Category: Divine Feminine

Activism, Bravery, Calling, Challenge, Courage, Divine Feminine, Here I am, Lord., Hope, Insight, Inspiration, March for Our Lives, Social justice, Spirit wind, Transformation

Ah! Women!

kathymfindley

228BEA2D-360B-4749-994C-F28F1D756B13
Ah! Women!

With your heart of compassion, your mind full of creative force, your spirit empowered with the rush of Spirit wind and fire!

Ah! Women, with your steady and sturdy will that stands straight and tall and moves into the fray — any fray that harms others, devalues human beings, threatens all of God’s created order, brandishes violence and acts against God’s divine desires!

Ah! Women! Silenced, dismissed, diminished from ages past to this very day!

Ah! Women, now you will summon your courage and move forward with hope and grit! Now — in these unfathomable days of pandemic and protest — you will enter the fray in ways only you can. You will enter the fray bringing with you a transformative power for righting wrongs. You will inter the fray bringing your womanwisdom and the insight that is inside you, given by Spirit!

Ah! Women! Daughters of God,

I will pour out my spirit on all flesh, and your daughters shall rise up and find their own voices, dreaming dreams and seeing visions . . . In these days, even on my female slaves, I will pour out my Spirit.

— From the Prophet Joel 2:28-29 NRSV (a feminist paraphrase)

Ah! Women! As you go forth, never forget when you enter any holy fray God has placed before you, that you do not go alone. From the wisdom of Maya Angelou:

Whenever you go forth into a new project, task or vision, remember that you do not go alone. Behind you is Harriet Tubman In front of you is Sojourner Truth. Beside you is Fannie Lou Hamer and next to you is your grandmother.

Fill in the names of your own revered women, and know that you are going forward with the power of other people.

Ah! Women!
Perhaps, like Esther, God has called you for such a time as this! 

Ah! Women! In you, there is hope and grit!
In you, there is unbridled courage!
In you, there is transformation of every wrong!!

May God continue to empower your spirit, steel your heart and grace the sound of your own voice! Amen. A*women.

Hear this choral music and contemplate the calling of God:

 

Baptism, Call, Divine Feminine, Here I am, Lord., Images of God, Sacred Worth, Transformation, Valued by God

A Heart “Cracked Open by God’s Love”

kathymfindley

I wonder sometimes about God — how God works in us, how God graces us, how God calls us. I wonder, too, if I will hear God’s call in the voice of a Mother God or a Father God. The gender of God’s voice matters to me because I sometimes fear the voice of God our Father and instead long to hear a gentle voice spoken by the Divine Feminine. So the God I envision, a God who is both male and female, comes to me in the ways I need, calls out to me in a voice I do not fear. Still, I wonder at times if God speaks to me at all, if God values me. I wonder if I am really worth more to God than the sparrow God watches so intently. (Matthew 10:29-31)

As I contemplated my sacred worth as God’s child, I could not help but think back to my baptism, the first day I felt truly chosen, the first day of my wholeness, the first day I heard so clearly my call by God to ministry. I was eighteen years old, yet I knew beyond any doubt that my life had been transformed. In the years that followed, the brightness of my life transformation dimmed from time to time by those that would degrade my call and devalue me as a Christian and a minister. It was not easy in those days for a woman called to ministry. What God had affirmed, the Church denied, and I felt diminished and despondent many times through the years.

Which brings me to a beautiful, comforting quote I happened to read today that answered my question about whether or not God values me.These words were part of a sermon preached in January of 1998 by The Most Reverend Frank T. Griswold, XXV Presiding Bishop and Primate, The Episcopal Church, USA:

 A transformed heart is a heart that has been cracked open by God’s love; it is a heart willing to have its tendency towards accusation and judgement overruled by the same voice Jesus heard at his baptism, a voice that speaks to each one of us and says, “You are my daughter, my Son, my Child, my Beloved, my Chosen One in whom I delight, in whom I rejoice, with whom I am well pleased simply because you are. Live on in my love; enter into my joy; abide in my peace.”

Simply because I am!

I can live with that — knowing that God really does value me as a child of God and knowing that both my transformation and my call to ministry matter. “Live on in my love; enter into my joy; abide in my peace.”

For that knowledge, thanks be to God. Amen.

 

Every child of God is called. “Follow me” was spoken to fisherfolk, not to the religious leaders of the day. This song is special to me because it was sung at my ordination. I hope it will inspire you in the times you struggle with your call from GOD.

Divine Feminine, God

God Our Father, God Our Mother

kathymfindley

9998EBC3-4AFB-4E2A-82C1-E78B7C44F12B

For those of us who experienced a traumatic childhood because of abuse by a father, the thought of God as our Mother is comforting. Such an image of God feels approachable, as God’s gentle hands reach out to us and we place our hands in Hers. Perhaps that makes no sense to some, but for the rest of us, we see any father image as threatening and frightening. In some ways, we need the mothering aspects of God.

I have been reading a fascinating book, Womanist Midrash, by Wilda Gafney. Womanist Midrash is an in-depth and creative exploration of the well- and lesser-known women of the Hebrew Scriptures. Using her own translations, Gafney offers a midrashic interpretation of the biblical text that is rooted in the African American preaching tradition to tell the stories of a variety of female characters, many of whom are often overlooked and nameless. 

I am fascinated by her writing and have used it as a resource for teaching my Sunday School class which focuses on the stories of Biblical women, women who often remain nameless, women who inspire us, women who live through horrific violence, women whose stories mirror our stories. From these women — Rahab, Shiphrah and Puah, Jephthah’s Daughter, Deborah, Huldah, so many women whose stories enrich our faith — we have heard the voice of God and have experienced God in new ways.

Today, I share a lovely passage from Womanist Midrash:

She, the Spirit of God , She-who-is-also-God, at the dawn of creation fluttered over the nest of her creation as He, the more familiar expression of divinity, created all. They, Two-in-One, are the first articulations, self-articulations of God in the Scriptures. God is female and male, and when God gets around to creating creatures in the divine image, they will be male and female, as God is. Feminine language for God occurs in the text repeatedly. This means that feminists and womanists advocating for inclusive and explicitly feminine God-language are not changing but restoring the text and could be considered biblical literalists.   (Wilda Gafney, Womanist Midrash, page 20)

May we find the Divine Feminine in our lives. May God continue to open our hearts to new images of the Divine. May we experience the care and nurture of God our Father and God our Mother.