Unfortunately, this post is not the feminist analysis I promised in my last post---though it is coming, probably tomorrow or later in the week. This post (to anyone who has been reading this will not be shocking), is mostly about Godde and what it means to be made in the imago dei. In this post, just to let those of you who are easily offended by feminine language for the divine, Godde the "Father" will exclusively be referred to as "She."
I would apologize, but, frankly, there is nothing for which to apologize. I am through with pretending liberating naming toward Godde is wrong or "less than ideal." And, for that matter, that I think being queer is sinful. Or, to echo one of Rachel Held Evans posts during last week's of mutuality, that patriarchy, or hell, kyriarchy, is even remotely Godde's dream for the world.
To quote Martin Luther: "I cannot and will not recant anything, for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. Here I stand, I can do no other, so help me God. Amen."
As I wrote before, I was affected quite intensely by the movie Snow White and the Huntsman. The word "undone" is really no exaggeration. True, there were those gut-deep sobs during the Florence and the Machine song running during the credits that Danny sat with me through, bless him (though, it inspired a really, really, really great conversation about the power of story afterward).
In the day and a half since, one image in particular has has burrowed under my skin; the very end, when she is coronated, the subjects she liberated from the oppressive queen rasie their voices to cheer.
"Hail the queen! Hail the queen! Hail the queen!"
It slipped between my mind and my eyes: the world looked different. Even Kristen Stewart, whose expression usually vacillates from "coy, lip-biting face" to "angsty horizon-ward gazing face" (Don't let me fool you. One: I really am a hardcore fangirl. Have you SEEN The Runaways??? If you haven't, stop reading immediately, go watch her fabulousness, and come back...Two: in all honesty, those are my two most common expressions too), managed a believably regal bearing.
Her eyes. GAWD, her eyes. For perhaps the first (or second) time in her videography thusfar, there was fire there. First in the battle scenes, and then, at the coronation. Snow White knows she, not Ravenna, is the rightful heir to the throne. It is right that she occupy the seat of power-with and power-for; she cared about and loved the people.
Oh yeah, and again, it did not end with a wedding. That story has its place (it is a beautiful story--for many), but a love story is the most common one available to women (eight out of ten times) in theaters if she is the lead. If she is not, she is on the back of her man's motorcycle or tied up waiting to be rescued by him; Or, she can be a Manic Pixie Dream Girl or a Smurfette (Feminist Frequency is so right on!) but never a Virgin, one who belongs to herself. She is rarely ever a "fleshed out" character.
Along with becoming a mother, the marriage/love story is also the only story available to women in churches (see Shawna Atteberry and The Christian Godde Project for *We can fix that*).
This Snow White was not a love story, thank Godde. It was one of mutuality among genders and, mainly, woman's empowerment. It was a story I have longed for so long, apparently without knowing, that, to borrow a Biblical turn of phrase, it "pierced my heart through" when it finally came.
Then, Monday night/Tuesday morning I bolted awake at four a.m. after a strange, gauzy dream about hugging and singing a love song to another woman. I was cognizant, even in the dream state, the woman with whom I shyly flirted, was a rejected part of myself. The powerful part.
(Note: To be clear, being gay is not about one's over-controlling mother or distant father or any variation thereof. This is not a Freudian or Jungian interpretation of women's sexuality. Lesbians are lesbians because they like women. Period. In this one particular dream, I just knew the symbolism was not about wish fulfillment---or not the apparent kind, anyway).
I woke to a dark hotel room (with strange little beetles creeping around in the bathroom. Ew), insecurity dogging me again as soon as blissful haze faded. And my only recourse was to pray: "Godde, in dreaming I enjoy being a woman, but when I wake up I get the impression that You like boys just a little bit more...Snow White, that bolt of lightening that hit me when I saw a powerful woman on screen, and my experiences with The Powers That Be (implied in that is You) don't mesh. Help?"
It was one of those five year old's questions "why could a Joshua be a priest but a Jael could not several thousand years ago? Why can Johnny be a priest or pastor now but not Jane? Why does Christianity have such a masculine feel when its founder was so queer (in the sense of being so transgressive)...
For this evangelical-ish (very ish) feminist, the question is different from Rosemary Radford Reuther's. A "male" (slippery, slippery word. Gender =/= sex) savior can save women. Undoubtedly. It happened, as least according to my tradition. Plus, in the red-letters, Jesus usually welcomed and empowered all the women with whom he came into contact except that one lady (apparently, unlike some people, He learned to reject prejudice through experience). And, He hasn't said much to me about my vulva personally. It just never comes up in our conversations...
Soteriology is not the issue at stake. Ontology is (Haha. Unintentional joke. Get it? Also, consider this my immortality project, a la Ernest Becker).
All those in the Christian tradition of sound mind agree that Godde is Spirit. Shout that out at a prayer meeting, you'll get a dozen amen's. We all know Godde is not some gray haired, bearded, man in the sky. We can even sing songs like God is not a white man. But the pronoun used for our supposedly Transcendent Being is always "He."
In our heart of hearts, I bet probably ninety nine point nine times when most Christian's pray in the U.S. (my guess, regardless of one's race, gender, or ethnicity) we envision the Father as the Sistine Chapel God. White rich guy in the sky. Of course, being white, rich, or a guy is in no way wrong. Duh: this needs no further explanation.
It is when Godde is only envisioned in this way that it becomes problematic. Because if that is the only image we have, our Godde becomes brittle. Let me explain. The Holy Spirit, in John 3, Jesus says is like the wind: She blows where She wills.
When asked for a name, YHWH tells Moses Her name is, "I Am Who I Am" or "I will be there how I will be there."
Sometimes, Godde feels less like a mysterious and ungraspable Being than like a insect fossilized in amber. We diagram Her, try to pin Her down in taxonomy (otherwise known as systematic theology), or put Her on a shelf content with our categorization. We know exactly where She is, and exactly what Jesus is doing and saying at any given moment. We know that when we look at Godde, we behold a masculine face. Not a Rainbow of Light. Not a Hurricane of Love. Fire. A Lion. A Hen. A Midwife. A Woman looking for Her lost coin. A Widow seeking justice (This sermon, if you are interested, is a really good listen). A Mother crying out in labor. The Wind; Though, all these metaphors are Biblical.
And yes, I realize opining about words is hypocritical given the space I have dedicated to writing on Godde (occupational hazard of an amateur theologian).
I am just so tired of the reified Father figure who ceases to surprise us and who serves to legitimate the oppression of women. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Mary Daly said...
"If God is male, male is God..."
I cannot get more profound or articulate than this...
While I adored the week of mutuality, it breaks my heart that this conversation is even necessary. At the risk of alienating my complementarian friends, I fail to see the difference between "separate but equal" gender roles (man as leader, woman as nurturer and submissive) as anything but an ontological claim.
Jesus is to Godde as Man is to Woman (nevermind that there are many, many other genders than just women and men). In the great chain of being, Godde is on top, Jesus below Her (where exactly is the Holy Spirit in this formulation?).
And somehow, practically, this becomes the impetus for a wife's submission to her husband, at all costs. Even, sometimes, to her detriment. Regardless of her strengths, feelings, or whatever Godde has "called her to" (it's trite, but conveys the idea I want to get across). Just because of how she was born (or socialized), she never gets to be whole. She lacks what her husband has always had: an ontological claim. It is good he exists, though it is merely permissable that she does.
So what in the world does this have to do with Snow White?
I think what struck so deep is that I knew Godde can and should be imaged as a queen. Not exclusively, not only (lest we reify this image as we have done with Father or King). But, I really think deep called to deep and in this moment. Godde is not a man, She is Spirit.
She is beyond gender.
She is beyond sex.
She is. He is. They are. It is.
Just one pronoun can shake up one's understanding. One's Spirit. Especially one's feminine spirit that feels so shut off from Being...
And, then, I stumbled across Psalm 93 in Laura Grimes's absolutely wonderful Sophia's Psalter:
Sophia is Queen; She has put on splendid apparel;
Sophia has put on her apparel and girded herself with strength
She has made the world so sure that it cannot be moved
Ever since the world began, your throne has been established;
You are from everlasting.
The waters have lifted up, O Sophia,
the waters have lifted up their voice;
the waters have lifted up their poundings waves
Mightier than the sound of many waters
mightier than the breakers of the sea,
mighter is Sophia who dwells on high
Your testimonies are very sure,
and holiness adorns your house, O Sophia,
forever and ever more.
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