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I wound up in seattle this weekend, we were supposed to head to BC but someone (meaning me!) forgot her passport and couldn't cross the border. We did try! So we wound up in the University district... doing... *gasp!* SHOPPING! I found this book called The Secret Commonweath written by Rev. Robert Kirk. It is the documentation about Fairy stories in Scotland! I bought two copies, one for me and one for the library. I am so excited!
I am also reading a book called Embracing Jesus and the Goddess A Radical Call for Spiritual Sanity. I have been doing a great deal of inner work around the nature of where the feminine face of God fits into spirituality. What I have been taught all my life by the charismatic tradition of Christianity is that God is neither male nor female, so therefore it is a moot conversation. I have also been taught that it is a conversation brought out only by a suspect, wounded subculture that is angry at men, and therefore when they search for a feminine face, that it is out of anger and rage, not any holy qualities. Susan Shaw states that Feminism is the ideology that women are people too. It is not the same as lesbianism, nor is it the downplay and subversion of men. I do run across many women who are as cruel to men as they purport that men have been to them. And in my mind, you have the abused becoming the abuser.
It similarly doesn't help that in the Christian scriptures, the only blatant mention of the Goddess is in the prophetic books... but then the phrase is, "foreign practices to gods and goddesses". The scriptures mention both the masculine and the feminine, and their practices... so at this point, I can only imagine that this is referring to a specific practice or deity structure that was unhealthy instead of the feminine nature of divinity? Christians hold to the idea of it's okay to call God in the masculine, even after that scripture and do not use this reference in scripture to stop it, which implies to me that it is not about gender but the practice. Secondly there is the Scarlet women / whore of Babylon motif... which is interesting too... but still, in the same book there are references to gads of male figures who are just as evil if not worse and they are not using this to remove the male references. Islam is very good about keeping the gender away from the name Allah... with the very name historically meaning YES / NO. This includes not referring to God in any anthropomorphic images whatsoever.
Moving into a different direction, we find a removal of the feminine from the creation story. The name Elohim is a plural gendered word in a language that has no he/she/it to speak of. You figure out the gender of what you are referring to based upon the ending and root of the word... Therefore, sort of like most female names in our culture end in the sound EE or AA (Mary, Kayla), you can tell the name gender based upon the root and ending... Bob is a boy name... Bobbie is a boy and a girl name, Bobby could be boy or girl. The name referring to the deity that created the earth and humanity is both Male and female between it's root and ending combination. And it's plural... not singular. Many Christians say that is because Jesus was up there too, as a personality or that the angels are there and God is referring to the whole of the heavenly bodies. Ok... but then you are referring to the hosts of creation with THE HOLY NAME OF GOD and we are back to the same conversation of God having a feminine face, a feminine quality and that being upheld in scripture.
Then you have female prophetess' and Judges!
Secondly... moving into monotheism in general. I am a dyed in the wool monotheist. Monotheist meaning that there just isn't more than one thing out there. I don't think that there are separate god and goddess entities out there. I do think that there are angels. I really don't have a stake on the name either, just like I can call God, Jehovah Raffa (Our banner) or Elohim (Creators) or Emmanuel (God with us). Each is something that I understand.... or how about Ya Shaffi, Ya Kaffi (the healer and the remedy)? And within Christianity, they take this a step farther by putting in father/son/holy spirit as being separate but the same. Functional monotheism, faces of the same presence. If you can have father / son / holy spirit as three entities into one and it doesn't violate monotheism, you can have a feminine face of god and a masculine face of god as functionally one and it doesn't remove the monotheism.
I am also reading a book called Embracing Jesus and the Goddess A Radical Call for Spiritual Sanity. I have been doing a great deal of inner work around the nature of where the feminine face of God fits into spirituality. What I have been taught all my life by the charismatic tradition of Christianity is that God is neither male nor female, so therefore it is a moot conversation. I have also been taught that it is a conversation brought out only by a suspect, wounded subculture that is angry at men, and therefore when they search for a feminine face, that it is out of anger and rage, not any holy qualities. Susan Shaw states that Feminism is the ideology that women are people too. It is not the same as lesbianism, nor is it the downplay and subversion of men. I do run across many women who are as cruel to men as they purport that men have been to them. And in my mind, you have the abused becoming the abuser.
It similarly doesn't help that in the Christian scriptures, the only blatant mention of the Goddess is in the prophetic books... but then the phrase is, "foreign practices to gods and goddesses". The scriptures mention both the masculine and the feminine, and their practices... so at this point, I can only imagine that this is referring to a specific practice or deity structure that was unhealthy instead of the feminine nature of divinity? Christians hold to the idea of it's okay to call God in the masculine, even after that scripture and do not use this reference in scripture to stop it, which implies to me that it is not about gender but the practice. Secondly there is the Scarlet women / whore of Babylon motif... which is interesting too... but still, in the same book there are references to gads of male figures who are just as evil if not worse and they are not using this to remove the male references. Islam is very good about keeping the gender away from the name Allah... with the very name historically meaning YES / NO. This includes not referring to God in any anthropomorphic images whatsoever.
Moving into a different direction, we find a removal of the feminine from the creation story. The name Elohim is a plural gendered word in a language that has no he/she/it to speak of. You figure out the gender of what you are referring to based upon the ending and root of the word... Therefore, sort of like most female names in our culture end in the sound EE or AA (Mary, Kayla), you can tell the name gender based upon the root and ending... Bob is a boy name... Bobbie is a boy and a girl name, Bobby could be boy or girl. The name referring to the deity that created the earth and humanity is both Male and female between it's root and ending combination. And it's plural... not singular. Many Christians say that is because Jesus was up there too, as a personality or that the angels are there and God is referring to the whole of the heavenly bodies. Ok... but then you are referring to the hosts of creation with THE HOLY NAME OF GOD and we are back to the same conversation of God having a feminine face, a feminine quality and that being upheld in scripture.
Then you have female prophetess' and Judges!
Secondly... moving into monotheism in general. I am a dyed in the wool monotheist. Monotheist meaning that there just isn't more than one thing out there. I don't think that there are separate god and goddess entities out there. I do think that there are angels. I really don't have a stake on the name either, just like I can call God, Jehovah Raffa (Our banner) or Elohim (Creators) or Emmanuel (God with us). Each is something that I understand.... or how about Ya Shaffi, Ya Kaffi (the healer and the remedy)? And within Christianity, they take this a step farther by putting in father/son/holy spirit as being separate but the same. Functional monotheism, faces of the same presence. If you can have father / son / holy spirit as three entities into one and it doesn't violate monotheism, you can have a feminine face of god and a masculine face of god as functionally one and it doesn't remove the monotheism.
