An image of God beyond violence

National Catholic Reporter, Dec 3, 1999 by Kathleen Fischer

Discovering God's feminine side means less stress on power and control

A young friend of ours recently attempted suicide. She nearly succeeded. For the next four days she lay in her hospital bed, listlessly staring at the ceiling, refusing to get up, to wash, even to look at or respond to anyone who spoke to her.

On the fourth evening, she became aware of a woman standing in her room. The woman took Molly's hands in hers and ever so gently asked, "Who was it that hurt you so badly?" Molly did not answer.

The woman stayed for several minutes, quietly holding Molly's hands. Then, turning to leave, she said, "I am the chaplain here, and I will be on the floor all night. Call me anytime if you feel like talking."

At three o'clock that morning, Molly got up and called the chaplain. She remembers it as the moment in her long struggle with manic/depressive illness when she finally chose life.

"Now I know why in my support groups they have sometimes spoken of God as a woman," she later said. "Never have I experienced such comparison and gentleness as that woman showed me in those few words and in the whole quality of her presence. Only a womanly God could have reached me in the state I was in that night. I hated myself. I didn't think I could ever be forgiven. And I had made myself absolutely unreachable."

Here are two contrasting stories, no less true.

In recent weeks Seattle has mourned several local women who were murdered as they tried to escape situations of domestic violence. One was the mother of two teenage daughters, both brutally killed with her in their home. Another was shot along with the young daughter she had just picked up at a "safe exchange site" for the husband's visitation rights. He had secretly followed them back to their car and opened fire on them there.

Domestic violence is a complex issue, and we may not immediately think it has anything to do with images of God. But professionals who work with men who batter report that assaultive men believe the stereotypes about male-female roles and identify strongly with the stereotypical male role. They feel they have the right to control anyone with less power or status. Battering is the most effective way to establish one's dominance.

In the background of this misguided supremacy is the image of God as male, silently but powerfully legitimating male control at the very highest level of power.

Most of us grew up simply taking a male God for granted and living unconsciously with the consequences. In recent years, this exclusively male imaging of God has been called into question by growing numbers of theologians, reflecting both biblically and philosophically on the issue. Now there is quite a struggle in the churches over how we should speak of God.

Little wonder people on different sides of the matter take it so seriously. It has immense practical implications for our personal and cultural lives. It deeply affects how we see ourselves as women and men.

In Memories of God: Theological Reflections on a Life, Roberta Bondi gives a moving account of her discovery that as a woman she images God. Having prayed the psalms for years, she finds herself one day unexpectedly confronted in them by a violent male world. She feels anguish, betrayal and despair as a woman in a male world. Shutting her eyes in her hopelessness, she begs God to help her.

Gradually behind her closed eyes she becomes aware of a living landscape. There, under a large oak tree surrounded by all the animals of the earth she sees a tall, dignified woman dressed in brown. Self-possessed and graceful, the woman looks something like Bondi's mother. Gradually, Bondi realizes: "This, too, is the image of God!" She is filled with amazement and delight:

"In spite of all my difficulties, I had not even known before that I hadn't believed I was made in the image of God. Now, for the first time, I knew it to be true. I, as a woman -- neither as a defective male nor as a generic human being, but as a woman -- am made in the image of God. I no longer felt divided against myself."

Other women have shared with me how powerful it is to hear the divine named as female. One rejoiced as she repeated the refrain of a litany: "All you works of God, praise Her and glorify Her forever." Another felt her experience as a mother fully embraced for the first time, as a prayer leader intoned: "O Spirit of God, you who hover over us as a mother over her children." Women turn to God as Holy Wisdom, Sophia and Shekinah; as compassionate sister, delightful daughter, supportive midwife, wise crone.

They say they could not have imagined the resulting relief and freedom, the breaking open of inner regions hitherto unknown: "Something sprang to life in me. I knew a connection and acceptance that made me want to laugh and weep all at once."

Surely this kind of joy and liberation is a work of God's Spirit. Have these women discovered anything else but what the Bible tells us in its very first chapter, that God created humankind in the divine image, male and female (Gen 1:27)?