Monday, April 13, 2009

Discovering the Feminine Divine

Since watching the 2001 movie "Laura Croft: Tomb Robber," I've wondered what a strong feminine role model would look like. Somehow, a testosterone based character with a sexy body and double barreled guns wasn't what I was looking for. In the cinematic world, in reality, and in Christianity, women are usually cast as innocent virgins in need of rescue or as sexy vixens.
Women and men are unarguably different. Physiologically, from conception, the Y chromosome oversees the building of a man, the double X's, the sculpting of a woman. Leonard Sax, in Why Gender Matters discusses research after research supporting the differences between the genders. The partitioned male brain versus the integrated female brain, movement focused male eyes, face focused female eyes, even at day one. Fascinating.
That rules out both men and Laura Croft as my feminine role models.
Now I find myself in the midst of reading Dance of the Dissident Daughter: A Woman's Journey from Christian Tradition to the Sacred Feminine, by Sue Monk Kidd. As the author points out so clearly and without rancor, modern Christianity is a patriarchal system, with women in a subordinate, supportive position, never equals. Although God is acknowledged to possess both male and female characteristics, God is, nevertheless, referred to as "He." We are "His" creation, "He" is our "Father in Heaven" or "God the Father." So that the mountain of "he's" and "mankind" and God the "Father" serves to tip the balance toward a male God through pervasive use. As Ms. Kidd says, "the word God does not register in us as neuter... what registers and functions in the mind is male" p. 140.
So deeply is the masculine pronoun ingrained, it feels blasphemous to call the Divine, "God the Mother." It feels as though God would be so offended by a degradation to the feminine "He" would strike me with lightning, perhaps through this very keyboard. After all, was not Eve the first to sin? Doesn't she, therefore, deserve to shoulder more of the blame for humanity's depravity? Wasn't it she who tempted Adam into eating the fruit, precipitating the damnation of mankind? Well, that's another discussion altogether...
Most churches have made it their policy to protect the masses from the vixen and her feminine deceit by the prevention of women's ordination, preaching, lead teaching (except in the children's classes, of course), and any other task but those of ancillary and supportive roles. When women pastors are allowed, they continue to labor within the greater patriarchal system, ministering for a overwhelmingly masculine God. This further diminishes a woman's ability to understand God as One who loves womenkind with equal fervor and value as mankind. How can "He" have created me in "His" image, as it states in Genesis 1:26 and 27, when I am a "she?" How can this traditional, paternalistic Divinity understand me?
The closest approximation of a feminine divinity Christianity has is the Catholic Virgin Mary, reverenced to a great degree by Catholics and even by some Protestants. As a holy figure, she poses threat to neither the supremacy of a masculine God, nor as a temptress of men. She is naive, a "handmaiden of the Lord," denied any form of sexuality. Her unrealistic lifelong celibacy (No children are referred to in the Bible until Jesus is an adult, then his brothers are mentioned. See Matthew 12:46. Furthermore, the Bible says Joseph did not touch her until after Jesus was born. See Matthew 1:25) is a golden halo on her brow, her blue robes a shroud to conceal any sensuous curves, her face is a picture of childlike innocence, untainted by the cares or desires of the flesh.
Other prominent Biblical women include Mary Magdalene (tainted by unsubstantiated rumors of prostitution), Martha (yikes, too much hard work), Jael (pounded a tent peg through Sisera's head), Deborah (a judge of Israel: promising, but not enough information), Lot's wife (a pillar of salt), and El Shaddai (God, the breasted one), the Mother who birthed us with hard labor (Deuteronomy 32:18) and who would gather us under Her wings (Matthew 23:37).
Would She make a good role model? Perhaps I could get to know Her better? The next question would be: How?

Monday, April 6, 2009

Darkness

Three years ago, I was helping take care of my centenarian grandfather. On week days, I would take my toddler boy and infant girl to my parents' home, where Grandpa was living, to help with his personal cares. My mom was midway through the last five years of her life, battling daily pain from a radical surgery that removed a lung infested with mesothelioma. My stress and grief were heavy. Some girlfriends sent me away for a short weekend's respite. At that time, while hiking along a stream and witnessing a log bridging up a small waterfall, I wrote these dark poems:

Why?

What is life about?
We are born and die.
We are there and gone.
Babies born, die.
Knowledge, wisdom, personalities, individuals.
Black.
All is darkness.
Black.
Darker than night.
Blackness without stars.
Darkness without memory of light.
Black.
Thick, all consuming
Black.
Are you there?
No.
There is nothing.
Nothing before.
A flicker.
Nothing after.
Pain between.
Nothing to nothing.
Who cares?
Why send your son to save that?
It doesn't make sense.


Dead Ladder Up

Stark, grays and browns.
Hard, creases and crevasses.
Points, sharp and slivered.
Warped, smooth and rounded.
A ladder of dead, rising up a waterfall

Gushing and roaring, white with life
Over green, dripping and cool.
Wind rushing and cavorting,
Aerating water, leaping and falling
Under dead ladder up.

Little moss,
Soft and fuzzy
Cool and green on dead.
Growing life persisting,
Continuing, proliferating
Over dead ladder up.

Climbing.
Fearful, slipping and sliding.
Carrying, clutching memories.
Chasing, comforting, surrounding me
Crawling on dead ladder up.

What is there?

Heartbeat pounding, shaking.
Adrenalin rushing.
Found the sun.
Sitting, watching water falling
Under dead ladder up.

Life unto life flowing down, around.
Caressing, incorporating death into life perpetually
around dead ladder up.

Tree grew tall by stream and fall
By brook and flowers, reds and greens
Watched life grow for centuries
Flowing, drying, living, dying
Seeding, drinking, branching, feeding.
Crush, break, dam, boom, death.
Becoming dead ladder up.

Grandpa is an aged tree
Who doesn't want to pass.
Roots entangle deeper,
Clutching life's rich soil.
Roots grown feeble.
Too weak to extract life's essence.
He feels his blood slow,
His branches yield,
His leaves dropped brown
Coat the ground.
Dimly aware, the trunk stands,
Weaker and weaker.
Rocks tumble around, breezes blow.
None strong enough.
None strong enough yet.
But soon.
Too soon for tree, it seems.
To yield it always seems too soon.
He will fall and become
Dead ladder up.


My Love and I

"Look!" says Life,
"My partner, my Love,
Always peaceful, always giving.
Each incarnation provides change,
Food, renewal."

"Look!" says Life,
"My Partner, my Love,
All grays and browns.
Coupled to me by rock and stream.
Fully combined in the richness of the soil,
My Love and I.
Death and Life."

Life and Death merge
In ecstatic union.
A climax for a moment
When all else begins to weep.


Fallen Trees

The dead are like fallen trees.
Feeling nothing.
A memory of their relationships
Stories of their lives
Continue to enrich those who knew them.
Yet those memories decompose.
Fragmenting with time
Until they disappear completely.
A new generation of trees have fallen,
Changing the landscape
of each person's mind.