Today I officially start The Mother God Experiment, as I hold my fourteen month old sleeping baby in my lap, his head in the crook of my left arm. My right hand is free to write.
Yesterday was the first day I read from a new translation of the New Testament, The Divine Feminine Version (DFV). My husband, Joel, gave it to me for Christmas—it is March now and I am finally opening it.
My toddler pulling Is It Okay To Call God Mother? off the shelf brought The Mother God Experiment to life. But the seed of the idea for this one-person experiment began as a dissertation project when I was in a doctor of psychology (Psy.D.) program. I wanted to see if praying to God as Mother would have an impact on self-esteem in Christian women. I withdrew from the program to be an at-home mother, but my thoughts sometimes returned to my dissertation over the years.
At that time, the Divine Feminine Version of the New Testament didn’t exist. It’s timing (published in 2014) is for me, and I hope, for you.
The first chapter, Matthew 1, made the “begets” interesting for the first time. Wow, get this, for starters:
“This is the genealogy of Jesus Christ, the Son of Bathsheba and David, the son of Sarah and Abraham.”
That is good news, though not “according to the tradition of Matthew” as the header says. The good news is that Sarah and Bathsheba, ancient mothers, matter. And you and I matter. And so does this nascent blog.
Maybe Sarah and Bathsheba being mentioned first gave me the courage to just send Joel away when he came now to do our usual pass off where he sits with the napping baby and reads while I go do housework or spend time with our 9 year old. He often reads for work (he’s a professor), but still. I am used to putting him first, and my two kids. He’s the one bringing in the money. No matter how much we value non-paid love-work, it’s still money that brings status and power.
And so, here is the worn-out definition of Mother: the old shoe and faded door mat. She is the one in the background at the park holding the kids’ jackets, or the invisible one taking the picture.
Juxtapose her with God. A God so faithful that we usually ignore Her, forget to thank Her, but remember Her when we are really needy, really broke, really in pain.
God wants to be remembered, just like all mothers, more often than Christmas and Easter and when we feel desperate.
God, too, is saying, “I matter.”