Have been pondering this one. I know its a bit of a theological minefield, just wondering if anyone has any thoughts? Can God be our heavenly mother? Do we need a heavenly mother? What is the role of the Holy Spirit? (apparently denoted in the feminine gender in the Hebrew... ) talk to me wise people!
A week today, when all the furore has ebbed and the markets have bottomed out, our nation will awake to the sounds of bugles and church bells as we commemorate 100 years from the start of the Battle of The Somme. I am an historian by background, and the Somme for me is emblematic of a human tragedy that need never have happened. My reading of it is this: we began a war from a variety of odd alliances and murky motivations, capped off finally by a sense that no-one had the will to stop it. In order to give the war effort impetus, posters, propaganda began to be bandied around about the enemy, about what they would do to children and how they needed to be stopped. It worked as a recruiting effort- young men, boys, and women all joined the war effort. They joined as an act of patriotism, tinged yes with fear, but also a sense that it might be the right thing to do. They joined from across the country- but at the heart of the front line forces were thousands and ten of thousands...
Comments
"O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, but you were not willing!
... thats a kinda of female thing... ie the "her" bit...
also there is a lot about God and breasts, in the best possible way, and gathering people to them - its interesting searching in the bible for breasts :-)