In honor of TVUUC
The Living Tradition: What Remains of the Goddess
First delivered at UUCB on February 12, 2006
As I begin my ministerial internship as a UU in conjunction with UUCB’s 50th anniversary I think it appropriate to do a series of sermons that will hopefully help us all explore what it means to be Unitarian Universalist. Gregory is tackling the seven principles we recite each week in our service but there is an additional component to Article II Section C-2.1 we probably do not reference often enough: the living tradition.
The living tradition which we share draws from many sources:
· Direct experience of that transcending mystery and wonder, affirmed in all cultures, which moves us to a renewal of the spirit and an openness to the forces which create and uphold life;
· Words and deeds of prophetic women and men which challenge us to confront powers and structures of evil with justice, compassion, and the transforming power of love;
· Wisdom from the world's religions which inspires us in our ethical and spiritual life;
· Jewish and Christian teachings which call us to respond to God's love by loving our neighbors as ourselves;
· Humanist teachings which counsel us to heed the guidance of reason and the results of science, and warn us against idolatries of the mind and spirit.
· Spiritual teachings of earth-centered traditions which celebrate the sacred circle of life and instruct us to live in harmony with the rhythms of nature.
Over the course of the year I’d like us to address our living tradition,
but most importantly do so in the closing words of our covenant. Grateful for
the religious pluralism which enriches and ennobles our faith, we are inspired
to deepen our understanding and expand our vision. As free congregations we
enter into this covenant, promising to one another our mutual trust and support.
Our living tradition provides us with virtually limitless sources for our
personal spiritual growth and development of individual theologies.
Unfortunately, not every source will resonate with all of us at the same time
but with the trust we place with one another perhaps we’ll all stumble upon
sources we’ve never considered that awaken our interest and engage our hearts
and minds.
Footprints in the Sand
One night I dreamed I was walking along the beach with the
Lord.
Many scenes from my life flashed across the sky.
In each scene I noticed footprints in the sand.
Sometimes there were two sets of footprints,
other times there were one set of footprints.
This bothered me because I noticed
that during the low periods of my life,
when I was suffering from
anguish, sorrow or defeat,
I could see only one set of footprints.
So I said to the Lord,
“You promised me Lord,
that if I followed you,
you would walk with me always.
But I have noticed that during the most trying periods of my life
there have only been one set of footprints in the sand.
Why, when I needed you most, you have not been there for me?”
The Lord replied,
“The times when you have seen only one set of footprints in the sand,
is when I carried you.”
As most of you know, I was raised in mainstream Christian traditions, not exactly a wellspring of feminine presence in divinity. Despite the lack of masculine pronouns in the poem I just read and the nurturing behavior of The Lord, these words still do not evoke a feeling of maternal protection in me. God the Father and Jesus the Son don’t leave any ambiguity with respect to gender and this aspect of the tradition has been too firmly ingrained in my psyche. Sadly, Sophia…the personification of Wisdom and a creative force in the Hebrew Bible is for the most part utterly suppressed in contemporary monotheism. Despite this, I was presented with a unique opportunity which resulted in perhaps the most stunning spiritual event in my life.
I attended a weekend retreat in the Shenendoah Valley for Catholic college students when I was a senior. We lucked into unseasonably clear and warm January weather. The nun facilitating my round table took me aside at one point and gave me an individual assignment for the next solitary meditation period. She told me to contemplate God, not as the father, but as a mother. I had never had anyone ask me to do that before. As I sat under a tree looking over the gorgeous Blue Ridge Mountains on a clear crisp day I was overcome by a comforting presence—a very earthy, creative and enveloping experience of the divine. A power I’d not felt before and sadly have never tapped into quite the same way again.
I asked some friends of mine from a variety of traditions to give me their impressions of the concept of goddess and was delighted to see my experience echoed a bit in many of their expressions.
·
my gut reaction to the
word "goddess" is power. I think of "goddess" in the earthly
way - a woman who is beautiful, smart, strong, powerful, yet calm.... and
basically has her shit together.
·
I've always thought that
if there is a god, it must be feminine because there are very few absolutes in
the world but one is that only females can create life. So if I ever start
believing, it'll be to a goddess I also like the idea of earth goddess, that our
life has come from the earth.
·
The Roman Catholic
Church teaches that the Godhead is without gender but that the Holy Spirit is
the feminine aspect of the Godhead. However I do think for many, especially the
more patriarchal Christian sects, the word Goddess is perceived as a pagan term
and as an affront to God.
·
When I think of the word
"goddess" -- I think of serenity and beneficence. I think of love and
warmth and forgiveness. I think of wisdom and strength and quiet.
·
I don't think of goddess
in a divine sense at all. Maybe my upbringing?
I generally think of and use that term in a more earthy, feminine power way.
Definitely of the flesh.
·
My first thought is
Mother Earth in the 'I can't believe it's not butter" commercial in the
70's. Next is Athena. Next is a really powerful sexy woman. Sort of like Adonis
only a woman. With curves.
·
Power. It makes me feel
strong. Also protected, but mostly strong and happy.
(Feminine in the divine) is Extremely relevant for me, as a Pagan – the earthy
goddess lady is an integral part of the faith, along with her passionate mate,
the lord. One of the reasons I left the Christian God was that it made me feel
dirty to be a woman. Maybe that is not a common experience, but it was mine.
Historically, the mythology of the feminine in the divine is older than the
paternalistic tone of contemporary monotheism. I should probably note at this
point that I am approaching the topic today from a decidedly occidental
standpoint. The goddess within eastern religion and mythology will be addressed
at a later date in the context of exploring wisdom from other world religions.
Archaeological finds from the late Paleolithic and Neolithic periods in Europe and the Near East provide evidence of agrarian societies that worshipped the goddess as supreme. There are several reasons why the female image would be recognized as divine.
1. The earliest humans did not understand the connection between sexual intercourse and childbirth leading to the assumption that woman spontaneously created life.
2. The extended dependency of the human child, especially in infancy when nourishment came from the mother’s body, renders the female form a natural mythic image of critical importance.
3. The metaphorical identification of semen with seed, womb with earth, and breast milk with bounty would be recognized by a society that relies primarily upon the harvest for survival.
The image of the serpent found on ancient seals, statuary, wall murals and in shrines is closely associated with female divinity and power. When the patriarchal Aryan and Semitic tribes of the ancient historical world prevailed militarily over indigenous populations in Europe, the Near East and perhaps Egypt their mythology incorporated clues to the prominence of goddess worship in the myriad stories of male deities and heroes prevailing over serpents and dragons. Zeus destroys Typhon, Perseus slays Medusa, and Yahweh defeats Leviathan. “It may even survive in the legends of St. George and the dragon and St. Patrick and the snakes.” (Stone 1993, 68)
The transition from the archaic goddess religion to historical patriarchal mythologies has profound repercussions on modern humanity. “Our ethics, morals, conduct, values, sense of duty and even sense of humor are often developed from simple childhood parables and fables. From them we learn what is socially acceptable in the society from which they come.” (Stone 1993, 4-5) When these parables and fables are the basis of the majority religious tradition they become sacred truths that are extremely difficult to invalidate.
The Bible provides us with the most comprehensive example of the oppression of the goddess and by extension, the female half of humanity. The myth of the Garden of Eden completely reverses the order of procreation by having the female derive from the male. The presence of sin and need for atonement is ascribed to the female and her symbol the serpent. Childbirth is rendered a punishment rather than a beautiful act of creation. The social laws propagated by the priestly scribes responsible for the late editing of the Hebrew scripture around 400BCE are extremely concerned with maintaining patrimonial identity and highly restrictive with respect to female freedom. A married woman guilty of adultery shall be stoned to death but a married man may have sexual relations with another woman provided she is not already betrothed.
The Aryan Europeans who conquered Greece may not have been as draconian with their laws but their treatment of the female role in reproduction was hardly better. Zeus, a male God, produces Athena from his head and Hermes from his thigh. The male usurping the role of life-bearer is apparent in the ascendance of Zeus over Gaia in Greece, Marduk over Tiamat in Babylonia and Yahweh over Astoreth in Canaan. The expropriation of creation by the male is carried forward with the Logos, the divine word, uttering life into being without benefit of the womb or the struggle through the birth canal.
In Europe, the Fertile Crescent and the Levant, the process began with invasions and continued for millennia with “the process of re-mything” to obliterate worship of the goddess still going on as late as 400 BCE. (Eisler 1987, 85) Male dominated war-like societies had become standard in the Occident and persist to the present day. The preeminence of patriarchal societal structure has resulted in a lamentable dissociative accord with the inevitability of nature. “Neither to the patriarchal Aryans nor to the patriarchal Semites belong the genial, mystic, poetic themes of the lovely world of a paradise neither lost nor regained but ever present in the bosom of the goddess-mother in whose being we have our death, as well as life, without fear.” (Campbell 1964, 54) This fear of death is a primary motivating factor in Judeo-Christian mythology.
I’ve mentioned Eileen Wolf before. She’s a friend of mine in St. Louis whom I turn to regularly for spiritual conversation. She and I are on the same wavelength often enough for it to be spooky but there still remains plenty we can learn from one another. Friends like that are to be cherished. When I brought up the subject of this sermon with her she said, “my own beliefs tend to focus on Wholeness, and it’s obvious that a Divine anything that doesn’t incorporate half of the obvious Whole is simply not realistic, acceptable, or even logical. Male energy doesn’t create—that is the realm of the feminine. The notion that a white-bearded sage conjured the world is so far out of the spectrum…even Zeus had to steal Athena and sew her into himself…Male energies are simply different, with different purpose and tendency.”
Given the traditional monotheistic use of masculine pronouns and images for God it is not surprising that many people today are seeking to either capture what remains of the goddess or establish an entirely new connection with her.
Since the discovery of the Gnostic gospels at Nag Hammadi and the Gospel of Mary, there has been renewed interested in how the feminine is expressed in Christianity. One need only look at the phenomenal success of The Davinci Code to see that. For many women, and indeed some men, Christ feels incomplete without the presence of a wife to embody the archetype of the divine couple.
One female Christian minister says this about her calling: “As a
female pastor I have become aware that I have been trained to be a priest, but
in actuality I am a priestess. I mediate Goddess, not God, and there are no
guides within Christianity—no protections—no sanctions—that help me deal
with Her power when it is unleashed. I feel as though I could spend the rest of
my life exploring/rediscovering the art of being a priestess.” (Lebacqz 1991,
p. 169)
The growth of Wicca and other neo-pagan spiritual groups is another indication the feminine in spirituality is something that cannot be overlooked. Indeed, Wicca was supposedly the fastest growing religion in America in the 1990s, and that does not include other pagan groups that do not identify themselves as Wicca but incorporate recognition of femininity in the divine as part of their worship.
I’m not sure its wise to swing the pendulum completely in the other direction and attempt to eradicate the masculine components of divinity as that still leaves the question of wholeness unresolved. Life may come from woman but let’s face it. She’s not going to be delivering a healthy bouncing anything if something of the male didn’t help the creative process get started. To quote Eileen again:
“I believe that people
speak their own Truth. I believe that any and all Divinity lies within each
spirit. I believe that those spirits are both an instrument of and a channel for
the Divinity within. How can anyone work towards something as
psycho-developmental as “self-actualization” or enlightenment or nirvana or
heaven or perfection or any other lofty goal without comprehending the Whole of
what they, themselves are. And by closing off oneself to half of the necessary,
there is no zen moment. Is the Divine Feminine relevant? Oh yeah, way!”
Whatever the relationship may or may not be, every one of us in here was the product of both a father and a mother. The next time you are feeling a little low, step outside and find a nice comfortable spot among the green. Imagine yourself enveloped in the nurturing, maternal, gentle, feminine aspect of the Earth that is our home keeping in mind the maternal instinct to protect what we have created carries with it the command to ultimately relinquish responsibility to the offspring.
Now I’ll close with an alternate version of the poem I read at the
beginning—one that captures the feminine aspect of divinity, indeed a
decidedly maternal essence of universal existence.
One night I had a wondrous
dream,
One set of footprints there was seen,
The footprints of the Goddess they were,
But mine were not along the shore.
But then some stranger prints appeared,
and I asked Her, "What have we here?
These prints are large and round and neat
But much too big to be from feet."
"My child," She said in somber tones,
"For miles I carried you alone.
I challenged you to walk in faith,
But you refused and made me wait."
"You would not learn, you would not grow,
The walk of faith, you would not know,
So I got tired, I got fed up,
And there I dropped you on your butt.
"Because in life, there comes a time.
When one must fight, and one must climb,
When one must rise and take a stand,
Or leave their butt prints in
the sand." (Anonymous)
Copyright © 2006
Ann Fuller, February 2006
Resources
Campbell, Joseph. 1964. The
Masks of God Vol III: Occidental Mythology. New York: Penguin Books.
Eisler, Riane. 1987. The
Chalice and the Blade. San Francisco: Harper Row.
Lebacqz, Karen & Ronald G. Barton. 1991. Sex
in the Parish, , Louisville, KY, Westminster/John Knox Press.