Tag: Sophia-Wisdom

"We worshiped as feminists, sharing rituals grounded in women’s experiences and using feminine language for God. These rituals included a milk and honey ritual that celebrated the goodness of women’s bodies and a song that affirmed the wisdom of women as created in the image of God..."

I can see now that, like my spiritual director said long ago, my image of God was all wrong. My gut feeling was that my own best interest was second to God’s. The image of God as Father left me with too few harbors to go for emotional safety. He would send me out to sea, endlessly, on some errand of his own design, as he did Jonah.

I was curious as to how such a unique story was received by the public, and I found that When God Was a Little Girl has garnered overwhelming praise and support from readers. The book was published with the assistance of a Kickstarter campaign that received nearly double the amount of pledges requested to publish the book. Reviews on sites like Amazon and Goodreads are glowing, and the book received two prestigious book awards in 2014.

God is with us. Sophia is with us. Woman Wisdom is with us. We are with each other. We can continue to move forward together on this journey of shalom as we lean on God and lean on one another.

"Of course we were confronted with innumerable problems and questions as we worked through the text. We understood that our task had to be about more than simply swapping out a few words and changing some pronouns. "

Just two months ago I found that the only thing which comforted me on a day I felt heartbreakingly useless and worthless was sitting in Mother God’s lap and letting Her hold, pat, and comfort me until I felt completely soothed. When I soon after found that there is a book that teaches children such behavior from an early age I knew it was something about which I needed to spread the word.

Without a fundamental shift in how we conceive of God, we will continue to be a people of oppression, bondage, war. And yet there is a failure in our faith traditions to see that oppression, bondage, and violence are by-products of masculine portrayals of God; of patriarchy baptized by religion. If we fail to recognize the interconnection between our theology of God and how we treat others, we cannot work for justice, liberation, or peace.

For Gabriel, Sophia is a threefold Goddess who rules the past, present, and future. As the sevenfold Goddess, she rules time and the planets in the solar system as well as the seven organs in the human body. And as the twelvefold Goddess, She is the collective consciousness of humanity...

For many years I have also believed that a symbol other than the cross should be at the center of Christianity. The emphasis on the cross leads to the glorification of violence and death rather than the love and abundant life that Jesus taught.

My joy for the little butterfly was also the joy of breaking out of my own chrysalis. In the ashes of my loss, I found a crown of beauty, my own voice, which had enormous value all by itself. My body hadn’t birthed a baby this time, but it had conceived something else: the belief that I am valuable and that my voice should be heard, loud and clear.

"Just when I thought we’d about eliminated the so-called 'generic' use of 'man' because it really is exclusive, up pops 'you guys' almost everywhere. Women and girls seem to use 'you guys' as much as men and boys do. So why do females think they’re included in 'you guys'?"

Interviews with forty women from a variety of religious traditions—Taosim, Judaism, Zen Buddhism, Islamic Sufism, Indigenous, Hindu, Religious Science, and Christianity, including several women who are part of Ebenezer Lutheran Church, more commonly known as “herchurch.”

Lesson 2 - "What would Greek-speaking Jewish readers have drawn from this opening reflection on logos? [One of the possible interpretations of the meaning] was Wisdom. Hebrew sages of old were part of a movement that emphasized gaining wisdom through close observation of the natural world. See, for example, Proverbs 6:6-11, about observing the behavior of ants in order to live well. But these sages were not inventing wisdom; they were discovering it. For Wisdom was personified as a woman co-creating with God from the very beginning. Read her exquisite poem in Proverbs 8:22-31. Before all of God’s creative acts, 'I was beside him as a master worker, and I was daily his delight…' (v 30)."

"Multiplied over the course of a lifetime, it is easy to see how our culture reinforces male preference at the same time it methodically undermines any sense of well-being and confidence a woman works to cultivate. Our exclusive language continues to make women invisible and in some cases our derogatory language aimed at women reinforces an insidious sexism that is more difficult to expunge than the more easily located, explicit variety."

The prevalent worship of an exclusively male Supreme Being is the strongest support imaginable for the dominance of men. Some advocate using only female divine references for the next 2000 years to rebaptize our imaginations that have been so fully immersed in masculine divine images.

The Bible links Sophia (Wisdom) to Christ. The apostle Paul refers to Christ as the “power of God and the Wisdom (Sophia) of God” (1 Corinthians 1:24), and states that Christ “became for us Wisdom (Sophia) from God” (1 Corinthians 1:30).

"Women who think, women who question, women who are educated are a threat to those men who think power is theirs by right—simply by having been born male. And so in many times and places, now and in the past, education for girls has been discouraged, opposed, made difficult, or actually forbidden —in spite of the impoverishment experienced by nations that hold such attitudes."

Wisdom does not make distinctions between public and private or spiritual and sacred. For wisdom, all of life is full of the divine and to be lived to the full.

In Changing Church I tried to reflect not only racial and ethnic diversity, but also diversity in sexual orientation and Christian denominations. To pursue their calling some of these ministers have overcome obstacles not only of sexism but also of racism and/or heterosexism.

It is not often that one comes across a worship-related book so richly layered that it becomes a prized resource far beyond the parameters of corporate prayer. This volume, a treasure trove of both scholarship and artistry, is one of those.

"I have been blessed with many images of the Divine which have helped me to pray and find comfort. But the one image that I return to, that I cling to when I am in my most desperate moments, is Mother. 'As a mother comforts her child, so I will comfort you,' God says in Isaiah 66:13."

by Mary Louise Bringle My vocation as a Christian feminist hymnwriter began accidentally—and perhaps even a bit irreverently. Never let it be said that God...

When I call Her by name, / especially in community, / I find comfort, support, solace, strength, / I am held in Her loving arms. / In relationship, I pray / and worship.

You cannot be God / Without being mother / To those you have birthed, / Whom you have held in your arms / And fed at your breasts.

Old Testament scholar Phyllis Trible opened the conference with a Thursday evening plenary analysis of texts about Wisdom in Job 28 and Proverbs 1, 8, and 9, while theologian Rosemary Radford Ruether, the Friday evening plenary speaker, helped listeners understand the call of God's people in an age of oppressive globalization.