Imelda

Dublin, Ireland

Lisa Amoroso-Johnson

Pamela Kolbas

Connect with the nurturing presence of God as Mother through feminine metaphors and a calming breath prayer.

Religion

Divine Connection

Spiritual

Christianity

English

God is not a man or a woman. Yet for centuries in Christianity, we’ve been given primarily masculine images of the divine. The Bible, and in particular the Hebrew Scriptures, show many feminine images of God, and in many of them, God is seen as a mother.  Feminine and specifically maternal images say something true about God and my experience with God, and I offer you this meditation as a chance to reflect on these images as seen in scripture. Find scripture references on my website.

God Our Mother

 For many centuries of Christianity, we've mainly heard God called Father or He. Encoded in the very grammar of the original languages of our sacred text, God is also our Mother and She. I used to imagine myself as a child sitting in my Father God's lap. I used to think of God high above me and unreachable, untouchable in His holiness. But these days, I find myself imagining God my Mother, who is as near as the ground beneath my feet, earthy and real and within reach, sustaining me with her very body. All I need to do to access her is to simply breathe. As I guide you through the meditation, I will share many images straight from the Bible that describe God with feminine metaphors. Let them wash over you and allow your imagination to take hold of them. In the beginning of time, God formed humankind from the dust of the ground. God then breathed a divine feminine presence into the man's nostrils, and the breath of God became an animating force for humankind. She is the God whose breath continues to animate our lives to this very day. If she withdrew her breath, all of life would cease and all humanity would turn to dust. She is the God who picks you up and carries you on her wind into the presence of the divine. The God who breathes into your dry bones and makes you come back to life. The God who breathes on you in order to give you a blessing of inner peace, inner knowing, and inner trust. She is the God who doesn't ask you to do something that's out of your reach. This God's word is not on a high mountain, and it's not far away across an ocean. This God is as near as the tongue in your mouth, the heart in your chest. She speaks love and her heart beats truth, steady and faithful. She is the God whose face is reflected in your face, the God who teaches her children to walk, who takes them up in her arms and heals them, who leads them with kindness and love. The God who bends down to feed her children from her breast, and when they've finished, she lifts her baby to her cheek. She is the God who will treasure those tender memories forever. She is the God who cried out, gasping and panting with the pains of labor as she gave you birth. The God who comforts you, whose fairy presence calms and quiets your soul. She is the fierce mother bear God who attacks anyone who tries to steal her cubs, and the eagle mother God who pushes her baby birds out of the nest so they learn to fly, yet is always waiting to catch them and carry them back to safety with her expansive wings. This is your mother God. With your mind full of these images of a compassionate, nurturing, caretaking, fierce, comforting, loving mother God, I will leave space for you to enter in to a new form of imagination for who God is and who God can be to you. If your mind starts to wander, I offer this simple breath prayer. As you inhale, say to yourself, I am at peace. And as you exhale, saying like a baby with its mother. And as you exhale, saying like a baby with its mother. Start to bring your awareness back to the sound of my voice, back to the present moment, knowing that you can return to this space simply by returning to your breath. I will bring the meditation to a close, but as always, feel free to stay in this space for as long as you need.