A month ago I wrote an essay on prayer and belief. In it I concluded, for myself, that if one is inclined to believe in God he should do so whole-heartedly and without reserve. Since it is a Choice to believe, despite any evidence for God (or the contrary), one’s Choice becomes enough evidence for the Believer. Some of us lose good luck charms and suffer deeply, affecting our lives. Reality is subjective. A woman who derides her husband for having an affair takes a much different perspective when she finds out the allegation is unfounded. She literally sees him differently, and her emotions and actions follow suit.
I’m sure you’ve heard the story of the blind men who all touch different parts of an elephant and so, using their unique perspective, describe the animal in very different ways. Your world is your perspective. Some of us follow dreams closely, some of us worry incessantly. Maybe you run to the other side of the road when you see a hooded teenager coming down the street. Your actions are based on how you see the elephant, how you perceive the world.
So I choose to see and believe in God. Whatever my perception of God is, it meshes with my emotions, heart and intellect; I can see a crack of light beaming from God’s room, and beyond the door I sense Paradise. In fact, if the sliver of light exists then Paradise exists. If the light beams into my heart, and I am full of God, then paradise is right here. If I squint just right I can see it in the world. My Perspective.
Think also that hundreds of billions of humans have lived their short lives Knowing a God. They have patterned their days to include God, and they feel good about the world. It may allow them to turn for a few minutes from the chaos and worry of the mind (most of what we worry about, and what agitates us, is only in our minds, and never occurs) and sense peace and love. Perspective. Where is it written that we have to spend 24 hours a day constantly monitoring the world for potential disasters, most of which never will occur? Some who believe in God fix their gaze on God, and trust that the world will run own course anyway, regardless of the constant monitoring. Without belief these people might be miserable, steeped in anguish and worry. For many of us, true belief and trust in God lets us act in the world differently, and these actions change the way we are acted upon by the world. So the world changes for the better.
I believe I know God, and want God in my life. I’ve worshipped my entire life, plowed through various religions and ideologies until I arrived at just God – My God – the God that’s been distilled from the collective unconscious, before we put costumes on God. But now I add a costume so I can relate in a stronger way.
My intellect tells me that God must be genderless, since God is All, including all aspects and emotions of either gender; God is a stern Warrior, and a Nurturing Mother. Our Western God can show his manhood, but never her breasts. And our Western Patriarchal minds make it almost heretical to address God as anything other than Father.
As a man, I’m a fighter; one who must prove my bravado as I trip through the world. Social conditioning calls for the need to suppress my need for nurture. It asks me to temper my incessant need for Love with the proof that I have battled for it, whether in the marketplace, in conquest of women, or in some other victory lap. As a man, I must achieve something out in the world to attain favor from lovers. So society tells me. The son must make his mark to be well-appreciated. So a man is always pleasing his father, in some sense, proving his worth. In time it became The Big Father – God. God the Father became God the King, the Smiter of Enemies, the Great Warrior Judge. So this was my God also, although Jesus put me a bit at ease by pointing out God’s love for his sons and daughters (I put that here case the Jesus folk have forgotten Jesus’ main message).
Now I want to flip God around as that fierce symbol, and my early manhood, grows stale. I don’t need to fight the world anymore – I see that it was all a game anyway. I only fight a bit to support my now grown family. In my years I’ve learned not to hurt others to get what I want, so I don’t need God as my Confessor or Judge. I’ve noticed that God becomes what you need right now, what you want to reflect out into the world. I want to give to the world. Some time in middle age a man comes to the notion that he’s done fighting, and wants to help others in their struggle. It became evident to me that I needed a new Perspective on God.
We’ve always ignored (in the West) the creative nurturing of God the Mother – God AS Mother; giving birth to the world, showing us love in others, fostering an unbreakable bond with us (her children), lending insight and boundless creativity; woman is the Ultimate Creator (she creates Life). Not that any of these aspects are particularly feminine, but we rarely equate them with God the Father. In men they are a by-product of life; men pound the earth just like the Creationist God, to shape it. The world, to men, is formed by pounding and fighting and conquering, and that has been our God.
So now, although I will need some of the Father aspect of God, I’ve spent too long ignoring all the beauty that a Mother God can bring to me. She nurtures the world. She has given us our own mothers as examples of unconditional love and forgiveness (mothers visit their sons even in jails). She is truly God the Lover. We long for her when we are lost, as a child, in a department store, or as we search for the great love of our lives. What we didn’t know existed in God we found in nurturing women, and we hoped these women would love us for all our faults.
Isn’t it a beautiful thought? God is a nurturing, loving mother we can always turn to when we need an embrace! We always said God loves you; well, believe it! Or don’t believe it and keep your frenetic mind on its own god (also called Mind). But if you believe in God, find God as a mother. It even seems weird at first to call Her God, we’re so ingrained with the male God!
And why not? We’ve spent our lives looking outside ourselves, to a higher power, for strength and wealth and control. Why can’t we also pray to be nurtured and loved, as I child whole-heartedly begs of his own mother? To deny that we need this kind of love is to deny our very soul, for God created us out of love, and wants us to act with love to all Her children. In fact, love is the only rule for God – Love God and Love all Her children. Go ahead, take a second to look it up! Start with the Golden Rule and Jesus the Son, and move to Bodhisattvas and Krishna and Allah or Lama; any name for God or Man will do. Love is the key. Love through a father is somehow earned; a mother’s undying love begins instantly upon seeing her child; it’s her nature, and there will never in the world be anything more important than that child.
God loves us like that. God created us out of love, so will love her children. What’s wrong with that? We deny love in the West as a weakness, or something reserved for those who prove themselves to us. That’s our mistake, and that is why we come home and crawl into our holes, hating the world. Our perspective is that the world is NOT a place for Love, and if God created the world then there may be something wrong with God too.
That’s your mind speaking, because your heart has grown cold. It’s all Catch-22; as your heart grows cold you see the world as a cold place, and in return for not loving the world you don’t deserve to be loved by the world. It’s a cycle – you act in a certain way and the world throws it right back in your face! Somewhere in there you have also been testing God, and He’s failed miserably. No sense in wasting time on God anymore when he only answers 50% of your prayers, which might have found fruit anyway! So you lose faith. That’s your Mind speaking.
Change your view; look through the other end. Yes, the world has been made a hard place, but by Man. Sure, there are natural tragedies – cancer, earthquakes – but most of the pain in the world is caused by Man. Man’s creed? It’s okay to screw someone, but not to love them. In other words, “I’ll get Mine! God wants me to Conquer, and enjoy all the fruits of my labor (or treachery); He understands that I’m only human, and humans feed their selfish desires, and yes, some people will get hurt, but they’ll be hurt anyway. So if God can’t understand this I’ll just get rid of God!”
Remember I said that God is all, but we understand Her/Him based on our Needs. Some of you don’t want to need God. That’s fine, but your world will always be in turmoil. With only the Mind, and men, to guide you, you are going to have a rough time. Where will you rest and find some peace? Where will you find the strength to love, and so be loved? Again, if you don’t believe, that’s a Choice. Just don’t hurt others.
I’ve come to see things from the other angle. My world is painful because I make it painful; I cause pain, and I’m afflicted. That’s another choice. The world is hurting me because I am hurting others. Period. I cannot understand the odd things, like cancer, but on deeper meditation I know that those odd things (tragedies) are a part of being alive on earth, so I cannot control them. I can control actions, and to act from the heart is the best I can afford. I choose to believe in God because I Know it’s right. I Know. Now I choose find love in God as a Mother symbol. There is really only God, with different identities so our culture can relate; male, female, elephant or avatar. We come to God through a symbol we can understand, and in relating to God we open a channel to know God. So, again, I choose to know God the Mother. Does this deny the Father aspect? No, God is all, and praying to the Mother IS praying to God.
Do we feel that by worshipping God as Mother we will be honoring some lesser aspect of God, and not God True? Nonsense; God Is. If God is All, then God is Masculine, Feminine, Anthropomorphic, Pure Energy, Big Bang, and so on. God is All. We can see Her in any way that helps us find a channel. The notion of God as White Male Bearded Judge Disciplinarian has caused many worshipers to cringe – it has left God on a separate, inaccessible plain. I want to relate fully to God, I need to have my heart torn open and let God pour in, and then share that with the world. I’m done conquering – I want to love the world!
No amount of fighting or shoving is going to change this world for the better. Only Love can create love. So why not find strength in a Loving, Nurturing God? It’s what I need.
So now I’ve looked through the prism from the other side; I’ve changed my perspective. God is alive for me, but in another form. I now pray to God as Mother. It seemed strange at first. I even had to separate Mary of Nazareth (previously the closest icon from my childhood to approach a feminine deity) from my “new” God. I was unfamiliar with asking God to let me do Her will, which includes loving and caring for all Her children. If you think about it, these are the “Radical” aspects of God Jesus mouthed, but I think he chickened out at the last moment and left the Father bit in, rather than be stoned to death in his culture. But even Jesus was very aware of the love of a nurturing mother (since history says his father died); his notions of Universal Love are very feminine qualities, and a complete departure from the War God of the Jews.
My God becomes a Perfect Mother to ALL Her children. As a son, she asks me to care for the others. She begs me to love them despite their faults, and to see through the veils of differences to recognize the Brother and Sister in everyone; she wants me to see your true being – your soul – underneath the costume you now wear. In soul we are all the children of God. Isn’t loving you better than conquering you? And to do it with God’s Grace? Wonderful! To conquer means to disarm and control you, then take your stuff as my reward. Men conquer in God’s name, but really, isn’t that just an excuse for men to become richer and more powerful?
What about those who are hurt by the conquerors? Who will care for you? I will, with God working through me. We lepers are no longer outcasts, despite what the preacher say (Jesus hugged the lepers, but his followers despise homosexuals?)! Man uses such horrid ideas to get rich and control you. I tell you now that if there is a God, and God created ALL men and women out of love, then She loves all her children unconditionally. Further, She wants you to care for each other, to be her arms to hold your sister. This is the message of ALL religions – love and care for each other. Stop hurting each other in any way. The Mother loves you all equally, and needs to share this love through human actions.
There’s a quote somewhere that God could not create a violin without Stradivari. It implies that God must work through Man (Mankind). God only affects the world through the actions of women and men. You blame God for the state of things, but do you ever deny the urge to help a homeless man? How else is God supposed to care for that man? God cannot nurture the world without you, and cannot change the course of events without you. My Mother works through me, and so everyone I touch with Compassion is being touched by God. That’s Man acting as God.
What’s Man acting as Man? Look around you. Do you think the man who senselessly bombed Iraq really thought “God was his General”? Or did he just ignore God’s urge Not to kill thousands for his own greed? That’s something that really could have changed the world, but man can run his fingers through riches – it’s much harder to give oneself to God. I like to think that someday in heaven (or wherever) we will meet those that we’ve hurt, our brothers and sister now undressed and plainly soul, and we’ll have to explain why we hurt them. Forget about God’s judgment – would you hurt a person on earth who you had to face directly and explain yourself? Imagine killing thousands in a single second – all brothers and sisters.
My Mother God would Never allow it. We’ve created the Warrior God to justify war. Mothers are left to care for the wounded. It’s wrong. Her heart should always be given first priority- can we find a way NOT to hurt each other? These are all my children; they have emerged from my womb as souls, then came to earth unknowing. Will someone please consider this!
So I vow to do Her work now. I promise, Mother, to bring you into my heart, and I offer my Body and Mind and Heart; you may work through me. I am no messiah, nor god – I am your son who wants to care for my sisters and brothers. I want to share you with everyone who sees me; I want to reverse the pain man has inflicted on man. I want to finally be worthy to be called your son.
I beg all of you, my brothers and sisters, to consider this. I used to hear “God loves you” in church, but I could never really imagine the Warrior Judge loving me unless I earned it. Further, so many preachers said it was okay to love Only Certain People (people like Themselves). Finally, how do you Love everyone?
By loving your Mother, and caring for her children at her request. A Mother loves. A mother sees her daughter on the street and runs to hug her. A mother visits her son in prison. This is Jesus’ God, now unveiled for you. God loves Her children through you. In your heart you have the impulse to go out and care for one another. Don’t deny it. You are children of God first, men and women second, if you believe in a soul. Love everyone, the lepers and the gays and the Jews and the Italians and the Muslims and anyone else who is different from you, because beneath these costumes we are truly the same soul-children. You know it, but it is scary to act – you don’t trust Man; he might attack you. Try. Remember that you are sharing God with Her children who cannot see her correctly. She is love, and works through you. Work with Her. Pray to her to come into your heart and guide you. As you change your world perspective, your world will change. Keep her in your heart always