But, you see, God is NOT a Male. Jesus took on a male body and maleness in this world. But this does not "prove" male superiority as some would claim. God is pure Spirit, not a "dominant male." Jesus himself possessed a holistic spirituality and spoke passionately of wanting to gather the people of Jerusalem into his arms as a mother hen gathers her chicks. If God created women as well as men in God's Image, then God is Mother as well as Father. I submit that women NEED to occasionally pray to God as their Mother to deepen their relationship with God and simultaneously understand their dignity as women, both body and soul.
Whom does a girl go to to discuss the trials and pains of menstruation? My Mom explained to me about what would happen to my body before my periods started. My Mom taught me how to hold a hot water bottle to my stomach for cramps, or to use a heating pad, or take Motrin. Women and girls mother each other through this passage to womanhood. Why not talk to God our Mother about these things, knowing that God in Her wisdom understands how important this bodily ritual is because God our Mother CREATED us to have the dignity of a body preparing for possible pregnancy and the miracle of birth?
Whom do women/girls go to to understand sex when they first begin to have intercourse? Women and other girls, of course. When women first begin to experience sexual intercourse, there is an inner need to understand arousal, pleasure, and climax from the feminine perspective, which includes the mind, and the emotions as well as the body. I remember praying passionately to God my Mother to help me understand how my whole self needed to "work together" during love-making. "You understand," I said, and meant it.
If women connected their dignity AS women, AS made in God's Image, to their sexual lives, they would not feel the need to give themselves in sex before they entered a committed relationship. They would recognize that their bodies are sacred gifts which can't be separated from the simultaneous gift of their minds and hearts. Connecting so strongly to God the Woman, the Mother in prayer as my husband and I adjusted to each other sexually, intensified my respect for my own feminine body, mind, and heart, and my ability to love my husband to my depths as we made love, and in so doing made "more" love for our committed relationship.
When I had my babies, in the throes of delivery, I felt one with God, Mother Creator, Who empowered me to share in the creative power of God in a unique feminine act. Loving and raising my children and grand-children as well as a fragile, limited human being can, is part of my covenant with God, my living-out the awesome spiritual reality of being a woman created in God's Image.
As a Co-Pastoral Administrator of a Parish, once again I turned in prayer to God, Mother Creator, asking that holy power, authority, and creativity be Spirit-Inspired, not ego-inspired during my tenure. That I would pour God' love over my people, and shepherd them well, remembering always that God the Good Shepherd says "I Myself will shepherd My sheep."
St. Paul, in a moment of inspired prayer, wrote in Galatians 3:27-28 that because we all drink of the one Spirit, "there is neither Jew nor Greek, neither slave nor free, neither male and female, for all are one in Christ Jesus." God does not discriminate against women, or subordinate women because of their femaleness - in God's eyes we are equal.
Women are equally capable of being disciples of Jesus the Christ, and receiving every gift the Spirit can pour over us. In fact, Jesus' women disciples did not leave him during his Passion, and they helped bury him and were the first ones present when he rose from the dead. Yet many churches still do not incorporate women into positions of administration, or preaching, which are clearly gifts of the Holy Spirit, even though women are part of the Church community through their Baptisms.
A priest in South Africa, Fr. Larry Kaufmann, CSsR, an ardent believer in women's God-given equality with men, wrote in a letter to his good friend theologian Elizabeth Johnson "May all women all over the world leave their pews, get into the aisles, and dance their way to freedom and full participation in the church." Praying to God as Mother, as Creator Mother, can strengthen women's soul-deep understanding and acceptance of their dignity and authority and generative power as women created in God's Image. May the dance of freedom and love and joyful exploration of our gifts be part of our personal calls to live out our incalculable worth as daughters of God, created in Her Image.