Torah tells us that humanity is created in the image and likeness of God, "male and female he created them." Gender is essential to our species, so essential in fact that we often impose gender on God as well. No matter how strongly my Christian students (I teach religious studies as Middle Tennessee State University) affirm the nongendered nature of God, they balk at the notion of calling God "Mother". For them the Trinity is not a metaphor: God the Father is not a Mother, and the Son of God is not the same as the Daughter of God. For billions of us humans God is masculine, if not actually male. Yet as Torah again reveals, "it isn't good for man to be alone." Wholeness demands the linking of male and female, masculine and feminine.
In Hinduism this is clear and overt: every God has his Goddess, because one without the other is incomplete and powerless. While Hinduism may be the most explicit example of the Divine Wholeness, the other religions of the world also seek to balance the masculine with the feminine.
In Judaism She is Chochmah (Wisdom), the first of God's creations, the Torah, the Sabbath, the Shechinah (God's Presence), and the people Israel as a whole. In Christianity She is Sophia, Mary the Mother of God, Queen of Heaven, and the Church. In Islam we learn that Buraq, the horse that carried Muhammad (PBUH) from Mecca to Jerusalem from when he rose to heaven to meet God, had the face of a woman. Muslims also revere Mary, the mother of Jesus, as an intermediary between the people and Allah, and Muhammad revered his daughter Fatimah as if she were a divine being, saying "Allah, The Most High, is pleased when Fatimah is pleased. He is angered, whenever Fatimah is angered!" Buddhism also treasures the image of the Mother and the Feminine as essential to the whole, and Taoism speaks of the Tao as the Great Mother, and sees the feminine yin as essential as the masculine yang in the dynamic balance of reality that is tai chi.
The challenge of our time isn't to move from masculine to feminine, but to recognize that both are part of a greater unity that is ultimate Reality. I believe we are on the cusp of a true revolution of human spiritual consciousness, a turning of the wheel of wisdom that will allow us to speak of God the Father and God the Mother even as we know that God includes and transcends these and any other terms we may employ.
The return of the Mother will carry with it the release of women from social, economic, and religious bondage, and the release of the feminine energies that both women and men embody. My own spiritual path is enmeshed with this return. The Mother is my experience of God, and meeting Her in/through the Bible (especially the Book of Proverbs, and the Wisdom of Solomon) is my life work.
Rami Shapiro will be presenting a retreat at Wisdom House, March 11-13, 2011 on the theme: "The Lady with a Thousand Faces: Wisdom in the World's Religions." To register see www.wisdomhouse.org/program/calendar.html.
