of raising your children and doing doing your thing. And you were writing about this very problem. And I had this horrible moment reading your words there.

Oh, dear God, we haven't even budged much. Certainly we have come maybe a little bit more toward the middle, but there is so much ground still yet to cover. We're still talking over the course of my entire lifetime.

We are still crying out those of us who are awake to this for Mother God, for the feminine in a world that seems somewhat adverse to that. And so my question for you is, you Looking back over your life, your work, you have been a veritable prophetess in your sphere, speaking truth, shedding light, calling consciousness to this.

You've often called it the woman question, which I think you're borrowing from. Is that from the Bronte sisters, I believe? I don't know. Yeah. You have worked tirelessly toward this, and we still have so far to go.

My question to you, as someone starting out, is this, as a feminist and activist, which, you know, those words mean different things to different people, but I mean them in the best possible sense. I hope you know.

What? What words of advice, wisdom, caution would you have for someone trying to affect the same change that you have worked to change your whole life? Is there something you wish you had done more or less of?

Is there something you hope to see more and more of us doing now? Well, I feel that I have generally stayed on the track that I have felt called to. Most of my close feminist Mormon friends have totally dropped out of the church.

I continue to participate and I am highly valued in my own local congregation, which we call a board. The male leadership of my ward and the larger group of about eight different ward is called a stake.

I have had nothing but great support from those men. And if you continue to read, well, you've already read, you're up to date on the diary, but you will have read that there were times when my stake president protected me from there were sort of kind of a purge going on in the LDS church.

And I absolutely do not say that everybody should stay in their own religion and work on everything from there. Absolutely not. The only thing everybody ought to do is to listen to their own heart and their own conscience.

That's all. And if they are led to move out of an organization and feel good, truly that that is what they're being called to do, then they absolutely must do that and I will be the first to honor that.

There are people who, like me, feel called to remain within a particular organization and be one that continues to ask the questions, continues to make a noise, continues to point out this thing is harmful and this thing is helpful.

We're going to have to always have the martyrs. We have religious martyrs throughout history and that's a sad thing when that happens. But in the entire picture of it all, I mean, we can't tell Joan of Arc that she should have made a different decision because she could have lived till she was 90.

No, she knew what she had to do. And she did it. And we honor her for that, as we do for so many others. So the only absolute that I know is that every individual must absolutely come to terms with who they are and how they relate to whatever organization they're in, or to the ethos, if they're not in an organization, how they interact with the whole personality of the society as it exists at the moment.

And then we just move forward in that path and whatever happens to us because of that, so be it. But it will be a contribution in the long run. Because those of us who are involved in this work, I think none of us has the question of is this important or is it just nothing?

We know how important it is. And so to have a vision that this movement to bring about partnership of men and women in society, in religion, and in our view of heaven, that is absolutely essential and is good.

And I just thought of this poem right here that I want to read if I may. I was going to ask if you had one that corresponded to this. This is true. Paradigm shift. After 359 years, the Pope acknowledged that Heretic Galileo was right and the sun does not revolve around the earth.

How long will it take men of the earth to acknowledge that we heretic women are right and the female does not revolve around the male? For we too have scoped the heavens, revealed the center, can testify of the brilliant celestial bodies and lo, the heavenly him and the heavenly her do no orbiting, no presiding, no ranking, are perfect partners in a slow dance so close you would observe that they are one.

I think it's hard for our mind to comprehend such a perfect partnership. When I have conversations with folks about this, I often hear, as I'm sure you do, well, there can only be one captain of the ship, you know, or there's only one expert in the room or any number of these metaphors.

Well, there can only be one eye, right? Well, that's a good point. I was just going to ask, how do you respond when you get that? I think you just told me. If we only had just one hand, we're in there.

I've got my head one leg. Okay, go ahead. Well, no, we are born male and female for good reason. Go ahead. Yes. No, that was just my question. How do you respond to the ingrained patriarchy that is in all of us?

I had a friend tell me, well, I know you're always talking about patriarchy, but really, what I'm running up against is really problems from women in my life. So that's not patriarchy. And I just, my jaw hit the floor.

Oh, goodness, we are infected with it, all of us, like racism, like any kind of otherization. We are all infected with us. It comes from men. It comes from women. It comes from non -binary folks. It's everywhere.

It's insidious. Of course. And I just, I get a little bit riled up about that, but I wondered what do you say about this? And I think I'm going to borrow that. Well, do you have one eye instead of two?

And perhaps our very nature is reflective of this dance of both the God and the goddess or whatever language works to express this divine partnership that you talk about. All right. I wonder if you would read that.

read like mother like daughter, because that's one of my favorites that expresses this. I have what it does for us. Okay. Yeah. And yeah, we should ask. So what's the benefit, you know, of what we're trying to make happen here?

Yes, because right now the question to me is what's the best thing I can do with my time and energy and look, as you've mentioned, so much sadness, so much tragedy around the world. There isn't really a continent that's not touched by war and strife and horror.

And I've been asked, why are you so fired up about this, Mama God thing? You know, why don't you focus on specific things? Why don't you target injustice in certain ways? And my response has been, this is the only help I can think to bring to the conversation.

This is what helps get us. turned around. Right. And this is foundational. This is not trimming the tree up here. This is really getting down into the root. Yes. Everything. Yes. Yes. So here's the poem you asked for like a mother like daughter.

Yes. Because she is beauty, I must be beautiful. Because she is God. I must be good. Because she is everlasting. I will continue tomorrow and the day after the day after the days after that. Because she loves me.

I must be lovable. And when I pass a mirror, when I receive a smile, I recall that way back in the garden or in the heaven, I was made in her image, truly in her divine and breathtaking image here in my eyes.

Look. See me. See her. Now, Anni, I know there are a lot of women and I speak to them all the time who do not see any kind of a problem in addressing God only as Father. And I believe that they're being honest.

But I still believe there's something deeper because it is not possible to sit in a congregation as I do every week. And here, and you know, a few weeks ago, I decided to take a little test. So I got on my pen and I marked every masculine name, every masculine pronoun, his, her, whatever.

I did that for all the males over here and over here I marked for all the females. And I didn't know the exact when I tallied it up. It was like, I don't know, 99 or something to eight over here. And we cannot swim in that water constantly without it affecting our psyches, our feelings about ourselves, about the others male and female that we work with.

So there are numerous, numerous reasons why it's, it's just essential that we find ways to change our language, which changes our vision, which changes our sense of who we are and who everybody else is.

Yes. Agreed with my whole heart, yes. When I started, I don't know if I've shared this with you, probably over a decade ago, I had a conversation, that's weird to say, with God. And God asked me this question, how would you relate to me if I were a woman?

And I was driving at the time and I nearly rear -ended the person in front of me. I was so startled by this question that came to me. And so I began, I actually couldn't, at that point in my life, many other things were going on.

I didn't have the bandwidth to really hold that question in front of me, to look at it, to examine it, to see what it was there to teach me. And so I sort of tucked it away. It has come back, as you might have guessed.

And as I have embraced the question and begun to ask more questions that come out of, and begun to find evidence within the Hebrew scriptures, the Christian scriptures, by that of course I mean the Old and New Testament, other writings, other saints of old talking about the divine feminine, and then of course, revolutionarily finding the good saint, Carol Lynn Pearson, to illuminate my path.

Suddenly, something within me, something very primal, has stood up and it's been hunched down and clenched and closed my whole life. And it feels like a blossoming, because now I am invited to see my own self as made in God's image, where I never had the permission to do that before, growing up within a very patriarchal sect of Christianity, always thinking, okay, we are made in the image of God, but God is all male, and so discovering the damage that that did to me, to not know that I too am made in God's image, and that God is so pleased with my femininity, and it's not a secondary thought, and that has changed everything for me.

And so that's what led me here. Wow. Yes, that's very powerful. Anni, thank you for that. Yeah. Yep. Well, I'm just so glad that there are folks like you and me asking these questions. And there are more and more, more and more, because this is not going away.

This is not going away. And I think you're right. It is inevitable. It is the lifting of our collective consciousness. And you and I are here to do maybe some of the sifting around in the dirt and illuminating where this can grow and flourish.

See, what I know also is that there are a lot of men who totally understand this. In my own church that I attend, there are a lot of men that I can talk to and who honor my work in this and who totally understand that this is where we have to go.

Mm -hmm. That's been surprising for me as well. That's been something I've experienced. There are, this is everyone, not just the women rising up. Although, I will say, we really need men to voice this very loudly, because just the women bringing this to the front, we need help.

We need help from our brothers who are willing to say, hey, yeah, this is imbalanced. It does take a mother and a father always to have a baby. Let's think about this logically for a moment. Right. And so calling on all you good men to bring this to the foreground for us as well, for all of us, for the good of us all.

Indeed, yes. Yes. Well, Carol Lynn, do you have one more poem you'd like to end with as we come to a close here? Olly, I'm certain that I could find one. Two images of the one God came to my mind, but if there's something else you'd rather do, I'd rather not.

I love all of you. That's 137. Oh, yeah, that's right. Yeah. Two images of the one God. After the Sabbath reading of the holy book, grandfather the rabbi looked at his two grandchildren and smiled. Hannah frowned.

Grandfather, she said. Why is God always him? Why is God not female? Grandfather's eyes brightened and he said, but he is. If you look for what hides in plain sight on A God with a womb who cries out with labor pains.

A nursing God who suckles us. A comforting God who gathers, who brood under her wings. A God who defends us like a mother bear. A God who hovers over her young like an eagle. Hannah smiled. Daniel frowned.

Then he said, So God is not male? Grandfather laughed and replied, but she is. Our God is a father who loves and forgives us. A Potter God who forms our clay to good purpose. A God who is a king in whom we put our trust.

A warrior God who will fight for our good. A God who is a husband, faithful and kind. A shepherd God who leads us in righteous paths. The children studied their grandfather, the rabbi, for he often spoke in riddles.

Now his voice became serious and mysterious. In the beginning, God created us in God's own image. God's female image and God's male image together manifest the miracle of our God who is one. And you, my darlings, are beautiful and equal images of God.

Hannah smiled. Daniel smiled. Grandfather, the rabbi smiled. And God smiled. Oh, if you had a microphone, I would say this is a good time to just drop it. That's just such a perfect summation of all we've talked about, Carol Lynn.

Thank you. I hope so. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. You know, I just want to offer you an opportunity to tell anyone listening or reading the transcript. The best way to get in touch with you and learn more about your body of work, your lifetime of love that you have offered up, how can people get ahold of you and learn more about Carol Lynn Pearson?

Go to my website, carolinpearson .com. All of my things are mentioned there. You can purchase at that website. You can purchase all of my things and And I will sign them for you personally or to whomever you're giving them and send them to you And you can also of course get many of my things from from Amazon Yes, because some of your things are not in print anymore I'll go out of print don't they But I find them on thrift books if I can't get them from your website, but anyone listening and wanting a good place to start It's a yellow volume of poetry called Oh, I just almost called it your pump finding mother -god poems to heal the world That's a beautiful place to start if you're Also invite people again to Understand that about this one woman play that I did yes that is available only at my website I have a professionally made DVD of This play of me performing 16 women throughout history in search of the female face of God And it comes in a little package of the DVD and the book that has photographs of all of the different women that I play And the entire text so this is a powerful look at history.

Yes Chilling powerful poignant. I cannot recommend this play more highly and if you don't have a DVD player There is also an option to stream it digitally So don't let that stop you if you don't have the technology for that you can still enjoy mother -wove the morning which I'd like to see on Broadway actually.

I'd like to see this have a come back Carol Lynn Take it and run In my spare time, I'll see what I can do Thank you. Thank you my friend many blessings on you and the work that you were continuing to bring Thank you Oh and many blessings on you any and then none all all of us who are called this journey And I think every one of us who has a consciousness that says oh, there's something there isn't there?

We are all called to the journey and and I really believe it is an absolute Journey that must culminate in partnership in partnership and so it is. And so it is. Thank you so much for tuning in to Barely Christian, Fully Christian.

If you'd like to get ahold of me, find me at my website, BarelyChristianFullyChristian .com or AnniPonder .com. From there, you can connect with me on Instagram or Facebook, sign up for a newsletter or get in touch with me and let me know how this episode has affected you.

I'd love to hear from you. The artwork for Barely Christian, Fully Christian was lovingly created by Lauren Leith of Little Moon Market. You can find her on Instagram if you'd like a beautiful moon of your own.

This gorgeous song by Wyn Doran and Paul Craig is called Banks of Massachusetts. Enjoy.