The nature of God in relation to women.

Soooo... on a religious note...

I have been doing a lot of soul searching lately and have pondered a few things that have some effect on my view of religion. What that effect is, has yet to be known. A big part of that is the nature of God (what better place to start?) and the idea of the Devine Feminine.

First off, I do not feel that as a women I am any less or any more than any man in God's eyes simply because I am a woman. If I were it would be inherently unjust and if God is unjust he simply cannot be God etc etc etc. That being said, apples and oranges and all that jazz. I understand that men and women are different and hard to compare...  they are very unique. Though I don't think it's hard to tell when a person or an organization has a preference for one over the other.

I feel that if God is in fact male he needs to have a female counterpart to allow him to understand his female creations. How else would an exclusively male god empathize with childbirth or the emotional struggle that many women have when they cannot carry a child to term? I have to keep in mind that the term "God" is not a gendered term, it is a station that does not indicate gender. Much like "teacher" or "CEO". For this reason when I am asked to pray in public I refer to my god as simply "God" to acknowledge that many in attendance may view God as male, but also to not feel as though I'm being untrue to myself in referring to God in the exclusively male form.

As an LDS person I have been taught predominately to pray and think of God as a male ie "Heavenly Father" ... I don't think it could get much clearer! :) But it is considered part of the LDS faith that we have a female part to our "eternal family" if you will. I think that many downplay this within the Faith. In fact I was saddened by the limited acknowledgment of Her in the new Gospel Principles handbook, especially in regard to the lesson titled "Our Eternal Family". In reading it I felt as though the majority of the lesson was about a single father. Yes, I will acknowledge that it did say "heavenly parents" twice so she wasn't completely excluded. i'm thankful for that. At other times I have noticed that within the limited acknowledgment that is within the Church this divine feminine is not capitalized ei Heavenly Father and heavenly mother. I don't know if this is just a holdover from the past ie polygamy and the acceptance of many wives, or if it is an oversight. (I hope for the later, I admittedly have issues with the concept of Polygamy but that is a whole other post in itself )

Anyhow, I found an article recently that absolutely enthralled me. It is written from an LDS perspective and takes into account Hebrew translations of the bible etc... and it also comes at the idea from a scholarly angle, which I appreciate, but often goes above my head! So if you are interested here is a link to it.

I am a Mormon Feminist....

Oh, contradiction that it seems to be...

I feel that women truly are equals to men, but that the world (and sometimes the Church) perpetuates attitudes that are not in keeping with the fact that women truly are just as capable as men, maybe differently capable but not unequally so.

I hate to use the word "differently" there. Not because it's not true, but because so often it is used to replace more belittling language.

Anyhow, I came across a truly beautiful idea today while reading one of my favorite blogs. This was in a comment that was responding to a post about how to make sure that our children know they have a Mother in Heaven (among other things) when so often She is not mentioned.

A poster with the tag JC stated this:

"...The other night my son, age 11.5, asked me why girls don’t have the priesthood. I asked him why he thought they didn’t, he said he didn’t know - but it wasn’t fair that boys HAD to go on missions and girls get to choose. I told him that girls do have priesthood that they use in the temples and that parents share the priesthood. We talked about how both parents are expected to be good parents, but moms (mostly) seem to spend more time with small children than Dads. This led nicely into a talk about Heavenly Mother. DS has some interesting thoughts about her. He suggested that maybe she is a stay at heaven parent. Maybe earth stuff is Heavenly Father’s “job,” and She is in charge of preparing people to come here and takes care of them when they get back to heaven. He thinks that is a very important job and that HM is in charge of that because people are going to be sad to leave their families here on earth and will need some really big cuddles when they get to heaven. He also thinks that Her favorite colors might be reds and pinks because HF created a LOT of flowers those colors to show his love for her. Maybe She is in charge of the beautiful things on earth that make us happy, like sunsets, snow, cool animals, and that leaves HF some time to deal with other stuff. (As a side note, I help DH with a lot of the paperwork for his job, so doing a job together isn’t a big deal to him.) These are just his thoughts and I think that they are good ones. He doesn’t feel that She loves us any less, maybe more, because we spend lots more time in heaven than on earth..."

What a beautiful idea! To think that it came from an 11 year old astounds me. I like it oh, so much better than the "we don't talk about her to protect her." idea that is so often repeated (almost to the extend of being offensive. Why would a mother need to be protected from her own children?) But this? This idea rings more true for me and brings me more peace of mind.

From the mouths of babes ... and all that jazz.