WITHIN MOST RELIGIOUS TRADITIONS, the masculine nature of God has been favored and the feminine largely overlooked. Only in the last few decades have references to God in feminine terms become more common. Yet over 100 years ago, Mary Baker Eddy reintroduced the Genesis 1 concept of God, which includes the balance of both the feminine and masculine nature of the one Creator. In her book Science and Health, she identified God as being both our divine Mother and Father. One Parent, feminine and masculine together.
As each of us continuously broadens our perceptions of the true nature of God, we will—and in turn humanity will—gradually reach the full understanding of the allness, the wholeness, the absolute perfection of the one universal Mother-Father God of us all.
In the following articles, writers share their unique experience of how they've come to understand that the feminine nature of God—our divine Mother—weaves through all our lives in myriad forms, and how this understanding has blessed their own lives and the lives of others.
A mother wearing a full-length striped dress tenderly washes the foot of her towel-clad child in Mary Cassatt's painting La Toilette (The Child's Bath, 1893). Like many of this American painter's masterpieces, this one captures the essence of motherhood—patience, grace, care, unconditional love. Contrast that tender scene with the harsh image on television of a woman in orange prison attire who has forfeited the opportunity to raise her child because of a drug addiction that led to indifference and domestic violence. Most of us fall somewhere between the idyllic mother of Cassatt's painting and the mother behind bars. But even those who feel they have failed to be an ideal mother have an opportunity to discover and express the true essence of motherhood.
After losing my mother when I was only 20, I yearned for some presence of motherhood in my life. I still had some growing—and growing up—to do that I felt would be easier if I had someone to guide me. My mother taught me to love God and to be a good citizen. She was the glue that held our family together. I was grateful for her steady loving hand and her encouragement. Both my sister and I were raised to accept that we could do anything we aspired to. But at a time that seemed way too early to lose her, I was confronted with lots of questions: Why her? Why me? How will my life change without her support and guidance?
I found great comfort in Christian Science during this period. Unlike religious traditions that focus strictly on the fatherhood of God, Christian Science highlights the perfect balance between God's fatherhood and motherhood. In Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, Mary Baker Eddy gave a spiritual interpretation of the Lord's Prayer, where she interpreted the first line, "Our Father which art in heaven" as "Our Father-Mother God, all-harmonious" (p. 16).
Poring over the Bible and Science and Health led me to discover more about God's nature as both Mother and Father. Even though my human father was still around, I felt that I couldn't truly understand the motherhood of God without understanding His/Her fatherhood, since these facets of God's nature are inseparable and perpetually in balance. This period and the years since have harvested an increasingly spiritual view of fatherhood-motherhood for me that has stripped away the limits of human parentage and allowed for greater expression of motherhood in my own life.
Here's some of what I gleaned:
God is a tender Mother, caring for all of Her children.
In the months after my mother's passing, human life seemed fragile and undependable. I questioned why it appeared that God hadn't been there for her. As I came to better know that God is Spirit—divine Principle, divine Love—I could see that God is always actively assuring us that Her entire creation lives in perfect harmony. This was evident in the harmony of music, the beauty of architecture, the concordant movement of planets, the logic of mathematics, and so on.
I even glimpsed that my mother hadn't died, although I couldn't see her with my eyes or hear her voice. The analogy of notes on the musical scale was very helpful to me. Each one exists even when we can't hear it. And yet each note can be expressed in countless ways—through a violin, vocal chords, a birdsong. Rather than cold and abstract, God is Love and Life itself, caring for each aspect of His/Her creation eternally. It no longer made sense to me that anyone's life is temporary. So while I couldn't say specifically what my mother was doing, I could acknowledge that in God we—my mother and I—"live, and move, and have our being ... For we are also [Her] offspring" (Acts 17:28).
God is the one perfect Parent—where masculine and feminine qualities balance, strengthen, and support each other.
This perfect Parent includes both fatherhood and motherhood, as Mrs. Eddy observed: "Love, the divine Principle, is the Father and Mother of the universe, including man" (Science and Health, p. 256). Knowing this fact dispels the "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus" theory because we discover that God's parenting includes a combination of grace and strength, tenderness and integrity, wisdom and charity. We can expect to see that balance of qualities expressed in each of us, rather than succumbing to limited gender impositions.
I'm safe when I look to God for guidance.
An interesting sidebar occurred on my way to knowing God better as Mother. I realized I could either go to my human father for advice, hoping that he would ask God, or I could go directly to God, myself. I love that Christian Science teaches us to understand what we worship. It leaves no mystery. And the more we know of God's unconditional love, power, and presence, the safer we feel in trusting Him/Her to guide us. As I grew in trusting God, my relationship with my father got better and better, because I let him off the hook. We could have a naturally sweet and lovely relationship, rather than feeling we had to fulfill predefined roles.
God's love for me is unconditional, even when I make mistakes.
And believe me, I've made plenty. One of the loveliest aspects of motherhood is unconditional love. I have seen mothers with children who have betrayed, lied to, stolen from them, but the mothers were able to see through the mask of misbehavior to the pure and innocent beings within. Think of God—the source of all life and love—and of Her infinite grace. She knows nothing of our foibles and failings. Instead, She sees Her own perfect children, each fulfilling his or her distinct purpose harmoniously. What's more, She loves us so much that She has given us eternal life, so we coexist with Her forever.
The motherhood of God must be expressed within the hearts of all, whether man or woman.
Over most of my adult life, I've enjoyed exploring my expression of motherhood as being the reflection of the one, infinite Mother. While I've never given birth to children myself, I've had wonderful opportunities for practicing mothering qualities, including step parenting, teaching, and hosting exchange students.
Several years ago, I wrote an article on step parenting for a sister publication of this magazine. In it, I related how important coming to know God as Mother was to me when I found myself raising three children, although I had never intended having children. I heard from a single father who had read the article, and in all good humor, he let me know that he, too, claimed ownership of the ideas in the article, because he'd learned a lot about mothering from that piece. Mrs. Eddy elucidated this point: "A mother's affection cannot be weaned from her child, because the mother-love includes purity and constancy, both of which are immortal. Therefore maternal affection lives on under whatever difficulties" (Science and Health, p. 60).
Motherhood isn't confined to a person. Instead, it's expressed by every individual.
When I grieved over my mother, I confined the qualities of motherhood to just her. However, as I grew to see God as Love itself, I realized that since we've all been created in Her image and likeness—in the likeness of God as Mother as well as Father—we all possess the capacity to express that motherhood. A perfectly still lake reflects everything around it. It doesn't reflect only a tiny portion or only a few of the trees surrounding it.
So, too, we all reflect the mothering and fathering qualities of God—and nothing less. And yet, each of us expresses these qualities distinctly, individually. After my mother's passing, I found tender expressions of motherhood in my own life—an aunt who stepped in to help with my wedding, a retired schoolteacher who generously came forward to finance my final year of college, and today, a lovely husband who mothers me most of all. I just needed to lift my sight to see that motherhood can't disappear or be suppressed or hidden.
Lastly, God has no orphans, no unwanted children, no stepchildren, and no illegitimate children.
No one is ever separated from his or her true Parent. We all have a special place in God's home, the kingdom of heaven, right here and now. We're all wanted and cherished. Plus, God is pleased with us and will never leave us. Perhaps knowing this met my most immediate need. Losing a parent can be pretty disorienting. But understanding that my true Parent loves me helped me to echo the Apostle Paul's words, "I am persuaded, that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God" (Rom. 8:38, 39).
Mary Cassatt must have glimpsed something of motherhood's pure qualities to have captured its essence on canvas. Yet, as tender as her mother-child paintings are, with the human scene far from idyllic, we need to see beyond individuals and restore motherhood to its proper source—God. Only in the spiritual realm will we discover that our true Mother can never be taken from us. Then we'll see that everyone "as the offspring of God, as the idea of Spirit, is the immortal evidence that Spirit is harmonious and man eternal" (Science and Health, p. 29). And then we'll feel our true Mother's comfort, tenderness, and grace without interruption.
