{"id":18109,"date":"2019-06-13T09:48:29","date_gmt":"2019-06-13T13:48:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=18109"},"modified":"2019-06-13T09:48:29","modified_gmt":"2019-06-13T13:48:29","slug":"she-is-love","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/?p=18109","title":{"rendered":"She Is Love"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Feminine Incarnation<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/cac.org\/she-is-love-2019-06-13\/\"><strong>She Is Love<\/strong><\/a><br>\n<strong>Thursday, June 13, 2019<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/abwwcmQriq0\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n\n\n<p><em>Why not? Why not pretend for now that the Absolute (the Great Mystery, the Ground of Being) sometimes expresses itself in the body of woman? Pretending God\u2019s a dude hasn\u2019t exactly worked out for the vast majority of the human family, let alone the animal and plant communities or the air or the waters. <\/em>\u2014Mirabai Starr [1]<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Rev. Dr. Jacqui Lewis, an African American pastor and author that I greatly respect, spoke at CAC\u2019s recent conference on the theme of racial and gender inequity. Not surprisingly, some white folks in our audience were very uncomfortable. And that\u2019s okay! Discomfort is a teacher; it\u2019s an invitation to learn and grow. As unpleasant as it may be, we must face the truth of Christianity\u2019s complicity in creating and supporting systems of oppression. It\u2019s more than time for all of us to reimagine God. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Keep your heart open as you read Jacqui Lewis\u2019 vision of God:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>It makes sense that because white men created so much of religion, the image of God was an old white man with grey hair. However, this image needs a makeover because he\u2019s no longer working.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>My God is a curvy black woman with dreadlocks and dark, cocoa-brown skin. She laughs from her belly and is unashamed to cry. She can rock a whole world to sleep, singing in her contralto voice. Her sighs breathe life into humanity. Her heartbreaks cause eruptions of justice and love.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Of course, because God is a mystery, we don\u2019t know everything about Her. So out of our imaginations and our yearnings, our hopes and our fears, we make stuff up. At our best, we project goodness, power, kindness, and love onto God. At our worst, we create a God who is punitive, angry, judgmental, and harsh. We do this because we are those things, and we think they make us safe.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Projection itself is not the problem. The problem occurs when we don\u2019t examine those projections with a critical eye, with a hermeneutic of suspicion. The issue is that we write laws that codify the shadow parts of the god we create, in order to diminish others, to abuse others. The trouble starts when our god is too small, when we reduce our worst projections to fit in our pocket and keep this god on our team. When we neglect to confront this created god, we get the Crusades and the Doctrine of Discovery; the murder of indigenous people and Jews; apartheid and enslaved Africans; sexism, xenophobia, and homophobia\u2014all in the name of the too-puny god that is the worst of ourselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>I know I\u2019ve got my projections. They are inspired by my imagination and by textual studies. In Hebrew, the words for womb and mercy have the same root, and the word for spirit is feminine: <em>ruach. <\/em>In Greek, the word <em>pneuma <\/em>[breath or spirit or soul] has a feminine article, the word <em>Sophia <\/em>stands for wisdom, and the word<em> agape\u2014<\/em>God\u2019s love for us\u2014is also a feminine word. Therefore, my God is an incarnate feminine power, who smells like vanilla and is full of sass and truth, delivered with kindness. She\u2019ll do anything for her creation; her love is fierce. She weeps when we do and insists on justice. She is God. She is Love.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Feminine Incarnation She Is Love Thursday, June 13, 2019 Why not? Why not pretend for now that the Absolute (the Great Mystery, the Ground of Being) sometimes expresses itself in the body of woman? Pretending God\u2019s a dude hasn\u2019t exactly worked out for the vast majority of the human family, let alone the animal and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18109"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18109"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18109\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18111,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18109\/revisions\/18111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/co2mannatoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}