For those of us who never had the pleasure of knowing Mother God, there is a whole side of this tradition that has yet to be explored.
Whether we realize it or not, we know Her well in both the domestic and public spheres, at home and out in the world. And as we dismantle patriarchal understanding, She is emerging in new ways.
It’s important to note that when we talk about the feminine and masculine attributes of God and their effects on our spiritual experience, we aren’t talking about male versus female—we’re talking about how our bodies, brains, and souls experience God’s limitless expressions on a molecular level.
We are all a blend of masculine and feminine in different balances, but how we were taught to value each expression varies within families and across cultures.
For example, in my family, the masculine values of competition, rationality, and independence were far superior to the feminine values of creativity, feeling, and connection. I learned what would be respected and what would be ridiculed, and I behaved accordingly.
We learn these lessons from a young age, and this affects how we relate to God the Father and Mother.
The Domestic
Mother God sparks a domestic memory. In a world where women have ruled hearth and home for millennia, these images of Mother are imprinted on our psyche and soul.
This is not a truth to avoid or deny. Feminism isn’t about men and women “switching” roles within the public and domestic spheres—there is essential work to be done in both. Rather, it’s about valuing feminine contributions and giving everyone the choice to contribute to society wherever they wish.
And while the Divine Feminine is present in the public sphere, many of us are most familiar with Her in the domestic.
We know Her love in our homes. Mother God gets us out of bed in the morning. She is the warmth in the fireplace, the cuddles of young children, and the taste and nourishment of warm, buttery waffles.
She is the listening ear and support of a partner, the relational movement of the Divine. We feel her at rest and in play, and we know Her intimately when we care for the garden and each other.
We understand Her when we begin to know the significance of every mother across the world. As the primary caregivers of young children, mothers have formed the consciousness of generations.
It is the role of caregivers to teach self-respect, self-love, and self-compassion, and when we have learned how to thoroughly love ourselves, we can love our neighbor as we love ourselves…had you ever noticed that this is a prerequisite to loving others well?
Caring for and forming our children has a tremendous impact on the world we’re creating.
You can always spot someone who had a good mother. Those present voices in our early childhood become our inner voices, and for many, that inner voice is a compass pointing us in the direction of our mothers.
In the same way, Mother God writes her love for us in our DNA.
In the collective consciousness, Mother is love. She has love for herself and the ones in her orbit, moving with ease and confidence, knowing her value in the way the world is woven.
She is the weaver, the compass, and the inner voice.
The Public
In the modern era, many of us are still working in domestic roles, but those of us who work in the public sphere serve an equal purpose to bring the Divine Feminine to life.
The working mother is rebalancing the scales in a world that has forgotten the value of the feminine. She is rebuilding a society marred by patriarchy. She is giving birth to a new world.
Mother God brings that warm, supportive, inclusive embrace everywhere she goes.
In American culture, masculine attributes are often seen as “better” in the public sphere, a patriarchal understanding we are actively dismantling.
We see men and women alike “playing the game” by embracing their masculine energy to the exclusion of the feminine. They are encouraged to choose competition over collaboration, independence over interdependence, and productivity over play.
The issue is not the masculine itself, it is the lack of balance in our society at large.
We can embody masculine and feminine values at the same time, and when we achieve this, values will shift in business, in government, and everywhere humanity gathers outside of the home.
We will begin to see integration over compartmentalization.
We will see the end of hustle culture in favor of wholehearted living.
We will work together to solve complex problems, embracing nuance and grey areas, killing off perfectionism in favor of flawed goodness.
The Divine Feminine empowers us to create this new world together.
Mother God sees the ones who have been forgotten by greed and fights back. She remembers all of her children, no person forgotten. She holds every mother and child, the migrant breastfeeding on her journey to safety and the corporate executive weeping in her office when she just can’t pump another ounce.
Mother sees and loves us all. She asks how our day went. She understands us as the one who birthed us, and Her hope is that we begin to understand ourselves. When we know where to look, we see Her everywhere.
Maybe we know Her better than we thought.