Beyond God the Mother

As I write this it is just 24 plus hours ago that we passed through Mother’s Day, my least favorite creation of Hallmark, Inc. “M is for the million cards they market; O means only that its growing old…” My dissent can be traced directly to the fact that our mother died at forty three, when I was not quite five. At school and at church thereafter, I learned quickly to dread the second Sunday of May, especially when we were forced to make something cute or meaningful for our mothers, and when they gave prizes to the youngest mother (they don’t do that one anymore) and to the oldest mother and to the mother with the most begats under her, well, belt. I cringed inwardly when recitations of the irreplaceable importance of mothers were read. I wanted to be absent that day.

As far as my brother, sister, and I were concerned, our Aunt, our Father’s sister, slid almost seamlessly into the mothering role, though she wisely insisted that we address her by her proper familial relationship, and not as Mother. When I tried to turn those Mother’s Day pretties into Aunt’s Day pretties, I was met with looks of reproof or pity or both. It never seemed quite right.

I had been named for our Aunt, as it turns out, even though I was a boy-child. Rebellion ensued when that fact first dawned on me, but it lasted about a minute. Now I wouldn’t have it any other way.

My life with Aunt Dee was positive. She was a solid source of support, a great teacher, and a trusted confidant. My late mother, by all accounts, including my rather sketchy, barely remembered one, was a fine woman, multi-layered, and self-assured.

I cannot find the reference, but one of Wm. Faulkner’s characters, speaking way before women were ordained by anybody anywhere to any office of the church, says something like, “A minister is a kind of a woman.” I’m not too offended by that. In another place Faulkner observes that “A mare is more like a man than a woman.” In most respects those are unrelated comments, except that they both make a lot of sense.

Later this very week, the DaVinci Code comes to the big screen. I don’t think it’s much of a book, but it is the largest selling novel of all time, so what do I know? And the idea of the “Sacred Feminine” figures within its labyrinthine mixture of legend, foolishness, and just plain foolishness.

In seminary, I read Mary Daly’s shockschrift Beyond God the Father. I agreed with her that there are problems with the father language, especially when the image is built from our human experience of fatherhood, which can be problematic at best and abusively terrifying at worst. The light should be projected not from us to God, but the other way round. I understood all that, but thought the issue unresolved when she turned toward the feminine principle. God the Mother presents at least as much difficulty as imagery more masculine. An earthly father can be distant or violent. An earthly mother can be as mean as a snake or as cold as ice.

The primary punch that gives the Trinity its vitality is relationship. Father-Son-Spirit share relationship in spades. Always have, always will. Mother-Son-Spirit (or Mother-Daughter-Spirit for that matter) would tote that load too. So would Parent-Child-Spirit, though the abstract parent might not satisfy as much as the specific Mother or Father, and likewise, children only come in son or daughter varieties (okay, leaving aside real hermaphroditic cases). Abstractions counter revelation; they don't deepen the mystery, they just cloud pictures and obscure thoughts.

Like what I’m doing with this unfortunate burst of verbiage. It started with a rant against Mother’s Day, and all of a sudden we're back at Nicea pretending to unravel the core, trinitarian truth of our faith, and trying to take down the book that has made Dan Brown richer than Croesus while we’re at it. I’m not sure where I’m headed, except to say that sometimes Mother’s Day excesses began to look like Mother-worship. Father’s Day could go off that same cliff if it weren’t for the fact that no one takes fathers that seriously these days. Maybe that would allow new meaning to come to the word, this time from God’s side.

Relationship is all. Over job descriptions and modes and shifting states of being. Over one gender or the other or both merged. The Greek in us wants an elegant argument that leads to clarity. The Hebrew in us opens all windows on life, on messy, complicated, aromatic, boisterous, beautiful life. God is love, yes. God is life, too. And life is a dance, right? Perichoresis!

Happy Relationship Day. Happy Dance of God with God and with God Day. Swing your partner at the ball. It’s all right if it’s your Mom. Buy her a corsage if it pleases. Doesy-doe.

- Uncle Dee