Imaging God as Lover, not Lord

I led a workshop at the FGC Gathering in Colorado in which we explored some exciting ways of imaging and understanding God.  During the first two sessions, I drew upon two books by one of my favorite theologians, Sallie McFague: Models of God: Theology for an Ecological, Nuclear Age (1988), and The Body of God: An Ecological Theology (1993).

McFague starts with a critique of the old, “monarchical model” of God as king or lord, which she finds not only unbelievable but also deeply destructive for our time.  She cites three major flaws of the monarchical model: “…God is distant from the world, relates only to the human world, and controls the world through domination and benevolence” (Models of God:. 65).  This is a very authoritarian, top-down model which describes God as being “over” humans, and the created world as existing for the pleasure of (and exploitation by) one species only--we humans.

She suggests three alternative models: God as Mother, God as Friend, and God as Lover.  I particularly like the implications of understanding God as lover.  Says McFague:

We speak of God as love but are afraid to call God lover.  But a God who relates to all that is, not distantly and bloodlessly, but intimately and passionately, is appropriately called lover.  God as lover is the one who loves the world, not with the fingertips, but totally and passionately, taking pleasure in its variety and richness, finding it attractive and valuable, delighting in its fulfillment.  God as lover is the moving power of love in the universe, the desire for unity with all the beloved…(Models: 130)

This helps me understand the joy I feel in my experiences of beauty in God’s stunning creation. This underlies the powerful feeling of unity with all parts of the world which comes over me in my deepest experiences of the Spirit!  I am filled with love because, whatever God “is,” God is passionate, joyful love.

She goes on to note that, in this model of God, sin is not disobedience to a superior being, but separation from  “our lover God” and all that God has created and goes on loving.  And “salvation is the reunification of the beloved world with its lover, God” (Models: 139).”

In addition to resonating with my experience of the Spirit, this understanding of God provides a foundation for social and political action with and on behalf of all parts of creation: human, animal, vegetable and mineral.  The ravaging of our Earth for our material gain is now seen as enormously selfish and destructive of our relationship with our love and lover, God. 

I will expand on this further in my next post  in which I will explore an understanding of the earth as “God’s body.”

The Burning Oneness Binding Everything

I am entering the blogosphere to share some of my spiritual and human experiences as a Quaker and lover of the world. 

Experiencing "The Burning One-ness"
in Kenya, April, 2012

My title comes from the last line of the poem, There Is a Spirit Which I Feel, by Quaker economist, poet and philosopher Kenneth Boulding (1910-1993).  This poem is the first in a collection of Boulding’s sonnets based on the dying words of James Naylor, a 17^th century Quaker who was beaten and tortured for the unorthodox manner in which he expressed his beliefs as a member of the newly emerging Religious Society of Friends, or Quakers.  Read the full sonnet below.

In this poem, Boulding describes the difficulty of seeking the divine when it feels so distant, so incomprehensibly grand and removed from us.  He speaks of being “imprisoned,” “bound” in his mortal body, separated from the incomprehensibly grand Spirit.  He laments that, whatever Truth he glimpses “forever slips from out [his] clutch,” describing it as a “tiny cupful” from an ocean of Truth.  How can he really know God and Truth?

This has been my experience also.  As I understand it, the Spirit, or “God,” is a mystery, experienced by me indirectly, principally through beauty, love and worship.  For decades, I have plunged into experiences of beauty in the natural world, in music and art.  I have loved and been loved deeply, drawing great strength from these experiences. I have felt the presence of something wonderful and powerful.  I generally refer to this as the Spirit, or sometimes as God.  But I also kept hearing a challenging voice: “That’s not really God.  You’re supposed to hear a clear voice in the silence.  You should discern the will of God for you.”  Like Boulding, I frequently feel constrained, limited, unable to hear God the way I should.  So do my experiences qualify as genuine glimpses of the divine?

Boulding responds to these questions powerfully. As in all good sonnets, he turns sharply in the last six lines.  “And Yet,” says the poet, “some Thing that moves among the stars,/ And holds the cosmos in a web of law,/ Moves too in me…”  Returning to the image of imprisonment, he boldly states that this “Thing” melts the “ancient bars” that separate him from the Spirit.  And then he knows that he is part of “The burning one-ness binding everything.”

I will be sharing many more reflections on my spiritual journey, all of which have been formed through incredibly rich experiences of people, of the natural world, and of beauty. I expect to come back at times to the question—“Is this really the divine?”  I am hoping that some of you will respond with your own questions, challenges, and of course, stories of your own experiences.  And I would welcome your comments here on this blog post.

                         There Is a Spirit Which I Feel

                         Can I, imprisoned, body-bound, touch

                         The starry garment of the Oversoul,

                         Reach from my tiny part to the great Whole,

                         And spread my Little to the Infinite Much,

                         When Truth forever slips from out my clutch,

                         And what I take indeed, I do but dole

                         In cupfuls from a rimless ocean-bowl

                         That holds a million million million such?

                              And Yet, some Thing that moves among the stars,

                              And holds the cosmos in a web of law,

                              Moves too in me: a hunger, a quick thaw

                              Of soul that melts the ancient bars,

                              As I, a member of creation, sing

                              The burning one-ness binding everything.

NB:  Kenneth Boulding’s There Is A Spirit: The Naylor Sonnets, is available from Amazon.com.  My Pendle Hill pamphlet, The Burning One-ness Binding Everything: A Spiritual Journey, is available from the FGC Bookstore: www.fgcquaker.org/deepen/religious-education/quakerbooks-fgc