Like many in recent days John Chuchman has been incensed with the insensitivity coming from the Vatican in equating the quest for the ordination of women as both a sin and a sin on the scale of pedophilia. His blog in recent days [LINK] has featured a string of reflections exploring this controversy. For Catholica readers I have chosen this latest reflection and subtitled it "the search for the Divine Feminine". John's further reflections on this theme can be found at the link above.

King ...and Queen
the search for the Divine Feminine

Why do male hierarchs
prefer to hide behind
a theologically-contrived masculine God
that is nothing more than a mask
of a religion established by men only
led by men only,
refusing to seek and accept
the depths of Wisdom
always personified as Feminine.

We live at a time
of a male-dominated society,
adoring a male-god,
with business, politics, and religion
dominated by males.

But for early Christians,
Sophia was the vision and experience
of the Divine,
coming out of Jesus’ Aramaic teaching
that God is
Nurturing, Healing, and Compassionate.

(The male version of a God
as a punishing Spirit
who sends people to hell
was invented later by
a male-dominated Roman Catholic Church.)

Jesus loved women
and viewed them as equals.
He upheld their dignity
and often defended them,
embracing the feminine in all His relationships.

The writings that exalted women
have been condemned and/or burned
by those hell-bent
on male-control.

The attempted eradication
of the feminine aspect of the Divine
makes us motherless children;
Women are denied a sympathetic rapport
with the Divine Feminine;
Men have been denied a Divine Love Affair.

Early Christians
practiced Partnership Spirituality
valuing men and women equally as expressions of the Divine,
rather than creating a battleground that separates the sexes.

The Divine Feminine
everywhere present in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek,
is tragically missing
in English.

As written in Deuteronomy 32:18,
You neglected the Rock who begot you,
you forgot the God who gave you birth.
(Yahweh here is clearly feminine.)

We must return to an understanding of God
as the Living Source of All Life.
The Kingdom alone is not enough;
We need the Queendom.

We are tired of being orphans
of man-made religion.

IMAGE SOURCE:
The image used in today's headline is adapted from the logo used for the Christian Brothers' Congregation Chapter in Rome in 2002. I don't know who is responsible for the image but to me it remains one of the most enigmatic spiritual images I have ever used in my work. At once I see it as an image of a young man or a young woman searching for God and also at the same time somehow as an unresolved image as to whether the Divine is masculine or feminine. Click on the image at left to view at larger size. If any readers have further information on the origin of the image please let me know ...editor@catholica.com.au. The background used to support John Chuchman's reflection has been sourced from stock.xchng one of the sources for free images on the net provided by people who voluntarily upload their work for others to share. Daniel Cubillas who is located in Spain provided today's image. A gallery of Daniel's freely available images can be found at: www.sxc.hu/gallery/dcubillas.

John Chuchman

[Index of Commentaries by John Chuchman]