A few years ago, kneeling by my bed at night, I asked Heavenly Father if it was OK to pray to Heavenly Mother. I remember an immediate, visceral sense of dis-ease as soon as I’d uttered those words. Message received–I continued praying as I’d been taught, fearful that I was flirting with something dangerous.
A couple of years ago, inspired by my studies, I tried out the pronoun “They” when referring to God. I tried it once and felt almost queasy and disconnected from God. As I had those years prior, I ran from those things. See, I knew what those feelings meant: Not-good feelings=thing is not of God. I knew this. I have been taught this. I have taught it. I have experienced it.
It took years of reflection, examination, listening to smart people and coming to know God differently–it took gaining spiritual maturity that a mission, various callings, attending the temple and bearing my testimony had not given me–to recognize that feeling of dis-ease did not mean, “This is bad.” Rather, it was a gut reaction as I actively went against things I had been taught my entire life. It was my lizard brain rejecting my rejection, however small, of something that had always been a part of me. That wasn’t the Spirit. It was discomfort and fear of the unknown and, perhaps, the known–the knowledge that I was stepping over a line that the leaders of the church had made clear was unacceptable.
The biblical case for a divine feminine
Heavenly Mother shouldn’t be so unfamiliar to me. She and her identities have been around for millennia.
Consider the Hebrew Bible (the Christian Old Testament). There are a few mentions of Asherah–derogatory mentions along with the likes of Baal; there are celebrations when her heathen symbols are knocked down (1 Kings 18:19, 2 Kings 23:4-7). However, many scholars believe Asherah was the consort of Yahweh–his wife, his partner, his equal. In the Women’s Bible Commentary, Cameron B.R. Howard suggests that Huldah was a prophet of Asherah (p. 178). In the southern kingdom of Judea, scholar Susan Ackerman asserts, the people believed that the king, chosen by divine right, had Yahweh as his adoptive father and Asherah as his adoptive mother. Worship of Asherah was led by the queen mother (Ackerman, 187).
Jewish feminists believe in the Shekhinah, the divine feminine whose name comes from the Hebrew word that means “to dwell.” I have read that the Shekhinah was the spirit that provided a cloud during the day and pillar of fire by night for the Israelites as they fled Egypt. Author Melissa Raphael in “The Female Face of God in Auschwitz” writes of how women in death camps found the Shekhinah in a place where they did not find a male god. This represents a different kind of deity and a different relationship with her people.
Another introduction of God-She is that of Wisdom (sophia in Greek, chokman in Hebrew); Woman Wisdom plays the role of mediator between Yahweh and Israel–a role traditionally played by the king and included proclaiming God’s will to the people (Schüssler Fiorenza,133-4).
In But She Said, Elizabeth Schüssler Fiorenza discussed the teachings of Hildegarde of Bingen (one of our foremothers who is worth looking up if you’re unfamiliar–she was a rock star); Hildegarde envisioned G-d Sophia as a creative power and atmosphere that enfolded and quickened in ceaseless motion and dance that was within the world (158).
Other, even older traditions tell of a divine feminine, a mother goddess who is the foundation of heaven and earth. Indigenous traditions have foundational stories of individual women who created and led and brought divinity to the people. Tribes teach of a Sacred Feminine, which does not lay out gender roles but rather express the wholeness that can be found when feminine and masculine work in concert with each other. One of the earliest creation stories is found in the Enûma Elish, a Babylonian epic that details the creator goddess Tiamat, who is eventually killed by another god, who then uses her mutilated corpse to create the Earth.
Then where did she go?
In the last several millennia, the divine feminine has been excised from the Bible–sometimes clumsily, by poor translations, errors in storytelling, lost pages and misunderstandings–but more often intentionally, through omissions and revising so the Hebrew Bible would tell a story of a people led by a single male God and the New Testament would reinforce that founding patriarchal mythology. The King James Version of the Bible, the LDS Church’s chosen interpretation, is one of the worst biblical offenders of reinforcing patriarchy.
Bible translations, and religion in general–well, an increasing number of denominations and individuals in Judaism and Christianity–are making conscious efforts to create a more inclusive religion. That means Bible translations that use “he and she,” “men and women,” “my brothers and sisters” instead of using only male nouns and pronouns. Feminist biblical scholars are using midrash to give women in the Bible stories, names, voices and agency. All of us who have read the Bible and wondered where we as women fit are now finding, or creating, places where we fit. We are claiming the legacies of our foremothers, and it is a beautiful thing.
But there is a red line, and that red line is making God female.
Scholar Burton H. Throckmorton, who was part of a committee that completed an inclusive translation of the New Testament and the Psalms, talked about how people welcomed the gender-inclusive language of biblical characters and readers but threw up strong opposition, bordering on hysterical, to God-She. And the problem with that, he said, is that the foundation of patriarchy is not that men are the decision-makers in the church, although that is true. But that is built on the unbending belief that God is male. That is the real foundation of patriarchy. Men are in charge because God is male. Men receive revelation because a male God speaks to them. Male is correct, it is the norm, it is the head. Female is the Other.
“The bottom line is that we can be as inclusive of each other as our language will allow, but it remains that case that if we are permitted to perceive God only through male metaphors and on male analogies, nothing will have changed.
“The assumptions we make about ourselves and the assumptions we make about God all fit into and are determined by the patriarchal construct we have all inherited. this means that if we are to be inclusive in our language about ourselves, and renounce androcentric language with reference to human beings, we must oppose the construct of patriarchalism, and all androcentric language that derives from it, not only in reference to human beings, but also in reference to God, for it is our theology that ultimately legitimates our practice, and thus it is our God-language that validates our language about each other. Our practice and our intentions are grounded in our assumptions about God” (177-181).
Reclaiming or resurrecting or maybe just recognizing the divine feminine
A book I read recently, written by a woman looking for a greater God than she was taught, routinely used female pronouns to refer to God. It felt both unfamiliar and right at the same time. Another book I read just a couple of weeks later, written by a woman also looking for a different relationship wit God, asks the reader to picture God and says, “what does he look like?” It is both familiar and jarring at the same time.
A couple of months ago, I knelt by my bed to pray: “Dear Heavenly Mother and Father, …” The reaction wasn’t as visceral, but I still felt uncomfortable. This time, I powered through. It was both familiar and unfamiliar, jarring and right. I didn’t remember to include Her every time, sometimes catching myself mid-prayer to add, “oh, and Heavenly Mother. I don’t know why I forgot you … wait, yes, I do …”
Do you pray to Heavenly Mother? Individually, as a family, in church meetings? Please share your experiences. I have not yet prayed to her in a group, and I don’t know how it will go.
Sources:
Ackerman, Susan. “The Queen Mother and the Cult in Ancient Israel.” In Women in the Hebrew Bible: A Reader, edited by Alice Bach, Routledge, 1999, pp. 180-194.
Schüssler Fiorenza, Elizabeth. But She Said: Feminist Practices of Biblical Interpretation. Beacon Press, Boston: 1992.
Schüssler Fiorenza, Elizabeth. Jesus: Miriam’s Child, Sophia’s Prophet: Critical Issues in Feminist Christology. Continuum, New York City: 1994.
Throckmorton, Burton H. “Why The New Testament and Psalms: An Inclusive Version.” In Escaping Eden: New Feminist Perspectives on the Bible, edited by Harold C. Washington, Susan Lochrie Graham and Pamela Thimmes, Sheffield Academic Press, Washington Square, NY: 1999. pp. 177-181.
I am not a big fan of “formal prayer” anymore because becoming more agnostic/deist in how God is included in my life has that impact.
It also got confusing when trying to envision “the reciever” of my prayers – male, female, undefined – is it actually God or just an agent in a divine prayer-receiving organization? Could we technically be praying our prayers out into the universe that are picked up by an AI like Data from “Star Trek”?
Technically, is there even someone up there who actually has a job/function to recieve prayers (let alone implement divine machinery to produce a cause & effect chain of events that answers my request)?
But I do the “Thank God” phrases and sometimes I mentally (and when I am on my own sometimes) project something like, “If there is a God who is hearing this, I’d like it if you’d sit with me in this tough space while I sort it out please – any inspiration is helpful”.
And then I mentally “make attentional space” like one does when a beloved family member wanders in while you are pairing socks or washing dishes – you keep doing what you are doing and you tune into them too companionably.
I think that God is a co-creator (especially Heavenly Mother) and that whenever we are thoughtfully creating, God is with us. This includes mental stuff like writing, physical stuff like movement, physical items like furniture, crafts, and food, emotional stuff like safe conversational spaces and the entire “work of emotional processing and acceptance”.
Brene Brown wrote that “We are born makers. We move what we’re learning from our heads to our hearts through our hands”.
Our theology assumes that “femininity” is “already in the heart”, so there is no need to transfer anything about care from the mind to the heart through the hands.
Our patriarchal theology assumes that all creation is “uterus-based” to order the legacy of upcoming generations into patterns of behavior. Even if the lineage is adopted (lineage is still legacy), there is still “rites of birth” to provide evidence of belonging (like birth does).
I have been praying to Heavenly Mother/ Father or to “Mother/ Father God” in personal and family prayers for a few years now. When I first dared utter “Heavenly Mother” I had an experience similar to yours, which I identified as feeling shame/ fear for doing something “wrong” or “bad”. So telling and gross that I had been conditioned to react that way to something that is indeed so natural, beautiful, and right. My primary aged daughter also prays to Mother/ Father, not because I taught her to explicitly, but because she picked it up from my example. 💜 She has anxiety about praying in public, so she has not run into the potential shut downs that may come if she does this at church. As for me, I am not brave or disruptive enough to pray pray to Her in church, or perhaps I just know that I will lose all credibility or minimal influence I have if I do. 😥 I do always reference both in talks and comments though, e.g. Heavenly Parents. I noticed my teenaged son did this is his recent sacrament meeting talk and I was so pleased. I wonder if/ when I will eventually “slip up” and pray to Mother/ Father from the pulpit. 🤷♀️ It will probably fell quite freeing and wonderful. 👊🙌
My hope is that one day it will become so natural to me that I will truly “slip up” and I’ll just say Heavenly Mother and Father. Right now, I’m too aware of it. But it want to be so natural that when people act shocked, I can just say that this is how I pray.
Also, I’m mad that it is so unnatural.
I don’t pray much anymore, but when I do, I address it to “Mother and Father in Heaven.”
I prefer the genderless “O God” these days.
I had a mother’s blessing instead of a baby shower when I was pregnant with my youngest. The friend who said the opening prayer started with “Dear Heavenly Mother and Father” and all the words after didn’t matter so much, it was beautiful.