More Passing Thoughts

I cannot help but think that, since we cannot help but attribute gender to our conceptions of a personal diety, and since the notion of "Mother-and-Father God" seems to have gained some relative currency among those who pray that way, perhaps there are times when we prefer one gender attribution to God over another.

Like, maybe we begin, early in life, in our infant and child ways, to feel pretty good about Mother God, taking care of us, providing, as classic mothers do, protection and provision.

And then there comes a time in our lives when the adventures of the world beckon, and mastery, and competence, and testing ourselves against the elements and each other becomes more important to us than the relative comforts of home. Maybe then Father God appeals: strengthening, encouraging, picking us up when we're knocked down and dusting us off without coddling or infantalizing us, and sending us back into the frey again. In Father God's world we have enemies, but we have Him at our side, or better at our backs... The Good Father, growing us into adults.

Ah, but then there comes a time, or times come more frequently as we age, in which we need tenderness again. Not like before, but wounds need to be bound, our frailty acknowledged, our fatigue forgiven. More than anything, we come again primarily to need to be held, to be understood, to be accepted-- to be loved as only a mother could love. In the latter years of life, perhaps Mother God returns, to invite us into Her comfort, to put to rest our misgivings and to quiet our fears, and eventually to invite us to the sleep of the angels, when once again, in spite of all we've been through, we get that look on our faces of contentment and peace, a look She hasn't seen since we were wee.

All in God's good time...