So, this last week I've encountered two songs that refer to meeting one's mother in heaven. One of them ("Poor Wayfaring Stranger") says in one verse "I'm going there to meet my Father" and in another verse "I'm going there to meet my mother" (note the capitalization). God takes the father role, but the mother is just a human mother rather awkwardly placed as a heavenly figure.
The divinity of fathers is understood to be metaphorical and refer imperfectly to God's divinity, but mothers don't have anywhere to pass the buck in protestant culture. I'm taking Victorian Literature, and the strain is especially acute in that period. Victorian mothers are supposed to be superhuman agents of goodness, taking care of their own work and everyone else's, and generally glowing with virtue. I'm not saying mothers or anyone else ought to slack off on virtue and goodness, but the expectations were pretty ridiculous and still are in many subcultures.
If we have a psychological or cultural need for a divine mother, promoting earthly mothers to the position isn't a fair way to deal with it. And it's not healthy for them or those around them. A mother who thinks she's supposed to be an angel or goddess is likely to be acutely disappointed with herself, or self-righteous, or both. Idealizing human roles gets messy very quickly.
So maybe we need to recognize the mother aspect in God more. Mothers should be able to see what they do as a reflection of (not a substitute for) the mother in God. Then mothering is meaningful but allowed to be imperfect, and mothers can respect themselves and be respected for what they are.
3 comments:
Proverbs 31 Doesn't help the perfection-oriented literalist.
It does seem like the mother side of God is deemphasized . . . even in the Bible? Is that why the Catholic church deifies Mary?
Anne Lamott would agree with you.
(Just for the record, I have omitted a whole slew of obnoxious comments in reply to your post. . .maybe mentioning this is still obnoxious, but probably not quite as much :-D)
ilbyzt
ummm can i just say i love that song? and yes - God is both male and female, i believe, in the truest sense of both terms. at least, if you consider the term "man" to refer to the entire, dual-gendered race, then the fact that "man" is made in God's image connotes (denotes?) the dual-gendered nature of God. you can check me on the man = male/female thing, but i think it's worded like that in Genesis. i'm really tired right now though, so i could be wrong.
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