Understanding the Divine Feminine, God with us

To understand the necessity of the Divine Feminine in our lives, we will continue to explore the differences between masculine and feminine spirituality.

Within an exclusively masculine interpretation, God is only transcendent.

He is somewhere else watching over us, beyond body, earth, and matter.

But the feminine balances this interpretation by embracing Divine immanence, or the belief that there is divinity in the material.

Sue Monk Kidd elaborates in Dissident Daughter:

…the feminine carries an old and deeply entwined connection with nature, body, and earth. Women’s experience has been largely invested in these things as we go through menstruation, pregnancy, childbirth, and nursing. 

We’ve also traditionally been the ones involved in the earthly matters of caring for children, cleaning up bodily excrements, and nursing the sick and dying. 

If, then, we envision the Divine as female—a symbol that incorporates nature, body, and matter—then as a people we will come to honor the feminine…

A Divine Feminine symbol renders obsolete the old idea that these things are outside the realm of divinity. It begins to shift thousands of years of dualistic thinking, setting up a new mandate for the divinity of the earth and the holiness of the body.

…Patriarchy has majored in divine transcendence, which means separateness from the material universe—being above, beyond, or apart from it. Divine immanence, on the other hand, is divinity here, near and now, inherent in the material stuff of life.

Patriarchal influence played a role in removing God from the material, the often misrepresented lines from Paul about the battle between our spirit and flesh still drives the conversation around material evil.

But Divine immanence is written into the Christian tradition. 

Jesus is called Immanuel, or God with us, which was a revolutionary idea at the time. God was no longer just “out there” but near and now.

It’s in scriptures like Colossians 1:17, “He is before all things, and in him all things hold together.” Or, if you’d like to take that verse for a Divine Feminine spin…

She is before all things, and in her all things hold together.

Not only are we connected to nature, our bodies, and the earth, God is holding all of these things together. Scripture teaches us that there is Divinity in the material.

Women have always known this.

We have an intimate knowledge of Divine immanence. We experience Her in our bodies in childbirth and motherhood, and embodied living is a part of our wiring.

In our experience, humans are not just brains in jars, a disembodied rationality. Our essence can be touched, known, and held. We know the human body is holy.

We know Her in the warmth of the Sun on our skin, evidenced in the countless health benefits of spending time in nature. The Divine Feminine draws us outside, away from our desks and overproduction and into rest, presence, and play.

We feel Her in our relationships, in intimacy and safety. We seek out and maintain social connections, knowing that we are not meant to live our lives in silos, in our modern homes completely isolated from our community.

For centuries, a patriarchal culture controlled the Christian narrative and wrote from the masculine perspective, but from our feminine vantage point, we see that She is with us.

Mechthild of Magdeburg, a medieval Christian mystic, writes, “The day of my awakening was the day I saw and knew I saw all things in God, and God in all things.”

Honoring earth, body, and the material world belongs within the tradition. Jesus was Divine immanence, Divinity in flesh, making a way for us to better understand what’s happening here.

It’s time to embrace Divine immanence.

We will stop despising our bodies.

Instead, we’ll read 1 Corinthians 3 and know that our bodies are temples of the Spirit, holy and sacred, and we’ll begin tuning into them, growing our embodiment practices, and honoring the gifts that they are.

We will stop acting like we are removed from nature.

Instead, we’ll remember that God is in all things in the natural world, holding them together, and our first calling in the garden was to love and care for the earth.

We will stop believing that Divine transcendence is the whole story. 

Instead, we’ll recognize that God is with us and honor the feminine by honoring the earth, our bodies, and our essential connection to our communities.

As we continue to understand the Divine Feminine, may we grow in consciousness and knowledge that She is in all things.

May we find the depth and richness of every expression of God, masculine and feminine.

And may we seek balance in ourselves so that we might play a role in rebalancing our world.