This Easter, in my meditations, I dwelt awhile on the Motherhood of God.
I like to observe religious festivals in my own way – spending time with the core themes of the season, reflecting on how they apply to me, in my world, at this moment in life. You may not at first see the link between the myth of Christ’s death and resurrection, and the contemplation of the feminine divine – but bear with me.
Easter, the major spring festival in the European calendar, overlays earlier Roman and European fertility rites, replacing them with a desexualised Passion. Its message, according to many, is transcendence – rebirth beyond mortality. But actual, earthly fertility – the generative, embodied, feminine force – has no real place in a patriarchal Christianity.
And yet, if God is everywhere, God must also be expressed in the feminine. Sages have acknowledged this for centuries, going back at least to Isaiah. Further still, the ancient Israelites worshipped a Great Mother Goddess, Asherah. She was once paired with El; Yahweh, in some traditions, was their son. By King Josiah’s time, Asherah was demoted to Yahweh’s consort; her worship suppressed.
Still, if God exists – or even if He doesn’t – She must. Not in a strict monotheistic sense – no Great Mother ever claimed to be the only one – but in a cosmic, symbolic, energetic sense. There is a feminine to the divine; even the prophets couldn’t deny it.
Julian of Norwich famously compared Christ’s suffering on the cross to a mother’s labour. She – and others from Jesus to Pope Francis – have spoken of God’s love as maternal, especially in her capacity to suffer with us. As Haley Stewart asks in her essay “Julian of Norwich and the Suffering Motherhood of God”: “[H]ow much of wisdom is understanding that [love and suffering] are inseparable?”
So, if you are suffering this Easter, search out the divine love that suffers with you. Find a tree to curl up beneath, or water to bathe in, and rest awhile in the lap of the Great Mother.
