When I first encountered women’s spirituality and read about imaging God through a feminine lens, it seemed so foreign to me.  As a child God had always been a fatherly presence which I experienced as authoritarian and awesome. 

As an adult I embraced an image of God as Spirit, which worked well for me as I moved on in my spiritual journey.  Yet, the word spirit also conjured up a sense of God as elusive and always out of reach.  

As we grow in our relationship with God, we discover that like any relationship it is fluid never static.  The Divine can never be enclosed or explained by one image or word, one explanation or experience.  Our hunger to know and love God is expressed in the way we search for a way to name God. 

Since my own mother was such a warm and nurturing woman, I found that thinking about God as a motherly presence helped me feel God’s love in a way that had never come through for me before.  My meditation time took on a new life and I composed the following prayer to express my new understanding of the Divine.

 Our Mother

Our Mother
who enfolds the universe
honored be thy name.

Thy Wisdom come
thy Word be done
on earth as it is in heaven.

Nurture me each day
with courage and compassion
Free me of fear and pride
so I may carry your love to others.

Grace me to embrace
my giftedness
And deliver me from
those who seek to rob my soul and
divert my destiny.