by Christine Sine
I am back into doing daily awe and wonder walks, and it is wonderful. The delight of absorbing the beauty of spring and the joy of inhaling the fragrance of flowering trees is intoxicating. For the last couple of years I restricted my walks because of its impact on my asthma. Now I feel I have a new lease of life.
Last week I walked around Greenlake for the first time for months and drank in the beauty and the tranquility of the early morning scene. I often think that it must have been scenes like this that inspired my Celtic forebears to write poetry. It often has that impact on me, though I must confess I kind of cheat. I took a number of photos because I know that for me, these photos are a wonderful stimulus to meditation as they draw me back into the landscape that inspired my awe and wonder. Since then I have been mesmerized by this photo that I took during my walk and it inspired the prayer below.
Today I sat in silence for a few minutes reliving that scene and once more drinking in the beauty. I hope you too will pause in your day to absorb the beauty of God’s world around you and enter the serenity and peace that it beckons us into.
Still waters,
Reflections in the lake,
Serenity catches me by surprise.
I makes me pause,
And hold my breath,
When I catch glimpses,
Of this surpassing beauty.
A never to be forgotten moment.
An image imprinted on my mind.
God’s glory held in the stillness ,
Of a lake.
(c) Christine Sine 2023
by Shiao Chong
Mother’s Day makes me think about God’s maternal side. Christianity has been guilty of a patriarchal history that has been oppressive of women. Our conception of God as masculine, e.g. God as Father or King, certainly contributes to our slide into patriarchy. Although written in patriarchal contexts, the Bible itself does not refer to God exclusively in masculine metaphors. There are, albeit few, feminine metaphors used to describe God in the Bible. In this post, I want to highlight the maternal or motherly metaphors used.
God as Mother Bird & Mother Bear
One of the common images is God as a mother bird sheltering her children under her wings. We see this in Ruth 2:12 – “May you be richly rewarded by the LORD, the God of Israel, under whose wings you have come to take refuge.” (All references are from Today’s New International Version.) The Psalms used this imagery a number of times:
“Keep me as the apple of your eye; hide me in the shadow of your wings.” (Psa. 17:8)
“… I will take refuge in the shadow of your wings until the disaster has passed.” (Psa. 57:1)
“He will cover you with his feathers, and under his wings you will find refuge …” (Psa. 91:4)
Jesus picks up these images when he laments over Jerusalem:
“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing.” (Matthew 23:37; Luke 13:34)
These images paint God as a protecting and sheltering God for his people. But a variation of this image paints a God who also pushes his children to be independent and to grow stronger. Mother eagles are known to teach their young ones to fly by deliberately pushing them out of its nest but catching them before they plunge to their doom: “[God] guarded [Jacob] as the apple of his eye, like an eagle that stirs up its nest and hovers over its young, that spreads its wings to catch them and carries them aloft.” (Deuteronomy 32:10-11)
Before we claim that the Bible only reinforces stereotypes of motherly warmth and care with these images of God, check out Hosea 13:8 – “Like a bear robbed of her cubs, I will attack them and rip them open,” says the Lord. Here, we see that the maternal instinct to protect the children can produce wrath as much as warmth. Beware the fury of a mother! No sentimental mother-image here.
God as Human Mother
Of all the prophets, Isaiah seems to be the fondest in painting God as an actual human mother as these three verses attest:
“For a long time I [God] have kept silent, I have been quiet and held myself back. But now, like a woman in childbirth, I cry out, I gasp and pant.” (Isa. 42:14)
“As a mother comforts her child, so will I [God] comfort you; and you will be comforted over Jerusalem.” (Isa. 66:13)
“Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child she has borne? Though she may forget, I [God] will not forget you!” (Isa. 49:15)
That last verse is one of my favourite verses for use in the assurance of forgiveness in a worship service. I like it for its compassionate and faithful portrayal of God but also because it is one of the few feminine images of God that I can use in a service. It reminds the congregation that God is beyond gender; the gender pronouns are simply metaphors to help us understand God who is always beyond our full understanding. As theologian Lynn Japinga wrote, “Language about God should help us to understand and encounter God, but we should not confuse the reality of God with the limits of our language.” (Feminism and Christianity: An Essential Guide, Abingdon: 1999, p. 64)
I know there are many conservative Christians who are uneasy with using feminine images for God. But using female metaphors for God is not a radical feminist innovation as the biblical passages above show. It is also part of early Christian history. Here, I refer again to Japinga:
In the second century, Clement of Alexandria mixed his metaphors in his description of Christians nursing at the breast of God the Father. Medieval mystic Meister Eckhart described God’s activity: “What does God do all day long? God gives birth. From all eternity God lies on a maternity bed giving birth.” (Feminism and Christianity, p. 65)
But Never Called Mother God
It is true, however, that despite these maternal images, the Bible never used the feminine gender for God, and never called God “mother”. In an ancient patriarchal culture, it is not surprising that the ancient Hebrews used masculine pronouns for God. But I don’t think that was to suggest that God has a masculine gender.
According to the Hebrew scholar Samuel Terrien, the reason why the ancient Hebrews never called God “Mother” was that “they reacted against the allurement of the Mother Goddess cult because they somehow sensed the difference between true divinity and deified nature.” (Till The Heart Sings: A Biblical Theology of Manhood and Womanhood, Eerdmans, 1985, p. 60) According to Terrien, ancient mother goddess worship, unlike certain modern-day revivals, was never about empowering or glorifying women. It was about glorifying Nature, with a capital N. It was born not from a veneration of female humanity but rather born from a confusion of the divine with nature; in essence, Mother Earth was worshiped as Mother Goddess. Thus, all that are primary issues with nature, i.e. fertility, sexuality, life, health and death, were associated with the ancient Mother Goddess cults. These religions tend to merge sex with religious ecstasy and economic security (agriculture and husbandry). It is not surprising, then, that many of their religious rituals involved sexuality, even temple prostitutes.
Hence, the Old Testament’s refusal to call God “mother” was not a misogynist act. It was an attempt to emphasize God’s transcendence over nature and to steer away from the ancient goddess religions that over-emphasized divine immanence in nature. Neither was calling God “father” a glorification of human fathers or males but rather, the Old Testament consistently merged the images and metaphors of the fatherly God with motherly compassion and love, as the maternal images above suggest.
Something True About God
Mother’s Day is as appropriate as any occasion to recapture the biblical maternal images for God to help us see further truths about God. “People described God in feminine terms, not because God is actually a woman, but because feminine or maternal traits say something true about God and about their experience with God.” (Japinga, Feminism and Christianity, p. 66). The same must be said of masculine and paternal images for God. We must not confuse these metaphors with God’s reality.
- What do you think of God as a mother?
- Have you heard it used in a worship service?
- How did you feel or react?
Do you feel uneasy about such images or terminologies?
Shiao Chong is the Christian Reformed Campus Minister serving at York University in Toronto Canada as the Director of a student Christian club on campus. He attends Rehoboth Fellowship Christian Reformed Church in Toronto. He is married to Martha with three daughters. Chong has written articles for various Christian publications and blogs. His blogs at 3dchristianity.wordpress.com where this article first appeared.
This post has been reposted for 2023 but was originally part of a series posted for Mother’s day that focuses on the mothering aspects of God. Here are the rest of the posts: Enjoy
Meditation Monday – Connecting to the Mother heart of God
Biblical Maternal Images of God by Shiao Chong
Maternal Images of God – a video – reposted 2019
Let’s Get Creative – Honouring Our Mothers
Anselm’s Prayer to St Paul: Our Greatest Mother
We all need the Wholeness of God…this resource includes reflections and activities for coping and thriving during challenges in search of shalom as well as hope for restoration.
It’s been quite a week hasn’t it? For my British friends in particular, the coronation of King Charles III took centre stage and provided all of us with an incredible spectacle. I watched it with a mixture of delight and despair. I loved the pomp and ceremony and the strong affirmation of Christian faith while emphasizing the need to embrace people of all faiths and all cultures. I loved that Welsh, Scottish Gaelic and Irish Gaelic were all incorporated into the service, but like so many I grieve the impact of conquest and colonialism initiated by Kings and Queens of the past that devastated peoples and cultures, around the world including the Welsh, Irish and Scottish cultures. As I listened to the Welsh prayer, I remembered talking to a Welsh theologian in the mid 1990s who still struggled with how the English sought to annihilate his culture and customs.
The British Monarchy was not alone in its history of colonial conquest and genocide of Indigenous people. In many parts of the world the figure of the barbaric savage wandering the landscape aimlessly in search of food was manufactured to facilitate the theft of tribal lands. Here in the U.S. there was a deliberate policy to destroy the wild gardens native peoples cultivated, and slaughter the great herds of the plains they relied on for food. This made it easier to force Indigenous peoples onto reservations, often hundreds of miles away from their ancestral homelands. Even in Australia, I grew up with movies about the “savage” Indians who killed the white settlers.
My Meditation Monday: The Spiritual Practice of Changing Perspectives this week talked about the need to change the way we look at the world around us. It seemed very appropriate after watching the coronation. I talk about the need for more awe and wonder in our lives, which is a great place to start as it draws us out of ourselves and toward others and inspires pro-social behavior like generosity and compassion. We live in a changing world and need to change our perspectives on so many things in order to move forward in a way that will bring light and life and love into all we see and do.
Over the weekend 2 posts appeared on Godspace that I was too busy gardening and watching the coronation, to publicize. The first was the beautiful Taize style worship at St Andrews Episcopal Church. The second was a repost of another Mother’s Day focused article: Honouring Our Mothers which provides a number of creative ways to honour our mothers living or dead. I created a photo album for my Mum’s 90th birthday which I still love to look at on her birthday every year.
Freerange Friday last week was a guest post written by Hailey Scandrette. Reaching for Connections is a must read as I think we see in her comment “I truly believe that pursuing connection is a radical practice that grounds us in our own humanity in ways that can shift how we see ourselves and how we show up to the world around us. “
Our most popular post last week was Biblical Maternal Images of God in which I weave liturgy and scripture together. I produced the video several years ago, and love watching it each year. It makes me feel I am embraced by the God who is both mother and father to us.
May you too keep your eyes and ears open this week to the ways that God would challenge your perspectives on the world. Let me end with a prayer that might help with this.
Breathe in the peace of God,
Let it take root in the depths of your soul.
May your spirit grow and blossom,
And give fruit in its season.
Fruit to nourish the life of others,
And bring light wherever you go.
Many blessings
Christine Sine
New resource! At Godspace, environmental issues and creation care are two things we are passionate about. This document is designed to help you celebrate Earth Day by making a positive impact on the environment. It can be easy to feel overwhelmed by the scale of environmental issues facing our planet, but by taking small, simple steps, we can all make a difference! Click here to download today.
by June Friesen
As I was pondering this idea of teacher appreciation many things came to my mind. I thought of the many teachers I had over my lifetime and those who are still teaching me new things in my life. For most of us the first teachers and possibly the most influential were and are parents and extended family. Pictured above is my kindergarten and first grade teacher. I am the little girl with the doll almost as big as I was. This woman made a deep impression on my life not only in her teaching but her love and patience with all of us little ones. There were many other teachers that helped prepare me for my journey through life in school from kindergarten through several years of college. Sadly I have to admit that many probably did not receive the appreciation at the time that was benefitting from their teaching because education was more of a requirement than something one necessarily always appreciated.
Jesus was the greatest teacher that ever lived on this earth. He came to teach humanity about how to live together in peace and unity, and also taught that all people were important to Him including the children, adults, the sick and the sorrowful. He was known to intervene when people tried to keep certain people, even children, away from Him.
Matthew 19: 13-15 One day children were brought to Jesus in the hope that he would lay hands on them and pray over them. The disciples shooed them off. But Jesus intervened: “Let the children alone, don’t prevent them from coming to me. God’s kingdom is made up of people like these.” After laying hands on them, he left.
I have always loved the picture that this brings into my mind. Take a moment and maybe even close your eyes and picture Jesus sitting on the hillside and the children gathering around Him, pushing in and trying to get closer than their sibling or their friend. Consider if you would how it might have felt to the child as He touched them, as He blessed them. For many years I had infants through five year olds in my home and having them surrounded by a peaceful environment was so key for them. In another Scripture Paul in his writing pays respect to Timothy’s mother and grandmother by their names for the way they had taught Timothy as he grew up.
2 Timothy 1:3-7 3-4 Every time I say your name in prayer—which is practically all the time—I thank God for you, the God I worship with my whole life in the tradition of my ancestors. I miss you a lot, especially when I remember that last tearful good-bye, and I look forward to a joy-packed reunion. 5-7 That precious memory triggers another: your honest faith—and what a rich faith it is, handed down from your grandmother Lois to your mother Eunice, and now to you! And the special gift of ministry you received when I laid hands on you and prayed—keep that ablaze! God doesn’t want us to be shy with his gifts, but bold and loving and sensible.
Many, if not all of us, have had many teachers throughout our lives. It usually begins within our family units and parents, moving on to school and then society and university. However, there are so many people who are in our life pathway who teach us things as friends, medical personnel, or workers at a store who help us. As I was considering this I remembered some specific teachers that had a great influence upon my life. Usually it was because of how they treated me, how they encouraged me in my learning experience, and because they actually took time to help me understand something I struggled with understanding.
While my teachers all through elementary school, high school, and college were instrumental in me gaining wisdom to navigate in life as well as a career, what I learned at home has helped me in so many ways. Some of the skills I learned were gardening, cooking, and preserving vegetables and fruits. Recently I had many tomatoes, cucumbers, mangos etc. in my kitchen stash. Below are some photos of things that I love to make. One is cranberry salsa, a recipe I discovered in a newspaper here in Phoenix years ago. It is a family favorite but also a favorite requested when invited to Christmas parties. I learned these skills first at home but also in school as when I was in 7th grade through 10th grade I was able to take a course called Home Economics. I learned so many things there as well.
Over the years I have also been active in teaching others skills that they may not have learned in their growing up. Sometimes it has been when someone has actually been living with us. Years ago I had some young teens from Jamaica in our youth group. They begged for a cooking class so once a week in the even we gathered in the church basement for hands on cooking class.
So today – who are the teachers in your life that you are grateful for? What are the things you are able to do because of teachers in your life – either in the home, school or workplace?
And as I close today I also want to challenge us in our spiritual walk. It is important to be open to those who are able to help us in a relationship with God. We can do that by having one on one relationships where a book of the Bible is studied. Or it can be a group study. And even if you are not close to everyone – guess what – zoom is a great opportunity to bless people over many miles. I have a great zoom group that I was invited to join at the beginning of Covid. I have only met one person and that was only two months ago but it has been a great nurturing and teaching experience for me.
And one last fun thing for me – I have learned how to embrace other cultures and even wear their clothing. I am involved with many refugees from Africa, and they have gifted me clothes which I wear proudly. They have taught me so much in so many areas of life.
So who are some special people who have taught you things over your life time? Do they know how much you appreciate their influence in/on your life? Maybe today is the day to tell them ‘thank you.’
by Christine Sine
By the simple act of altering the position of one’s head a different kind of world may appear
(Robert Macfarlane Landmarks 241)
A few years ago, I decided to have what I called “A Year of Seeing Differently. I had no idea how true this would be or how much of an impact this concept would have on me. “Read life differently” became so important to me that it became a way of life rather than just a season.
I had fun looking in different ways at all kinds of things from leaves to scenery to give me that different perspective I often need that is little more than a tilt of my head away.
Of course I could try standing on my head, lying on the ground or looking through the lens of a camera, or looking through my fingers or even just moving around a tree. All of these actions give me a different perspective, an important perspective that when combined together slowly give me a full understanding of what I am looking at. I have not tried standing on my head yet to get a different perspective of Jesus, but I have spent the last few years looking at him through different lenses too.
More than anything, that year taught me to look at life through the lens of awe and wonder which led to the writing of The Gift of Wonder, which I still think is the best book I have written.
Writing The Gift of Wonder changed me and my spiritual perceptions in ways I never anticipated. It all started with the awe and wonder walks Tom and I instituted after reading about the impact of awe and wonder depletion on our lives. Take notice, take notice, take notice was the core of what I read – take notice of the small things, the big things, the different things , the things that break our hearts and the things that give us goosebumps. That was what I picked up as I researched awe and wonder, and then I applied it to my life.
Noticing Begets Noticing
Wow – what a year. Noticing begat noticing begat noticing. Once I opened my eyes, awe and wonder became a new way to see the world and new spiritual lens through which to view everything. It doesn’t mean I naively saw only good things around me, but it meant I could look with awe and wonder at those who suffer as well as those who rejoice. There is so much resilience in suffering people. There is kindness and compassion, there is generosity that overwhelms me. When I look with the eyes of awe and wonder I am inspired to respond.
Here on Godspace I began the year with the blog series “for love of the world God did foolish things’ – so many foolish things that God has done – from creating humankind from soil, and giving us free will knowing that one day we would mess it all up, to putting into action a plan for our redemption that depended on a baby born to an unwed mother. That baby, Jesus, then ended up being crucified by the religious and political leaders of the day. How foolish can you get?
If that wasn’t enough to rattle my cage and encourage me to see differently, I started to take more notice of the political landscape and the stories that broke my heart. Gun violence, political chaos, hurricanes, fires and migrant caravans all pulled my heart apart. Yet they also inspired me as I gazed with awe and wonder at first responders risking their lives for people they never knew, and watched the resilience in the midst of desperation of people who have lost everything.
The event that most impacted me that year was Ford vs Kavanaugh. It compelled me to look at the story of Mary and Joseph with fresh eyes, revealing new layers of the gospel story and new depths of awe and wonder for this incredible couple and the incredible journey they embarked on, literally changing the world as a result.
Seeing Differently As A Way of Life.
My year of seeing differently became a lifetime of seeing differently. COVID reinforced that need. All I did was resolve to keep noticing and keep going on awe and wonder walks. That of course means I needed to slow down long enough to do so. I need constant reminders however. A more recent article Why You Need to Protect Your Sense of Wonder – Especially Now. the author suggests:
Awe’s benefits extend beyond stress relief, however. Research has shown that experiencing something bigger than us helps us transcend our frame of reference by expanding our mental models and stimulating new ways of thinking. This can increase creativity and innovation, and facilitate scientific thinking and ethical decision making.
It also helps us build relationships. Though feeling awe frequently happens in solitude, it draws us out of ourselves and toward others and inspires pro-social behavior like generosity and compassion. Some scientists theorize that it has evolved to aid group cohesion and provide survival advantages. For work groups experiences of awe can lead to increased collaboration, team building, and social connection.
Wow, awe and wonder here we come! Something good did come out of COVID. We started to notice the world around us in new ways. Awe and wonder is not just a form of observation either. It means noticing emotions and our responses to them. It means not turning our backs because we feel overwhelmed but allowing the spirit of God to work through us in response to what we have noticed be it by the simple act of picking up a rock that caught our attention or by getting involved with the homeless or the victims of fire.
Awe and wonder has the capacity to change us and to change the world. I know it has done that for me, will you allow it to do it for you too?
Read life differently.
Read with love and not with hate,
with compassion and not with judgment,
with generosity and not with scarcity.
See your cup,
not half full,
not half empty
but overflowing with goodness and light and life.
Read life differently.
Look for the wonder of uniqueness,
not the exclusion of sameness.
Embrace don’t reject.
Forgive don’t condemn.
Seek Jesus in all things.
Work diligently to know,
he who is the way, the truth, the life.
Follow his footsteps,
in the way that leads to eternal life.
Amen.
A contemplative service with music in the spirit of Taizé. Carrie Grace Littauer, prayer leader, with music by Kester Limner and Andy Myers.
Thank you for praying with us at St Andrews Episcopal Church!
“L’ajuda Em Vindra” (I Lift up my Eyes to the Hills); “Kristus Din Ande” (Jesus, Your Spirit in Us)
Music copyright and all rights reserved by GIA/Les Presses de Taizé Permission to podcast/stream the music in this service obtained from One License with license #A-710-756.
“This is my Father’s World”
Alternate arrangement by Kester Limner, shared under the Creative Commons License, Attribution (CC-BY) Public domain lyrics by Maltbie Davenport Babcock, 1901.
“Children of the Heavenly Father” (simple folk arrangement)
Traditional Swedish folk hymn; Arrangement by Kester Limner and Andy Myers in honor of Naomi.
Service readings:
John 14:1-14
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“Through You”, a meditation by Steve Garnaas-Holmes. Unfoldinglight.net
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“The contemplative experience originates from this totally new kind of awareness of the fact that we are most truly ourselves when we lose ourselves. We become ourselves when we find ourselves in Christ. . . Contemplative prayer is a deep interior activity in the very roots of our being in response to God who has the initiative and yet draws us into certain very subtle forms of obedient initiative on our own side.” — Thomas Merton, “Contemplation in a World of Action”
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“Let us now imagine that this castle, as I have said, contains many mansions, some above, others below, others at each side; and in the center and midst of them all is the chiefest mansion where the most secret things pass between God and the soul.” — Teresa of Avila, “The Interior Castle”
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Excerpt “The Calling”, Mirabai Starr, from the Introduction to her translation of Teresa of Avila’s “The Interior Castle”
Originally posted here on May 2, 2015 as part of a series on the mothering heart of God.
With Mother’s day just over a week away here in the U.S., Australia and New Zealand, it is a good time to think about how we honour our mothers at this season. I know that it is a little late for for those of you in the U.K. where mothering Sunday is on the 4th Sunday of Lent. Ephesians 6:2-3 says: “Honor your father and mother”—which is the first commandment with a promise— “so that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth.” It is never too late to honour our mothers and maybe a late celebration is more special than one when everyone else is celebrating.
There are many creative ways to honour our mothers at this season. Making them something special is one of those ways. I think that all of us value something much more when it has been made specifically for us with love and care than we do when something is bought.
Here are a couple I came across in the last few days that I really enjoyed. Most of them are very simple.
Here is a great and simple way to make stepping stones using a cake pan rather than expensive molds. As I looked at this I thought of the broken china my mother loved that I wish I had collected and incorporated into stepping stones – maybe for my own sacred space.
To personalize a stepping stone for your mother (and this is for kids of all ages) use these instructions.
One very special creative project I did for my mother’s 90th birthday was to create a memory book. In my case it was a photo album, but a scrap book of special memories would be just as special and is something that kids love to help put together. Something like this is not only special for our mothers, but also for those who create it.
Another beautiful creative project for those who may not be into gardening, is to make a mother’s day plaque. As you can imagine there are loads of these on the internet but I particularly love this “mother and me” plaque, but this DIY instruction on making plaques or stepping stones can help you get creative.
Another possibility is a DIY mug – I got my mug at the thrift store for $1.00 It was well worth the investment.
Some of you know that after I lost my mother in 2015, I created a special sacred space in my garden. I planted roses, her favourite flower and one that is often used in memorial gardens. This year I added decorative pots and a water feature. We are all linked to our mothers in special ways that do not end with their deaths. Remembering, rejoicing and grieving can all become part of the creative process.
This is not just a space to remember my own mother but one in which to sit and savour the presence of God and to honour all of those who have so richly blessed and enriched my life.
So as you get ready for mother’s day this coming week how could you honour your mother, living or dead, in a special way?
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