She, He, Them
The world we live in was built on the Patriarchy and it bleeds into everything, especially religion and faith. Growing up in the Christian church, I thought that was how it should be because that's what I was told to believe. If you ever for one second questioned that, you were headed down a "slippery slope". I remember one day my dad asked me "What if God is a woman?" and you would think by my reaction that he had asked me to commit murder. That's how deeply entrenched I was in the idea that God is and must be and can only be a man. Fast forward about 30 years and last weekend on Mother's Day I'm sitting in my mom's church (Normandy Park United Church of Christ), celebrating "Mother Earth Sunday" and singing: "She's got the whole world in her hands, she's got the whole world in her hands..." The idea that God is only Father can actually be very hard for people that have never had a close relationship with their...