The Divine Feminine-Mother's Day

Midweek Faith Lift

May 11, 2022

Celebrating the Divine Feminine

Happy Mother’s Day

Rev. Deb Hill-Davis

 

Spiritual Passages

                                                                                  Calling on the Divine Feminine

3/4/2022

 

The Munich Security Conference meets yearly to exchange views on issues of international security. Founded more than 50 years ago, it assembles heads of state, diplomats, and business leaders from the world’s leading democracies. The Conference met two weeks ago in Munich with the group’s CEO luncheon staged at the Hotel Bayerischer Hof. Not a woman or person of color in sight.

 

“There are times in life to push forward, to make things happen, to take a dominating approach – the masculine dynamic. And there are times to expand, to become more, rather than attack or coerce things – the wisdom of the feminine. The most powerful arrangement is for the feminine aspect of each of us to be in leadership. Divine Feminine leadership is essential for the evolution of humanity.”  - Roger Teel, This Life is Joy

 

Affirmative prayer: Infinite Presence, I pray that humankind accepts the guidance of the Divine Feminine, the creative, nurturing aspect of life. May we allow the midwifery essence of an indwelling, creative spirit to bring compassion, artistry, and newness to our lives, to the planet.  

Thank you, God, forever. Amen.

 

Today we honor mothers and that nurturing quality that brings life into the world and the fierceness that protects life.  Happy Mother’s Day to all of us, because as Mr. Rogers said, “Everyone has a mother!” To which I would add, like her or not, we all had a mother who was the biological instrument of our existence.  She was part of the miracle of life; otherwise, we would not be here!   Today, we celebrate the gift of life and that we are indeed here, on the earth at this time in human history.  Our presence matters! Every Mother’s Day, I am reminded that Unity was birthed by a woman, Myrtle Fillmore, and her fierce commitment to the spiritual energy of healing and her unwavering faith in the power and presence of God in all of her life.  We are here because of Myrtle Fillmore, the Mother of Unity.

 

While it is traditional to honor all the “softer” elements of feminine energy, the creativity, the nurturing, the love, that somehow misses the truth that the Divine Feminine is also strength, courage, resilience, tenacity and incredible capacity for commitment.  Birthing a baby is no quick and easy process. Neither is raising a child. Birthing a new reality, a new approach to international security is not an easy process either.  As noted in the opening story, it would really be a blessing for ordinary women to be in the room and at the table when those discussions happen and decisions are made.  That would be refreshing and it is about time, don’t you think!?

 

This coming week, we have Friday the 13th, which has accrued all kinds of negative beliefs about bad luck, ill will and negative omens. Some hotels don’t even have an identified13th floor because people won’t stay there. I did not know this, but in researching the Divine Feminine I learned:

 

           “Friday the 13th was once considered the day of the Goddess, a day to worship the divine feminine in all of us, and to honor the cycle of creation and the potential for new life. The number 13 also represents change. An even 12 feels complete, but adding one more element to the dozen can be off-putting and even downright scary. Thirteen territory is the place of transformation, newness, and creation.” – Scott Awbrey

 

I would add that if we treat the number 13 metaphysically, we have #1, which signifies the Oneness and then the Trinity of three, which is the creative process of “Mind, Idea, Expression.”  We have the creative possibility that happens when we have our personal trinity of our human self, our Divine Self and our observer self, which is able to hold space and witness a fresh path, a new reality, a new idea, a new way that comes forward. 

 

If ever there were a time that the power of 13 was needed, that time is now.  It is time for women, for people of color and for all marginalized people to take their place at the table and speak with spiritual authority and be heard. It reminds me of a quote by Marianne Williamson:

         

           “Your playing small does not serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people will not feel insecure around you.

 

This quote reminds me to say thank you to all the brave women who had the courage to stand up and say #me,too and speak out to tell their stories.  It reminds me to say thank you to the women who had the courage to start a union type movement for nannies, caregivers and domestic workers so that their work is appropriately valued and compensated.  There is a Divine Feminine energy that speaks up for what is wrong, what is needed and what is next, and today we celebrate and honor that energy and we listen to what this energy is saying to all of us.

 

So how does this all fit together?  What are the threads in the evolution of spiritual consciousness that Myrtle Fillmore and other women of New Thought were tapping into when they asserted and affirmed their Divine Feminine Natures?  We know that there is a long history of the Divine Feminine, but it was suppressed as Christianity evolved into a formalized religion.  Here is what is said in an article published by The Esoteric Theological Seminary: “Putting the Goddess Back Into Judeo-Christianity” at http://northernway.org/goddess.html

 

           Many theologians and scholars believe the Holy Spirit written as, Pneuma in Greek every time it appears in the New Testament, is a feminine being. Note that Pneuma is a neuter word in Greek, but in Hebrew the word Ruah (Spirit) and in Aramaic the word Shekinah (Presence) are feminine words and imply a feminine divine presence. The Holy Spirit is possibly a Christian Goddess, not a mysterious invisible member of an all-male Trinity “club.” Or more provocatively, maybe there is a Feminine Trinity of God-the-Mother (Sophia and Mary?), God-the-Daughter (Mary Magdalene) and Goddess-the-Spirit-Presence (Shekinah, Ruah). The Holy Spirit appears at Yeshua’s baptism in the form of a dove. The dove has long been a symbol of the Goddess in the Ancient Near East, and was never used to symbolize any male Being or God.

 

          We must also look in the Old Testament, the Hebrew Bible, and consider the Goddess Sophia. Her name means “Wisdom.” She is the Goddess of Wisdom referred to repeatedly in scripture as the wife of God-the-Father.         *See Proverbs, Song of Songs, (also called Song of Solomon) in the Hebrew Bible, and see the Book of Sirach and the Book of Wisdom in the Apocrypha found in the center of any Catholic Bible.

 

 

So, now we know the truth….the Divine Feminine has always been a part of the story, even as the words were “masculinized” or neutered to dilute Divine Feminine power or recast it as something negative like “Friday the 13th.”

 

 There is also the Gospel of Mary Magdala, discovered in Cairo, Egypt, in 1896,  purchased and brought to Berlin by Carl Reinhardt.  It is a fragment of the Gospel written in Coptic and on papyrus and was translated finally in 1941.  It was written when Christianity was in its infancy stages and transmitted as an oral tradition as teachings from one who has heard and understood to another.  The significance of this writing is that it was recorded and taught by Mary Magdala, a woman disciple of Jesus who was very close to him.  It reflects a teaching that was the essence of the Jesus message, but is unlike the message that was ultimately transmitted in what became the approved writings or “orthodoxy” of the Christian Bible.

 

 The Gospel According to Mary Magdalene

 

(The Gospel of Mary)

Chapter 4

(Pages 1 to 6 of the manuscript, containing chapters 1 - 3, are lost.  The extant text starts on page 7...)

 

            . . . Will matter then be destroyed or not?

 

            22) The Savior said, All nature, all formations, all creatures exist in and with one another, and they will be resolved again into their own roots.

 

            23) For the nature of matter is resolved into the roots of its own nature alone.

            24) He who has ears to hear, let him hear.

 

             25) Peter said to him, Since you have explained everything to us, tell us this also: What is the sin of the world?

  26) The Savior said, “ There is no sin, but it is you who make sin when you do the things that are like the nature of adultery, which is called sin.”

 

 27) That is why the Good came into your midst, to the essence of every nature in order to restore it to its root.

 

In this passage, adultery means being something other than what you truly are, a spiritual being.  Jesus is saying that ultimately we are restored to our Divine Essence and our physical selves are restored to their essence matter.  There is no sin unless we forget who we really are, Divine Beings, embodied in this flesh on this earth.

 

Sounds like Unity to me!  This is what Mary Magdalen recorded of her interactions with her master teacher, Jesus and she was rebuked for this.

Did you notice that Jesus said, “Let him who has ears, to hear, let him hear.”  That is the Divine Feminine message, Listen, Trust and Follow.

 

This is how Myrtle Fillmore taught this message in her Healing Letters:

 

           Think of God as everywhere-present light, love, peace, power, and life.  Think of all men, all women, all children as abiding in God’s presence and expressing God’s qualities.  As you do this, you will touch the reality of individuals and you will invite only the best from them.

 

 Let us follow the Wisdom of the Women throughout the ages and as expressed and taught in Unity.  Let us learn to Listen to our Intuition, Trust it and Follow it as we express and empower our Divine Feminine nature on this Mother’s Day.

 

Blessings on the Path,

Rev. Deb