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Articles
by Rabbi Zalman Shacter-Shalomi
God,
Our Mother
By Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi
In
Biblical texts written during the age of the Patriarchs, God
was seen in masculine terms. Since the Bible refers to us
as "children of God" it was easy at that time to
project the sense of "Father" on the Deity. In the
beginning of the Genesis story, there is the statement that
"the Spirit of God hovered over the waters". The
image it evokes is of a mothering spirit warming, brooding
and caring for the new earth-egg and hatching life on Earth.
In
digging deeper, especially in the writings of the mystics,
we find traces of the feminine peeking out from underneath
conventional theologies. For example, one of the Hebrew divine
names, Shaddai, can be read as "the one with the nurturing
breasts." In the Kabbalah, the divine in-dwelling presence
was seen as the Shechinah here, too, seen as "the mother."
So, too, has the corpus of divine revelation been seen in
feminine terms as the Torah and the manifestation of the divine
in time as the Queen Sabbath.
In
Christianity, the third Person of the Trinity, the Holy Spirit,
has often been depicted as a dove. The Hebrew word for holy
spirit, Ru'ach Hakodesh, takes its verbs and adjectives in
the feminine since Ru'ach Hakodesh is a feminine word.
In
Catholicism, the image of Mary as the one to whom one can
come with any prayer and request has been celebrated. There
is even a prayer called the Memorari which contains words
that say no petition addressed to her will go unanswered.
In the Far East, in India, the feminine aspects of God have
many names: Lakshmi, Durga and Kali. And, in China and Japan,
one looks to Kwan Yin or Kanzeon as the source of compassion.
While
each tradition seeks to find ways of accommodating the feminine
into its theology, there seems to be a warm and loving quality
of compassion, Rachamin or "womb-feeling", that
we experience when we think of the divine feminine. The blues
expression, "Sometimes I feel like a motherless child"
points to the times when we do feel like a mothered child.
It makes such a difference when one begins to pray, especially
out of the awareness of one's diminishments, to address God
as Mother.
As
adults, and children before that time, we are sometimes in
need of the help that we got as children. Our pride of self-sufficiency
and "can-do" attitudes we experienced as young adults
needs to be set aside when we are in need of help with medicines,
incontinence, preparing our food, etc. This can be difficult
for us, especially if we have to rely on our own children,
who we parented, to help us. However, if we could see our
caregivers as compassionate hands of our Divine Mother, we
could let go of shame and embrace the blessings of Her loving
angels.
I
think also of the differences we experience when talking to
God as Father versus God as Mother. When we go to God, the
Father, we often take on the habit of offering something in
return for His help. We offer charity, social service, some
form of giving from ourselves that somehow is meant to even
the score of what we are about to receive. Not so when we
talk to God, the Mother. She asks nothing of us --- but to
let us be embraced by Her.
No
wonder Catholics say in their prayer, "Holy Mary, Mother
of God, be with us sinners now and at the hour of our death."
In Judaism, we speak of people who have had the glorious death
of dying by the Mother Shechinah's kiss. As elders, it would
serve us well to shift the root metaphor by which we address
God, from Father to Mother. It is much easier in this way
to affirm that underneath it all are the "Everlasting
Arms" (see Deuteronomy 33:27).
Articles
by Rabbi Zalman Shacter-Shalomi
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