Day 31: Death of God as Father and Mother

"Women who are "getting it together" are beginning to see that as long as God is imaged exclusively as male, then the male can feel justified in playing God."

"We cannot really belong to institutional religion as it exists.  It isn't good enough to be token preachers.  It isn't good enough to have our energies drained and co-opted.  Singing sexist hymns, praying to a male god breaks our spirit, makes us less human.  The crushing weight of this tradition, of this power structure, tells us that we do not even exist." 

"Our time has come.  We will take our own place in the sun.  We will leave behind the centuries of silence and darkness.  Let us affirm our faith in ourselves and our will to transcendence by rising and walking out together." Mary Daly

I think I live in a world that has a balance issue. When one side is over weighted, the response is to overweight the opposite side in order to create balance.  Maybe that has to happen because we don't know how to ditch the baggage overweighting us in the first place.  So then it becomes the other's responsibility to offset the balance by extra baggage on their end, tipping the scale in their favour.  Then the original overweighted side adds more weight to offset their lack and it goes on and on.  No one learns how to ditch the baggage and even out the scales.  

I had two great parents here on earth where we are identified by sex. Because of a mother and a father here, I have found existence.   Our species exists because of the two sexes available to us.  That is a limitation we have as organic species.  We have been set up to replicate ourselves with male and female contributions.  

When it comes to God, or Creator, there is no procreation required.  There is only Creator. So there is no gender needed to identify this Creator.  All gender attributed to the Creator is a result of the balance issue of humanity.  Mary Daly helped me to see that today, but I think I already had the inspiration in me.  She just helped move it forward today.  

It is easily understood how Christianity has adopted a male God.  Christianity arose out of a male dominated culture.  The bible was written by men.  There was no second thought to making God male.  Even today, people pray "Our Father" and don't think of what it implies.  Even the Holy Spirit has been engendered as a "he".  

Maybe it is the fallacy in our language that doesn't allow us to have a gender neutral pronoun for the Creator.  It gets awkward for people who need pronouns as a shortcut to talking about someone.  But I think it does a disservice to so many.   We are making God in our image.  Is that not an obvious observation?  

My first attraction to "The Shack" book ( and eventually a movie) was the introduction of Papa as a woman.  And then the Holy Spirit was also a woman.  But thinking more about it.  It seems like a balance response because the other side was overweighted.  Maybe that needs to happen, but is it the best way to create balance and see the Creator as not human and not engendered?  I don't know anymore.  Maybe we are stuck with trying to balance the scales by pushing each side to the extreme.  

As much as I enjoyed the Shack, I now am okay with not needing a female God anymore than I wanted to ditch the male God.  If I still need a visual connection, I am okay with seeing the Creator more as a river or as the wind.  Where I am not looking for a human face, but a picture of movement and all encompassing presence.  

I don't need a cosmic daddy.  I don't need a cosmic mama on the other side trying to balance the scale either.  I am okay with Creator being that which is beyond my human limitations.