Episode 3 - Mama God, Our Holy Spirit

Anni talks about what she means by calling God “Mama,” how she got here, and why it’s so important that we connect with the Divine Feminine.

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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.

In today's episode, we'll explore what I mean by calling God our Mama. I'll tell you how this began for me, and we'll look at why this is so important. Thanks for tuning in. I'm so glad you're here.

So, if you've read any of my blogs, you'll know that I like to imagine I'm having a conversation with you over coffee or a martini or tea or anything that sounds appealing to you and me, and try to see what it would be like if we could have a conversation about these deep things of the heart that really matter.

And so today, that's how I'd like to do this. I'd like to introduce you to my thoughts about the feminine side of God, and I'll do it as if you and I are in a conversation. Now, what's missing is I don't really know much about you, but I would assume a couple of things. And so one is that you're probably, if you're listening to this podcast, you're probably a seeker of some sort. And I don't know anything about your background or your faith or your worldview, but I'm going to assume you have an interest in spirituality. Otherwise, why would you click on a podcast called Barely Christian, Fully Christian? And you probably are somebody comfortable with questions and mystery, because otherwise, the title might throw you off. And so I'm just going to assume that you would have some open-handed questions for me today. If you were all curious about why I keep referring to Mama God, and what does that even mean?

So I bet the first question you might come to me with would be something like Okay, what do you mean by calling God "Mama," can you please clarify? What are you talking about even?

Okay, well, that's a really good place to start. Good question. I would remind you that I call myself both barely and fully Christian and in case you haven't caught episode zero called "Start here. Please," I might direct you there in case you were curious about what do I mean by barely and fully. But in very short recap, "barely" is to say there are a lot of questions I have and a lot of reservations and frustrations and grievances with the way Christianity has shown up in this world. But the "fully" part is I fully recognize Jesus as God's son, and I recognize that God is good and so that that qualifies me, I believe, to call myself a Christian, even though I have all of these questions, and maybe different opinions than what you might find in super-orthodox kind of Christianity.

Although, if we go back into church history a little bit, you might find that some of the things I'm saying are actually supported by our founding fathers and mothers. But I would also be quick to remind you that I'm not a theologian nor a historian, and so I'm coming at this with my own thoughts and experiences, and I hold a lot of this very lightly, but it's important to me to talk about.

So when I say Mama God, right away that might throw you off because, isn't God our Father? I do not mean that I need to set aside the belief in God our Father. I hold to the Trinitarian belief that God is three persons wrapped up in one, and when we say God, we really mean these three people.

And in traditional Christianity, we've talked about God the Father and the Son, and then this mysterious enigmatic character, the Holy Spirit. And from what I have experienced, studied, heard, and seen, I am leaning into perceiving the Holy Spirit as a feminine being.

And so when I talk about Mama God, that's really who I mean. I'm really talking about the person known as the Holy Spirit, you may have heard of the term Holy Ghost. I don't even know if she likes that one. I don't like that one. But going back to the original language, I find some clues about the femininity of the Holy Spirit. And I will leave the heavy lifting to the theologians of today to really do the work of explaining all of the linguistic references to her, but just to kind of sum up, there's too much. I cannot explain. Let me sum up. (Another Princess Bride reference because I just can't help myself.) The language in the Hebrew scriptures, or as a lot of Christians know that as the Old Testament, refers to the spirit as the Ruach, and I hope I'm saying that right.

And it's a feminine noun with feminine pronouns that accompany it, and I think it's even gendered in the verbs. So when the Spirit is hovering over the water, it's a feminine act. And then that's not all.

Of course, there is the El Shaddai, that name for God that in the English gets translated as the Lord Almighty, but when we look, it really means the Mountainous, Multi-Breasted One. What? And when I found that out, I just about had a...

Well, I was gonna say had a cow, but that's maybe from the late 90s. So maybe I need a better metaphor. But anyway, I was really enlivened to learn that the early believers in this mysterious God were given a name that denotes maternity and nursing even.

Now, I would remind you, of course, I do hold all of this gendered talk of God very lightly. I am fully aware that the person of God, this mystery we adore and worship, is beyond our expression and that probably, gendering God is just a stab in the dark at a metaphor that maybe doesn't serve us eternally.

But in this time and place, we have approached God from such a gendered perspective, from such a masculine viewpoint that now I really need to flip that pancake over, as my friend Jeannie says, and look at God's feminine characteristics and feminine traits and the way God nurtures.

And I'll share a little bit of my story, how that's been magnificently helpful to me to approach God as my Mother. But just to answer your question, what do you mean by calling God Mama? I'm referring to that mystery that many of us know as the Holy Spirit.

And here's another reason that I think it's all right for Christians to do this. And if you are not a Christian but you're listening to this for reasons of your own, maybe you're thinking, yeah, why? It's no big deal to think of your deity as feminine. Well, right. And to me, that seems like a no-brainer now, but it hasn't always. And the language that we've used has been so very masculine that we've almost...ignored and forgotten that there might be femininity. And so to me, this is a process of coming home. And here's something that occurred to me the other day. We talk about that Jesus Christ is God's only begotten son, right?

In that verse in John 3:16, you know, "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son." I was thinking about the word begotten the other day. It's not one that we use very often in day-to-day conversation, but you know, it denotes somebody having given birth to someone.

And so I was looking, I was thinking about the genealogies that are listed in the Christian scriptures in the book of Matthew. And I think maybe in Luke, we have another genealogy of Jesus. And almost exclusively, it's a father begetting a son. Once in a while, the biblical authors mention the mothers, but usually it's implied, and we have all of this record of genealogy, and it's always this father begat this son, and then that son begat somebody else.

And what occurred to me is nobody believes that those fathers did all of the begatting, (begetting?), the giving birth too, on their own, but it was the tradition of the day, which was very patriarchal, if you wanna look at the history, to just trace the lineage through the father, the patrilineal genealogies.

But nobody thinks that there weren't mothers involved in this process. Nobody says, oh, these were all immaculate births by the dads. It's understood that the mothers were there, although they're very rarely brought to the forefront, and lots could be said about the cases where they are and they're very special and precious.

But what I wanna point out is that we know that there are mothers, whenever there's a baby, of course there's been a mother, there's never any question. Oftentimes the paternity is brought into question, but we know who the mother is.

And what really strikes me is when we think of Jesus as God's begotten Son, we have ignored the question of who the Mother is. So we've got this trifecta of persons within the Trinity. We have the Father, God the Father, who we usually think of in very masculine terms. He's all powerful and all knowing and ever present everywhere and this really kind of majestic being. And we think of Him very manly. Then we have Jesus, who we historically believe is a man. And then we have this enigmatic Holy Spirit, which to us seems like this indescribable ethereal being.

And I think that's the point. I got to thinking not long ago, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, it's this Trinity, the three of Them, and Jesus being the Son of the Father, who's the Mother? Surely God the Father isn't like a single dad.

And who is that Spirit creature? Is that an uncle? We often talk about the Spirit in masculine terms. I mean, like heretical thought, of course they're not the Father and the Spirit, like a gay duo, right?

I mean like heaven forbid. So what is the Holy Spirit? Well, that's what got me thinking about Mama God. And so I'll share with you my journey of how I got here and how I regard the Holy Spirit as my mother, as much as God is my Father.

And together, God the Father, God the Son and God the Mother make the perfect trio of my heavenly family.

Okay, so the next question you might ask me would be something like, how did this begin for you? Tell me about your journey that led you into this belief that God is your Mother.

All right, great question. And I love to talk about this one. I've blogged about this. If you happen to see that on my website, you would know I'm gonna repeat some of the things here. But in case you haven't seen that or you'd like to hear about it instead, here we go.

So God and I have this beautiful relationship that circles around a lot of questions. And how it usually works is God drops a question on me.

And if I take the question, if I agree to hold the question, I ask it back to God and it inevitably ends up changing me, growing me, expanding me in one way or another. And it might be a whole other conversation to ask, well, how do you know if it's God or if it's just your imagination or if it's something that culture has snuck in subliminally?

Okay, right, fair point, fair point. To that I would just say, I've been walking with God long enough that I've really begun to trust that I am hearing from God. And I believe that biblically, we are given permission by all of the saints who went before us to, yes, lean into, God really does dwell within us and offers up questions and thoughts and provides experiences that can be our teachers.

And so that would be my answer to that question. So here we go. The first question that led me along this road, so far as I can tell, the first question was, one day I was sitting and having my quiet time with Jesus, and all of a sudden this question appeared to me.

Do I believe anything about God that is untrue? Is there anything false in my belief system about God? And you have to understand to me that was such heresy, because I was deeply rooted in a very fundamental branch of Christianity that really prides itself on having lots and lots and lots of answers.

And so the thought that maybe I could hold something true that really wasn't about God rocked me to my core. And I almost didn't want this question. I almost handed it right back. No, of course, I don't believe anything false about you, God. I have all the answers.

But there was something within me that went, wait a second, okay, that can't be true. I cannot possibly have all the answers about God. And so I agreed to hold the question. And that led to a whole new journey.

I would say that my adulthood took a new turn, the day I agreed to hold the question if I believed anything about God that was untrue. Well, not a long time after that, and there's a whole lot of story here I'm skipping over, another question came to me.

I remember I was driving along and the question appeared. How would you relate to me if I were a woman? It was as if God was asking me this question. Anni, how would you relate to me if I were a woman, if I were feminine in my form?

And let me tell you, I was so shocked by that question. I nearly rear-ended the person in front of me. I can tell you right exactly where I was on the street driving home. I remember it so clearly and I thought, what if you were a woman? If there was femininity in God?

Whoa, and that blew my mind. Some people listening to this are going, why is that so mind boggling? Why couldn't God be feminine? I know, I know, I'm kind of a late bloomer. I'm usually one of the last ones to the party.

And so, oh, well, it's my own journey. Here I am. So I couldn't really, I wasn't at a place in my life where I could really hold that question very long before I had to tuck it away. And other things happened and my story, my narrative took a different direction, but I kept it in the very back of my mind.

Meanwhile, I became gradually aware of a longing. Although I didn't know what it was, it was very amorphous, this desire to connect with what I now understand. It was my desire to connect with the maternal side of God, though that at that point, I didn't have permission.

I didn't know I could. I didn't know She existed. And I didn't know that my own femininity would ever be derived from God. And so it was this kind of gnawing at my soul in the very, very back of my mind. And it was hard to put my finger on it, but I began to experience a longing for Mother God. Well, now that I've done so much work around this and I've done so much reading and all of that, now I know I was becoming vaguely aware of what many of us are calling the "Mother Wound," the separation from the feminine and from all of the things that we would attribute to femininity.

And now let me just stop here and say, I hope that you're not mishearing. When I'm talking about these gendered expressions of being, I do not necessarily mean maleness and femaleness in the biological sense that we experience it here on Earth.

I mean the grander themes of femininity and masculinity of the Yin and Yan energies, or there are lots of different ways, of being and doing, of the sun and moon, of all of these different expressions. And everything we've got is a metaphor, and I don't think any of it hits home entirely.

But the feminine traits that I'm talking about are these maternal, holding, nurturing, soothing, comforting, collaborating, and there's a whole lot more. This is not an exhaustive list, but these traits that we so often attribute to our mothers if we were fortunate enough to have mothers who are worthy of these ideas.

So fast forward many years, I held on to that question: What would you think about me if I were a woman, if I were feminine, if you could talk to me as a Mama? And I really didn't do much with that question for maybe a decade or more until one day I came upon a book that cracked me right open to the core.

And it's Megan Watterson's book called Mary Magdalene Revealed. It's a very provocative story of her experience with the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, which I learned has been in existence, along with many of the writings that we have in the Christian scriptures or the New Testament, but was not included in the canon of scripture when finally the official committee was formed to say what is scripture and what is not.

It was left out. And I'm not here to debate whether or not the Gospel of Mary Magdalene is valid, is actually written by the Mary described in the scriptures. That's not my point. Here's what happened when I started reading this book, something in me opened up.

I was sitting on the couch, reading this woman's story of her interaction with Mary Magdalene, and all of a sudden, I had another question. Where have the women been all along? Why are there no books in the Bible that are attributed to female writers?

We've been here the whole time. Our stories are valid, our experiences with God are true, our narratives matter. Why have the women been so often excluded? Why are most of the stories about men written by men and for men?

And I began to become a little angry because it's like the lights were just flipped on in my mind in this one place. Wait a minute. Why is everything written by a man in my Bible? And then my eyes went to my bookshelf.

My husband and I have this collection of all kinds of books. And as I looked at the author's names, I realized 90% of these, maybe more, are authored by men. Where are the women writers? And why do we have so many books written by men?

Well, I started to talk about this out loud. I was sitting there next to my husband, and I said, "Where are the women writers?" And he's a very logical thinker. And so he began to, "Well, throughout history, women haven't been educated. And so most of the writings that we have have been by men." I said, "No, no, no, no, I know why we don't have women authors. I'm asking, WHY don't we have women authors?" I'm not sure he understood exactly what my impassioned questions were about, but I continued to think about them.

And then I began to look at Christian, what's the term? Ways of being, I guess. I'm sure there's a term that I'm thinking of, but it's escaping me right now. And you've probably heard this, where within many Christian circles, women are expected to be submissive.

And there's some scriptural evidence for that being the best way for a marriage, for a church to operate. And I suddenly began to look at that, wait a minute, why? Why are women supposed to be submissive?

Now, let me just insert this here. I do not think women should be submissive any more than men should be submissive in situations where they're under authority of somebody else. Maybe they have a female boss.

But within Christianity, within a lot of Christianity, and not all of them, women are expected to be submissive. And I kind of always accepted that because there are a few verses in the New Testament or the Christian scriptures that seem to point to that.

But all of a sudden I was like, hey, why? Why in a marriage, why are men the leaders and women the followers? What makes maleness qualified to lead and femaleness only qualified to follow? And I began to look hard in the eyes of this doctrine of feminine inferiority.

And you can call it lots of different things, but when you really peel it apart, it comes down to, oh yeah, men are in charge of women. And I began to wonder, what, where did this come from? And why is it?

So that was a really eye-opening question that I began to wonder about and then the next question that came was, Where does my femininity derive from in the first place? Where does it come from? Because again looking at the Godhead, the Trinitarian Godhead, we've got God the Father, male obviously, God the Son, well, we know Jesus was a male, God the Spirit, I don't know--jury's out on that one at this point in my discovery. Then where does femininity even come from if not from God? And then I went to the book of Genesis, the first book in the Canon, and found in the very first chapter when God created man and woman, God said, "Let us create man in our image" and so God created them male and female, and my eyes flew open.

I suddenly realized, wait a minute, when God made us in God's image God made us male and female and so if you do the math and you go backwards you realize that femininity derives from God's self and If masculinity is a reflection of God's image, then so is femininity. Because right there it said God made us in God's image, male and female God created us. Well that blew my mind and then the big question came in: wait a minute. If femininity comes from God, is there femininity within God? And I looked squarely at the Godhead and that question came to me: Why do you think the Godhead is all masculine? And who is that Holy Spirit? And if we've got a Father and a Son, somewhere in the equation, there must be a Mother. There has to be. And that's when I could almost hear Her laughing and God clapping her hands in glee and saying, "She finally sees, she finally noticed I'm here. I've been here all along." And so not long after that, you may have read my blog about Mrs. Doubtfire. I turned on that movie. And if you don't remember it, it's the story where Robin Williams is playing this wonderful, sweet, devoted dad who's estranged from his wife and she won't let him see their children.

And so he dresses up as a British nanny and comes and he stays with his children every day just so he can be around them. And his wife, played by Sally Fields, only lets him in because she believes that he is a woman.

And suddenly I realized we have let the Holy Spirit in, believing She was masculine, but all the while underneath that suit and tie we stuffed Her into, she's been our Mother, loving us, nurturing us, drawing us to her, calling us her own, birthing us, nursing us, doing all the things that a good mama does.

And all of a sudden I realized I have not been without my Mother. I've just not known it was her. So I did a lot of research and I found I'm not the only one who's wondering about this. And on my blog I've listed lots and lots of resources I'd be happy to send you to. Many brilliant theologians, men and women writing about this. And I found affirmation after affirmation, yes, keep going, there is so much goodness to be found in addressing God as our Mama, as well as our Papa, as well as our Brother.

And I've even heard some folks talking about our Sister. I am interested and intrigued. I don't have much there yet. My research hasn't taken me to God our Sister yet, but I am confident that God is all good.

And so the more I lean into this, the more I find, oh, it's always good when I ask these questions and lean in.

So you might ask me another question. Why is this important? Why does it matter when we have so many maladies in this world going on going on, so many terrible, horrible things happening in the world, why are you bothering to stop here and reflect and pause and be with this question of God's femininity? What good does it do? Well, that's a really great question.

And I've thought a lot about how can I help the world? How can I help usher in the kingdom of Christ? That kingdom that He talked about so often when He said, and the kingdom is now, and it's also coming, and how can I help bring it in?

And the more I've looked at that, the more I've realized what we think about God, influences everything else. I really love to sit with people and ask, okay, what's your North Star? What is the one thing, or as my friend Becca just asked me, what's in your top drawer?

What is the thing or a couple of things, that anchor you, these beliefs that are really foundational to who you are, that you come back to whatever season you're in, you always know you can count on these things?

Well, for many of us who identify as Christians particularly, if we hold the belief that God is all male and then women are somehow an afterthought, right? Because Adam was alone until he asked for Eve and blah, blah, blah.

Then we tend to underestimate the importance of women and then we subjugate women because if, well, as my mentor likes to put it, if God is male, then the male is God. And from there, everything trickles down from whatever we hold as our North Star.

So if there's no room for Mama God in our ideology, if God is strictly masculine, and even if we're like, well, God really doesn't have a gender, but then we continue to use masculine pronouns around God, we have gendered God, then everything derives from that belief.

And whether we believe consciously or not that men are more important, that shows up in every aspect of our lives. And I really believe that the way home is if we can find ourselves looking squarely in the face of Mama God as well as Papa God and Brother God.

And if we can see that femininity is to be revered, is godly, is every bit as important as all of the masculine attributes that we give to God, then maybe we Maybe we can make space for some things like collaboration instead of competition.

Maybe we can really talk about peace instead of war. And I'm not saying that women are better than men, and I'm certainly not asking for matriarchy, but I'm asking for a rebalancing, a coming back to both genders.

And also, as I say that, I don't want to exclude my friends and loved ones who identify as non-binary. And please understand that when I talk about masculine and feminine, I am again not talking about biology, and I don't mean to make you feel left out of this conversation.

But again, I need to emphasize the importance of valuing those traits which we so often attribute to femininity. And until we can do that, we will continue to deify things like aggressiveness and pushing our way forward and survival of the fittest and "might makes right," which are these ideologies that are so tired and they have gotten us into so many bad places and we need the feminine counterpart to balance and restore us to a place where we can make space for peace and collaboration.

And so for me, this is the most important conversation we can have right now. Let us approach God, the Mother, as much as we approach God, the Father. And I know this is a heavy lift to ask for Christianity because, oh goodness gracious, what would you have us do then, Anni?

Would you have us rewrite all the hymns and the Bible? And are you throwing out all your foundational beliefs because now everything needs to be turned on its head? Well, I'm well aware of what slippery slope ideology will do.

And I would say, I wanna make sure that we are anchored well in our beliefs about God before we go trying to change things. But we need to make space for the femininity of God. So before this conversation draws to a close, maybe you would ask me, okay, well, what next?

Like where do I go? How do I even look for information or experience or encounter with the Divine Mother? Am I even allowed to ask these questions? Oh, well, I don't know what to tell you. And I'm certainly not here to give advice.

But I would just say, I am on this journey and you're invited to come along with me. In our next few episodes, you'll hear, I'd like to interview some friends and people I know who have been... been asking these same kinds of questions and find out where they're coming from, what brought them in to this question, what things have come since they've asked the questions, and where do they think this is going?

And also, what are they anchored in? Because if we don't know where we're anchored, we will be aimlessly adrift, and that doesn't serve anyone. And so I would invite you to stay tuned as the conversations continue, and we continue to look forward to what happens when we include Mama God as the Holy Spirit in our Trinity.

What comes next? I'm excited to journey along with you. Thanks so much for being here.

I would love to hear from you. If you'd like to reach out, please do so. You can find me at AnniPonder.com. That's A -N -N -I -P -O -N -D -E -R .com. No E in the name Anni. Or at BarelyChristianFullyChristian.com. From there you can contact me in the email form. You can find Instagram and Facebook. I would love to stay in touch. And here do you have stories, questions.

Do you have an experience or an encounter with the Divine Feminine? Or do you have ideas for further podcasts or blogs? Please reach out. I would 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.