Exercising the Feminine Aspect

by Julie Smith

The world is hungry for a bigger picture of God. We are hungry to understand and see a picture of the Divine that reaches out to nurture and lead us. We have the picture of The Good Shepherd in the image of Christ and we are drawn to see a picture of God that holds us in the hollow of that kind of protected loving. It gives us a glimpse of the picture of the Mother image of God.

Cultures throughout time have created pictures of God that include a feminine side. Sadly, throughout the history of Christianity, we have often vilified the feminine aspect of God. We hold a picture of the Godhead as being totally masculine. This has driven many from the doors of the church in search of a religion that will embrace the feminine qualities of God that in our hearts we know exists.

In psychology, the idea of balancing the masculine and feminine aspects within oneself is critical to becoming a whole, healthy individual. Within religion, balancing the feminine and masculine aspects of God is critical to becoming a whole and healthy church. We were created in the feminine/masculine aspects of God. We need to create a truer picture of this God within the church by equally honoring these qualities.

The masculine qualities can be compared with a life force energy that seeds the feminine qualities of the void. The feminine aspect is the womb-like environment that allows the seed of creation to grow. In nature, we are perfectly clear how this process works. In life, in spirituality, however, we seem to have become ignorant on this.

Nicodemus, an influential spiritual leader in the time of Christ, came for a secret interview to find out where Jesus received his incredible, healing, magical-like qualities. His level of spiritual power had not been seen in Israel for quite some time. Jesus embodied the balancing of the masculine and feminine aspects of God. He was Spirit-filled. He was the perfect receptive womb for the infilling of the power of God.

How might we understand the Divine Feminine aspects of God within our own lives and within the church? How might we become more Spirit-filled and empowered to let the healing power of God flow through us?

To exercise the feminine aspect within us is to commit to becoming empty. We do this through the regular spiritual practice of quietness and meditation. We include quietness before God as a vital part of becoming the womb for the Spirit to grow Divine gifts in.

We are quite familiar with the masculine aspects of doing and acting. We are out of balance in the feminine aspects of becoming empty and becoming Spirit filled.

We have excluded the female gender from important aspects of ministry within the church because we believe that the masculine aspect of God is superior. We have confused gender issues with the issues of the masculine and feminine qualities that both men and women possess. In reality, both aspects are equal and both genders are needed equally in all forms of ministry and leadership.

Until we understand the differences between the masculine and feminine aspects of God and we understand the need to balance these qualities in our own spiritual practice and in the practice of the church we will continue to argue over issues of equality and the ordination of women. Unless we grow in this area, we will become a dying church.

We see the results of our treatment of Mother Earth. It is but a symptom of our treatment of the Divine Feminine. We have the opportunity to correct our course. Whether we choose to do so or not remains to be seen.

The most important question facing us personally is whether or not we will open ourselves in quietness and emptiness before God. The spiritual future of our lives and of our church depends on our learning to exercise the feminine aspect and balancing it with our overdeveloped masculine aspect of doing.

The Spirit quietly reminds us, “Be still and know…”

Exorcising Our Demons

by Melvin Bray

This is a Home-Training essay...

If properly understood, Senator Barak Obama's remarks last week at the Constitution Center in Philadelphia, PA, constitute one of the most significant and honest public addresses ever made on America's 400-year struggle with race. Had we heeded DuBois' 1903 prophetic warning, The Souls of Black Folks, it would have found voice in the 20th century. There is a conversation America has, literally in some cases, been dying to have. That conversation is not in favor of any particular presidential candidate. Please don't relegate and dismiss it on those grounds. However, it is unlikely that we would be so inescapably confronted with such issues outside of a person of color experiencing some measure of success in a bid for the highest elected office in the land.

In her God's Politics post, "Putting Rev. Wright's Preaching in Perspective," Diana Butler Bass implored us to listen better to one another. Now let me suggest something to listen for. The thought is simple, but the lesson is not: Not everyone has experienced America in the same way. And we must lay down the self-absorption that makes us think this doesn't matter, if we are ever to begin to appreciate each other.

Permit a timely example. If you are not Black, you may not know that the Black church is the theatre in which Blacks have historically exorcised their demons—with the pastor as both theologue and thespian embodying the collective process of redemption for his/her people every week. Initially, church was the one place we could go that we weren't under massa's whip, which is why we relish it. Eventually, it became the center and sustainer of our community. So most of us understand Rev. Jeremiah Wright in a way that may escape others.

Church equaled life for us. Where else could we go to exorcise the demons of injustice and intransigence? Where else could we go to exorcise the marginalization and invalidation, the defeat and depression, the struggle and scorn? Where else could we go when our children asked—as my daughter did while coloring just the other day—if Jesus were brown or white? My answer was that he was born to Jewish parents, people of color, whom we usually refer to as olive-skinned. And her heartrending response at 5-years-old was: Why can't he be white? In all the pictures, he's white! Where else could we give cathartic voice to our inner demons in hopes of being transformed like the phoenix into "the better angels of our nature?"

Continue reading on God's Politics blog>>> Part 1 & Part 2

Women in Ministry

In conservative circles,

the ordination of women into ministry is still a hot topic.

Most of the world’s major religions still exclude women

from serving in this capacity.

If Jesus were here today

how do you suppose he would view the issue?

It seems that there were a lot of women involved in his ministry

here on earth.

Ironic isn’t it?

One of the things that Christ accomplished in his life

was to build a bridge back to God that had been lost

because of man’s fall.

This fall resulted in an imbalance between men and women.

Part of what Christ was doing in his earthly ministry

was to re-establish equality between men and women.

He did this by example.

Women played a major role in his ministry.

It is the subsequent record of scripture that fails to speak

more about the role of women.

The person entrusted with the resurrection story was a woman.

We discover through the Gnostic Gospels

that were written during a similar time period

to the canonical gospels

but were subsequently lost,

that the male disciples still had a difficult time overcoming

their cultural biases towards women

and that they found it difficult to believe that Jesus

had entrusted important truths to a woman.

So, here we are 2000 years later, arguing over the same things.

When are we going to truly listen to the Master’s words

and begin to follow the essence of his teachings?

At the heart of Christ’s teachings

is the theme that each person is a precious child of God.

One is not more important than another.

No gender is superior, no race is better than another,

and every soul is gifted to serve in a unique way.

The heart of Christ’s message is love.

Let’s put the heart back into the body of believers.

"God's people. Amen."

by Nathan Brown

Somehow we got to talking about famous and favourite opening lines to books. And as the conversation evolved, this was pared back to comparing the first three words of literary works.

Eventually we got to the Bible and, despite her lack of religious background, she was proud to tell me she knew the first three words of the Bible, “In the beginning . . .”

But then she asked, “So, what are the last three words?”

As I retrieved a New International Version from a nearby bookshelf, I had to admit I didn’t know. I flicked to the last page and unwittingly read: “God’s people. Amen” (Revelation 22:21).

“What?” she almost exploded, hearing four words in place of the three I had read.

It took me just a moment to figure out what she had heard.

“How can it say that?” she continued, her outrage belying her distinct lack of belief.

After a few moments, I was able to placate her indignation with assurances that what I had read and what she had heard were two separate things and that the Bible was not as misogynist as it appeared.

But as I did so, I was wondering how often we—either intentionally or unintentionally, individually and corporately—send the message that “God’s people are men.” Whenever women are under-represented in our church’s decision-making processes, whenever they are denied opportunities and recognition in ministry roles and whenever the language we use as a church fails to include both genders, that message is repeated.

And it is not that our church doesn’t have a tradition of women in leadership. In The Silent Church, Zdravko Plantak charts the decline of women’s involvement in leadership roles. The number of women in conference leadership positions reached a highpoint about 1915—notably the year of Ellen White’s death—then fell away to almost zero by 1950 with only slight recovery since that time. While we have never as a church had this issue settled—despite the prominent role of women among our church pioneers—it seems incongruous that we seem to doing worse in more recent times than we may have done in the past.

Unfortunately, the perception of the role of Women’s Ministries has not always been helpful in this regard. While a specialised ministry by women for women as a safe place for addressing specific issues of women’s experiences and faith is important, the continued marginalisation of women into such a specialised ministry can be a frustrating distraction and, at best, a temporary stop-gap measure. If women had more voices and greater leadership opportunities in the wider church, there would be less need to create these artificial distinctions.

The difficulty, of course, is that this is largely a cultural issue and that the relevant biblical references are open to such divergent readings. Various—generally male—voices rely on a superficial reading of texts such as 1 Corinthians 14:34 and Ephesians 5:21-33 to argue women should be kept “in their place.” But, urges writer Charlie Peacock,

“the fact that these verses and others from 1 Timothy have caused women, in particular, so much pain is a sad commentary on our failure to be the people of God. The whole assembly of followers has suffered as well, and God and his Word have been maligned” (New Way to be Human).

If we consider that Paul was urging Christians to conduct their public meetings and family relations in a manner appropriate to the culture in which they lived, these texts might be best read as endorsing equality of opportunity, voice and standing for women in churches in societies where this is culturally appropriate—and even culturally demanded. This makes even more sense when we consider other statements from Paul calling for a more egalitarian social organisation within the kingdom of God in light of the unifying reality of salvation:

“There is no longer Jew or Gentile, slave or free, male or female. For you are all Christians—you are one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28, NLT).

As we write new chapters of the story of our church, we need to focus on the unifying and inclusive reality of “God’s people” and stop misreading, mis-hearing and mis-stating the “Amen,” particularly in a church community in which women most often constitute the majority of active membership. The church as a whole, the experiences of many faithful women and our witness to the society in which we work will be stronger and healthier for it.

Living Water by Julie Smith

This was not the kind of woman that a decent person would have as a friend. This was a woman with a “history”. You know, a history with many men. In fact, this woman was so despised by the respectable people in her community that she would only go to the common well for water during the heat of the day when no one else was around. It was on one of these trips that she met a most unusual man.

The story in John 4 tells us that she was a Samaritan woman. Through her conversation with Jesus we learn that she had been married five times and was currently living with someone who wasn’t her husband! Now that sounds pretty normal for this day and age, but it was more than scandalous during the time of Christ.

Samaritans were despised by the Jewish people because of their religion and their race, yet Jesus saw in this woman an unlikely candidate for Gnosis. Maybe it was because of her situation that her heart was open and receptive. She had already lost her reputation, security, and status in the community. She was on the bottom rung.

The story continues and we find that Christ opens up to her—a woman, a Samaritan, and a blatant sinner—that He is the promised Messiah and that He came to establish a kingdom within people’s hearts. He promises her a legacy of “living water” that would replenish and nourish her soul in a way that no earthly ritual could provide or satisfy.

To the most unlikely and unworthy, God’s secret plan is revealed. It shows us the condition our hearts must be in to truly open up to the spiritual gems available to us through the Spirit. As long as we hold on to our spiritual pride and sense of already having everything we need through our religious forms and rituals, we will never progress any further down the spiritual path.

We will stay trapped in formalism, religiosity, and legalism. It matters not which faith tradition you come from—the result of spiritual pride is complacency and a powerless religion. Sadly, that is where many of us live and never even know that the “living water” that we seek is obtained only by the indwelling Christ power.

The promise given to the Samaritan woman was that the living water would be like a spring, bubbling up new and fresh every day. This is what the path of Gnosis is all about—it is about a living relationship with the Spirit—one that constantly grows and nurtures us into spiritual maturity. The path never ends and continues on into eternity.

As a Christian Gnostic, you never “arrive”. You are never content to sit back on your laurels and contemplate your great spiritual understanding and successes. Christ reminded us that we are to be servants—not lording it over others.

There are many who desperately need our service of love and ministration. There is no place in Christianity for arguing over doctrine, debating truth, and criticizing the “church”. The true Spirit of Christ is about sharing the love of the Divine and reconciling a fallen planet back to Source. We can only do this when we are filled with the love of God and our hearts are channels for that amazing love to flow out into a hungry, hurting world.

If you are tired of a powerless religion, if you are thirsty for living water, if you crave the meat of the gospel commission—I invite you to a deeper path of knowing Christ. The Apostle Paul’s prayer for spiritual growth in Ephesians 3 shows us the way:

“I pray that from his glorious, unlimited resources he will empower you with inner strength through his Spirit. Then Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust in him. Your roots will grow down into God’s love and keep you strong. And may you have the power to understand, as all God’s people should how wide, how long, how high, and how deep his love is. May you experience the love of Christ, though it is too great to understand fully. Then you will be made complete with all the fullness of life and power that comes from God.”

Find Your Voice by Julie Smith

After centuries of silence, women are finally finding their voices in the world. Searching through the records of history to get little glimpses of the role that women have played—their voices are strangely and eerily silent. They are the muted players behind the scenes—an important voice of at least half the population unheard from and unknown. It is part of the wounded feminine of our planet.

Women carry the wound in their bodies and in their heritage. The legacy of silence, the ability and right to have a voice and be heard, the need to be able to say “yes” or “no”, has stopped the voice and energy of women for thousands of years. But this is beginning to change. With the reemergence of the voice of women in our world we have hope for healing.

What happens when you lose the ability to speak your truth in the world? What is lost when you remain silent when you wish to speak? How often do women not say what they feel they need to say because they are afraid of making someone uncomfortable or that they will be punished in some way if they do, even if that person has violated a boundary? What happens to the soul of woman when she remains in relationships that refuse to hear her and deny the reality of her feelings and thoughts?

Silence of truth, the loss of a soul’s contribution, is a loss to our planet. We are each one unique. We have a special truth to tell to the world. When our voice is lost, the planet suffers. To begin to heal we must truly learn to speak and also learn to listen to the truth of each other.

The belief in the Divine Feminine, that God created humankind in the image of feminine and masculine is crucial to our learning to honor the feminine on our planet. There is a law that tells us that “As above, so below”. Our current, primarily masculine view of God does not reflect the reality of God but it reflects our wounded picture of God. When we learn to acknowledge the feminine aspects of God, the truth of as above, so below will start to become a reality.

Spirit and wisdom represents the feminine of God. It is the indwelling, the mysterious aspect of an ever-present God through the power of Spirit. Our picture of a very old father figure with the masculine qualities of control and dominion never seem to be balanced out by a mother figure with the nurturing, tending, loving qualities of the feminine

But this is beginning to change. Our world is hungry for a balancing picture of God. As women wake up and start to speak in the world, they have spoken up about the lack of a nurturing, caring picture of God. Where is the feminine of God that is mentioned in the creation story? What have we done with the dual aspects of God’s character?

Our planet will begin to heal, and we will begin to heal when we develop a more balanced picture of God and learn to honor the voice of women—the voice of the feminine in All That Is and in ourselves. To lose your voice is to lose your ministry and your avenue of service in the world. When this happens, the unique picture of God that you are here to represent is lost and cannot be replaced.

Don’t you think its time to be heard? It does not require ranting and raving, but a true searching and an honest voicing of what is in your soul. You have something of value to contribute to the world that no one else can. The planet needs the voice of Spirit filled women to speak out with the words of wisdom and love that will help all of us to find ourselves and grow into a fuller, richer future.

Ask for Spirit to fill you and give you the courage to speak the truth of your soul. Believe in the beauty of the soul’s message. Have the fortitude and perseverance to discover and understand why you are here and what your unique ministry is to the world. You can make a difference. You already do.