Inclusion - Gender Equality and God

 GENDER EQUALITY AND GOD

The letter came in the mid 1970s and sounded dangerously feminist to me. It was an invitation that would eventually lead to a paradigm shift in my life. But that came later. At the moment my days were full and I was content. Raising five of our own plus assorted foster children left little time or inclination to question the values I was passing on. Values deeply rooted in my childhood and the teachings of my Christian faith. I loved my family and clearly was loved in return—first as a daughter, then as wife and mother. My friends from church would chuckle that I was spoiled rotten!

My love affair with my Heavenly Father was steeped in awe and trepidation. The concept of a Mother God did not exist. I’d never noticed that Christians were a motherless family and it would be many years before I saw a link between this view of God and traditional attitudes toward women.

I sometimes chafed that men held all the power, or hurt for women whose husbands might belittle them; still, life was good. I might not like it that the female was designed to be lesser, but who was I to question God? It hadn’t yet occurred to me that God’s designs were understood through male interpretation and translation. Through givens born of ancient norms.

In 1959 I had gladly given up my identity to become Mrs. John Spoelhof. Later it was “The John Spoelhof family.” Somewhere, hidden with the children under the veil of John’s name, stood JoMae Keuning. There came a point when I began to feel constricted and wanted to get out and grow up. Not out of marriage, but out of anonymity; into more autonomy for myself and women everywhere.

Yet when that letter came from a new movement in our denomination seeking gender equality within the church, I was afraid. It was an invitation to an annual conference on ordaining women. I recognized the justice, yet sensed that any interest would open a Pandora’s Box and change my life forever. So I tucked it away. I feared offending God.

A lifelong bookworm, I began to read more and more on the subject. Slowly the sentiments of feminism began to ring a bell. During the 1980s, I did start to crack open the box. I dug out the letter and attended conferences to study the issues and question traditional interpretations of the teachings in the Bible. In the King James Version of my youth I mainly saw myself referred to as a son of God. One day it struck me that if a “son,” I was a female son! What a difference that made! Meanwhile new translations changed the wording and confirmed my identity as a daughter on those pages.

I wondered, “If sons could mean sons and daughters; brothers, brothers and sisters, how long would it be before one could catch a glimpse of a Mother lost within the identity of our Heavenly Father?” I pondered such questions until after much reading and prayerful study, I learned to know God in a new way. I began to relate in a manner that recognized both the feminine and masculine face of God. If my sisters, mother and grandmothers—along with all God’s other daughters—were created in God’s image, there must be a feminine face to reflect, I reasoned.

I found it increasingly difficult to worship with only male leaders, with masculine language for humanity, and as if God were only male. I toyed with pronouns. Translated the hymns while singing. Until going to church became exhausting. I longed for childhood’s simple understanding of God. When God was my beloved Father; before I’d noticed there was no Mother. But you can’t go back.

Gradually our church did move forward. After a long and painful struggle in the ‘90s, it now ordains pastors and other leaders who are female. It has become more sensitive concerning language for humans. However, to this day, only masculine pronouns are used for God—albeit a bit less redundantly than in the past.

Today I still trust the God of my childhood and worship in the same church. The same faith—but with a fresh paradigm. The difference is a new understanding of who Godde is, and a new confidence in who I am. Godde is my complete Parent. My mind’s eye even sees this Mother/Father Godde spelled in the ancient English manner to de-emphasize the maleness.

Mine is an ongoing quest. It is very personal, admittedly imperfect and often lonely. But I believe there is a direct relationship between how we view, speak of and understand our Divine Parent, and how we view ourselves and each other. Language is that important. As long as Godde is known and worshiped as if only male; as long as the female reflection of Godde is absent, women will struggle against being treated and viewed as ‘lesser’; will struggle against feeling ‘lesser.’

-JoMae Spoelhof
   8/16/11

Written 8-16-11 and later featured on Jann Aldredge-Clanton's 'Changing Church' Blog:
http://jannaldredgeclanton.com/blog/?p=1382

Dance of the Said and the Unsaid - Translation/Interpretation

Dance of the Said and the Unsaid

This morning on Face Book I read an interesting piece on hermeneutics.  It was "The Interpreter" by Daniel Cohen, from the Feminism and Religion blog.  I saw something like this - that reading involves both the dark marks and the bed of light background they rest upon.  The idea is that the blank background is as important to decipher as are the black marks.  The dark printed words speak of what must be said and called attention to.  The light bed they are set on contains the context.  The givens.  Information so common to the reader it needn't be mentioned.  After interpreting the printed words of an ancient writing, it is just as important to understand what didn't need to be spelled out. 

I envisioned a dance of black and white.  Where together the spoken and the unspoken words begin to tell the whole story. And even where much of the context detail (once as familiar as the air first readers breathed) has been lost, awareness of that loss and the mystery of that common background must play its powerful part in translating and interpreting old teachings. There is power between the lines!

Link:  http://networkedblogs.com/CajX8

I posted this link on Face Book with the following comment:

Here is a story that made me think about the backgrounds of our ancient stories/lessons that were so familiar they didn't need to be spelled out.

.

..."every text contains two messages, one formed by the ink and the other by the spaces left between the inked letters, the material included and that which was excluded, and that the message was never complete if only the first text was read."

...[what was excluded was] "so well-known to the people in whose times the texts were written that they were taken for granted by the writers, who therefore felt no need to mention them.  Yet it was only because of the work of the cattle-farmers that others had leisure to write texts. And so once again he had shown us that what the text does not contain is as important to a true interpretation as what is made explicit in it."

-JoMae
 9/15/12

Beveled Rainbows

Beveled Rainbows

Rainbows bless our home

On sunny mornings

Hovering on the staircase

Splashing color on the walls

Moving along the woodwork

At the opening of the door

With its beveled glass window

They absolutely dance!

                                -JoMae

                                              2/12/08

                       b         y           

T         A   s      l   
                        h    y         o   e            e            
             e              l  t             c
                             u     D    n   
                                a

              

Morning Beauty

The Elegance of Shadow

                                 

September 2, 2012

The light is ever so lacy this morning!

Casting leafy shadows on the wall
and up the trunk of the old Maple tree
as sun pours through its branches
and begins to seep into the garden.

All is still this early Sunday hour.

Another lovely setting to enhance
our back porch coffee time.

Home

Zinnias from John's garden
Grace our kitchen table.

                               -JoMae
                                9/2/12