I’m with Her.
I have been sporadically using female pronouns for God over the last six months. Frankly, I didn’t think it was all that edgy a thing to do. I’ve never understood God to be particularly male, and I really didn’t ever take much time to consider how this constant reference might paint God for those unlike me (as my privilege allows). But the longer I’ve had the trust of pastoral care over Christian communities – sharing in ministry with persons of variety of genders, backgrounds and orientations – I have begun to see the ways the constant portrayal of a male God is negatively affecting the life, faith and ministry of so many non-male persons – and thus causing a deep fracture for all of us who belong to the body of Christ.
I did not, however, anticipate the deeply negative response I’d get about this use of language from Christians across the spectrum and across the country. Some questioning my motives, some saying I’m embarrassing myself, and others accusing me of using God as a politically progressive tool (seemed mildly ironic).
Indiscriminately throughout the pages of both the Old and New Testaments there is plenty of imagery of the divine and sacred feminine. God as a woman in labour; as a nursing mother; as a brooding mother hen; as even a woman searching out a lost coin. There are of course lots of traditionally male qualities ascribed to God as well, but also plenty of other qualities and charisms than I cannot imagine we would traditionally ascribe to be male or female.
Like it or not – God does carry us in her womb. God does give everything of herself in delivering us by new birth. God does nurse and nurture us at her breast. And God does shed blood so that we might live.
God is as deeply feminine as she can be masculine.
And I’m with her. But more importantly. She’s always been with me.