Dancing With The Other Foot

"Heaven rages like the dawn"

From time to time I like to see things from a different point of view, I think it's very unhealthy to only live inside a single worldview and be unable to understand how other people think and see the world.

For a brief time, for about two years twenty years or so ago when I was at university, I was an atheist. A few years later one of the most precious times in my life was working in London with a group of wonderful people, most of whom were thoughtful and loving atheists. I feel like I understand the atheist mindset, and it's a point of view I have a lot of sympathy with. Atheism is one perfectly rational and reasonable response to this messy world that seems to be ruled by consistent (if chaotic) physical laws. My own personal experiences have led me to a different worldview but I don't blame anyone for coming to different conclusions. Something I love about new atheism (I don't love everything about it) is its fierce rationality, its refusal to be duped. "Prove it then" is a perfectly reasonable thing to say. Rational scepticism is a very useful approach to life, and the extraordinary marvel of modern science (and medicine) is part of the outcome.

Many other friends of mine have an active spirituality but are very uncomfortable with the male-centric approach of Christianity to divinity, particularly in the context of all the damage that men have done and continue to do in the world. This is a point of view I also have sympathy for and I have no problem with the concept of "Mother God". A mother's love is the most powerful force in nature and there are few clearer examples of sacrificial, self-giving love than the love of a mother for her children. The female is clearly in even the traditional Christian God:

Genesis 1:27 So God created human beings in his own image.In the image of God he created them; male and female he created them.

So in that vein, here's an ode to the Goddess. It's in the form of prose, but it's my blog, so I get to call it an ode.

The goddess is love. Her love is bountiful goodness, there is nothing better, no other goodness. So let us venerate love as holy and sacred. The love we find for each other is holy and pure as she is pure. Revere and respect the love of your friends and family, abandon yourselves to a wild adoration of love wherever you find it.

And the very best thing of all, when you love love she grows. Bow to love wherever you meet her, in all persons and all things.

Love is rising and the darkness cannot hold.

The Father is a very real, and very beautiful, aspect of God. But if God created women in his image, then the feminine is in God to.

"Mother God" is a phrase to strike terror into the heart of conservative Christianity. So sad. The life giver, the carer, the nurturer. The one who binds our wounds. The passionate one.