by Rev. Laurie Sue Brockway
I believe the Goddess is re-emerging just in time. The Goddess is re-emerging to show us another side of ourselves, or at least to help us consider God is both masculine and feminine in nature, and therefore, that we all possess The Divine Within. She's come just in time. Here's why:
* Women feel left out of traditional religion. It's not just about becoming a clergy person or having power, it's about being able to recognize our own divinity. Men have been able to recognize their divinity through worship of a male divine. It's time that women access the Goddess Within, but first, we need role models.
* Men are shut off from their feminine energy, and quite frankly, in many cases from their softness as well. There is so little in religious environments in our culture - and most of the world's cultures - that nurtures that side of males. Men are suffering and our world is suffering because we still do not completely support the idea of men being sensitive, loving, gentle, forgiving, healing - even mushy.
This is so odd, because that was exactly what the ministry of Jesus Christ was about. Jesus was in so many ways the embodiment of both the male and female principle. Of Mary Magdalene, it has been said, "he could not see her in tears without himself weeping." He spent every waking moment of his ministry embracing people in his love, and continues to do so. I mean, who would dare call Christ a wimp? Yet we often label men who are in touch with that part of themselves by that name.
Because of the ingrained idea of a male divinity, our relationship lives are utterly confusing. Love means war when instead of accessing all the qualities of the male and feminine in ourselves, we seek partners to make us whole. We have to learn to come into relationships whole, and we can only do that when we embrace all aspects of the Divine.
* We've got kids to raise, and it's time we teach them that all of who they are is okay; that their sex doesn't have to assign them to specific gender roles; that we are all made up of the male and female principle, the yin-yang. If we raise our boys to know the divine only in male terms, then we deny them access to a part of themselves. If we teach our girls that the Feminine Divine only exists in fairy tales, they will grow up as Barbie Dolls instead of as Goddesses.
* We live in a world that is spinning out of control. This became so painfully evident with the September 11, 2001 attack on our nation, which brought forth a darkness that shocked and pained us all. But even before that, we were at war with one another and within ourselves, and our world reeled with imbalances: violence in our schools, people starving to death on a planet that has plenty of food to feed everyone, one natural catastrophe after another. Mom Nature has been trying to get our attention. God/ Goddess/ All There Is has been whispering in our ear. We must take stock of our world and ourselves. We must change, now.
New York author Rick Carrier told me that his book The Mother of God is about a female deity who walks the earth to come and tell us: CLEAN UP YOUR ROOM. It is time to clean up our planet, our personal lives, our pain, our wounding of one another and our earth, our relationships, our bad habits, our unconsciousness.
The Feminine Divine lives to love and protect all her children. She's there for us always but she's screaming out for our attention: "Listen to your mother," she calls, "I know what's best for you!"
Copyright Rev. Laurie Sue Brockway, all rights reserved, 2005. Reprinted here with permission.
Thanks to Spiritually Speaking too :)
