Yesterday I gave a small ‘talk’ at a local Presbyterian church (which may be where I am eventually ordained, if I ever finish my units…) which was appropriately called, by them, ‘Memoirs of an Activist’ through story, poetry and song. I worried that I would not be able to appear because the day before I had developed intense pain in the rib area under my right breast which resembled the pain I had suffered from a cracked rib from a mishap with a small freezer in a store 🙂 many years ago, which had me walking as an unfortunate robot… (a robot ready for the robot farm, you know what I mean… )

I rambled on about a number of things, sang and recited a couple of darkish poems about spiritual tiredness and angst, (which I explained is was what happened when an activist needed a nap) but I also spoke a lot about our women’s ordination movement, and ultimately said that I had been recently asked what the greatest ‘sin’ was, whether sexism or racism, and had decided, after great inner questioning, that it was sexism… if we conceived (officially) the divinity in her female persona, what could we not do as a species? Would we not adopt the caretaking attitude of the good mother, rather than the bellicose attitude of empire and capitalism, that always seeks to subjugate?

So this story about a request by our Anglican sisters to speak of God as female, or to omit the gender of God, is very welcome… You may find it here http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/32958213/god-is-neither-she-nor-he-say-anglican-priests and here http://www.theblaze.com/stories/2015/06/01/female-priests-propose-a-major-change-to-the-way-god-is-referenced/

The image above is a Byzantine Greek icon, showing the female (Sophia) nature of God with her daughters, Hope, Faith and Charity… and the paintings in the catacombs show male and female priests and bishops, all at one, not as in atoning, but as in joy and blessing…

Why do I have a picture of a samurai (female) warrior at the bottom of this post? Because, unfortunately, it’s been my role for lo these many years… I think I probably came out of my mother with a small infant placard about women’s rights or something…

It all reminds me of a rather nasty poem I wrote several years ago, which is contained in a very nice anthology called “Women of the Web” —

I am selling God by the Hour

Cheaper by the dozen,
you can’t afford not to buy into this,
in fundamentalist attire,
the up and coming

god of the ages
wrecker and destroyer,
sometime blesser
of male human efforts

women step to the back of the line,
no uncovered faces, smiles or pudenda
we don’t need no weapons of mass destruction
the divine is our ultimate and ultimatum

AMEN