Editor's Note: Bethany Swallow is a high school teacher in Abbotsford, BC. She and her husband, Derek, recently returned from Tanzania, where she taught in an international school and he was working with CIDA in the area of development.
The following response was prepared for a live presentation at the University of the Fraser Valley.
As a young, female reader, I appreciated several key qualities that Trudy brilliantly and authentically demonstrates in her years-long exploration of God and his fullness. I would like to highlight the theme of ‘wholeness’ that weaved its way throughout Trudy’s book, ‘The Motherheart of God,’ and I will frame that idea with several points of gratitude concluding with comments from my own journey towards wholeness.
My gratitude for Trudy’s:
Honesty – Trudy postures herself to exploring this question with an eager and open heart. She demonstrates an honest inquiry, as she communicates her confusion, her doubt, and her earnest curiousity about her relatedness to God.
Integrity – Trudy exemplifies a woman of integrity. I noticed this throughout the book as she is careful to not depreciate or undermine the value of the many voices that she interviews. The many snapshot interviews are carefully narrated alongside Trudy’s personal anecdotes and life stories. These provide a framework for the reader’s understanding of her exploration, and the integrity of her spiritual travels.
Vulnerability – Trudy demonstrates bravery as she describes the great risk she took in approaching this idea and question about God’s motherly qualities. Her time, her dedication, and her persistence identify her vulnerability in opening herself to truth.
Her patience – Trudy clearly lives in the tension of moments of illumination, and moments of confusion. As I was reading the book, I experienced many points of reflection and resonance, as Trudy would describe a moment of utter awe and reverence for God’s revealing himself to her in a specific encounter of truth. For example, in a chapter entitled “The Mercy of God: Protective and Womb-Like,” Trudy writes, “Never have I felt more awestruck by the mercy of God as I am today. God loves me in a sacred balance like a kindhearted father and a merciful mother! And the proof has always been there, neatly tucked away as hidden treasure in the Holy Scriptures” (p. 100). Trudy is blessed by a moment of illumination. While, in other moments, the weight and struggle to understand the debasement of women in our world context seems to weigh heavy on Trudy. But, what stands out in reading these varied emotions and experiences is the patience with which Trudy stands. She is patient to understand, and I appreciate the narrative of her tender perseverance.
Trudy moves with tender aggression, looking for a more whole understanding of God. Filling the gaps, asking difficult questions, and living without fear.
My Thoughts and Journey:
I am not a scholar, or an academic who has done any in depth studying of this idea, but from my reading and understanding of Thomas Merton, along with my admiration for the many writers of the Christian mystic tradition, I recognize the growing need to embrace a fuller picture of our roles as female and male, alongside our relatedness to a God who displays many holy characteristics.
My belief and understanding of this journey is that we are lead to wholeness by the many moments in our lives, and that we are given 2 choices or responses: the choice to move towards a greater awareness of truth, or the choice to continue in blindness. We face these choices in little and large ways each day. Our relatedness to God, in my experience, reveals a similar pattern of embrace or denial. Our experiences in spirit, mind, and body lead us to opportunities of choice. The choice to appreciate joy or the choice to accept suffering. The choice to take risks or the choice to remain still. Each of these choices tells us something about ourselves, our relatedness to God, and the lessons of truth that we are being made aware of.
I think that God not only stands apart from these distinctions of gender and sex, but, in his energies, and in the person of Jesus Christ, he demonstrates something greater, that transcends our desire to reduce certain human qualities to female or male, feminine or masculine, motherly or fatherly. As a young woman, I hope to love others with tenderness AND strength.
Is strength and courage only a masculine quality?
Is compassion and tenderness only a feminine quality?
In my experience of growing up in the evangelical context, I was not too often faced with the question of whether God demonstrated more masculine or feminine qualities. I understood God as ‘holy’ and ‘to be feared’. Now, I believe that the idea of God’s motherly qualities is something that may not have been discussed openly, and maybe should be, but, I have been blessed to experience God is whole and true ways, whether in masculine or feminine form. My own parents have loved me in whole ways – motherly compassion, fatherly counsel, motherly courage, and fatherly gentleness.
Thomas Merton describes a ‘hidden wholeness’ that exists in all humans, and don’t know if the pronoun, He, or She, has subtly informed the way that I conceive of God’s character, but I hope that in all of God’s holiness, pronouns do not limit him. Each of our journeys is moving us towards a greater and more whole existence. I know that my understanding of God has always been limited by my life experiences, but I also know and trust that God is revealing Himself to me, and through me, in his mysteries. My hidden wholeness is being gently, patiently, and steadily unveiled. How does this relate to God’s fatherly or motherly qualities? I hope in the reality of God’s relating to each of us in our most needy spaces.
Trudy, thank you again. I am grateful to have journeyed with you, through your story and your questions.
I’d like to end with one of my favorite passages from Thomas Merton’s Hagia Sophia:
Sophia is God's sharing of Himself with creatures. His outporing,
and the Love by which He is given, and known, held and loved.
She is in all things like the air receiving the sunlight. In her
they prosper. In her they glorify God. In her they rejoice to reflect
Him. In her they are united with him. She is the union between them.
She is the Love that unites them. She is life as communion, life as
thanksgiving, life as praise, life as festival, life as glory.
Because she receives perfectly there is in her no stain.
She is love without blemish, and gratitude without
self-complacency. All things praise her by being themselves
and by sharing in the Wedding Feast. She is the Bride and the
Feast and the Wedding.
The feminine principle in the world is the inexhaustible source
of creative realizations of the Father's glory. She is His
manifestation in radiant splendor! But she remains unseen,
glimpsed only by a few. Sometimes there are none who
know her at all.
Sophia is the mercy of God in us. She is the tenderness
with which the infinitely mysterious power of pardon
turns the darkness of our sins into the light of grace.
She is the inexhaustible fountain of kindness, and would
almost seem to be, in herself, all mercy. So she does in us
a greater work than that of Creation: the work of new being
in grace, the work of pardon, the work of transformation from
brightness to brightness tamquam a Domini Spiritu. She
is in us the yielding and tender counterpart of the power, justice
and creative dynamism of the Father.