Oh my goddess!

No, this is not a post about the manga. One of the most recent entries at Feminist Mormon Housewives discussed the concept of the Heavenly Mother in the LDS church--or rather, the lack of concept. For those not familiar with LDS doctrine, the theology considers "God" to be the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost as three separate and distinct beings.

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Something's missing, isn't it? For a church which emphasizes the motherly role of women and the significance of the traditional family structure, one would expect the godhead to include a fourth figure: God the Mother. But nary a mention in the mainstream church. Oh, you'll get a mention here of Heavenly Mother smiling down on you, a throwaway comment there about how it "makes sense" that there's a Mother-figure up there alongside the Father-figure, but nothing concrete and no commitment. The most I ever heard my (extremely garrulous) Mormon stepfather say about Heavenly Mother was when I asked him why we didn't know about her, and he gave me the apparently-familiar and sanctioned spiel about Heavenly Father not wanting all us Earth bastards to take Her name in vain.

Bullshit, of course. There is no Mother-figure in the LDS church because, despite all the fawning talk about women's divine natures and holy roles as mothers and wives, women are not valued in that community to the extent that men are. The church was one of men's making and they, like so many others, created God in their image.

As you will see if you click through the fmH link, many LDS women are concerned, frustrated, saddened, and angered by this lack in church doctrine. There is no divine feminine for them to look up to, despite the exhortations of leaders to develop one's divine nature. There is no Mother-figure to turn to and pray to as the members are encouraged to pray to the Father. The lack of the Mother undermines LDS doctrine; I wonder how the leaders have not noticed this? Perhaps they noticed and tried to ignore it, but ultimately, I hope, women will rise and there will be a Heavenly Mother to back them up.

Eliza R. Snitch's recent entries about the book Women Who Run With Wolves, for me, feed into and draw steam from the issue of Heavenly Mother. The book and her reactions to it are philosophical and utilize the concept of "Wild Woman" as feelings, instincts, reactions, and desires which are repressed for a variety of reasons and which women and men alike must return to in order to live fully and truly. However, I see "Wild Woman" as being directly connected to Heavenly Mother; both are lost, repressed, and stifled, and both are utterly necessary in different ways. For a mainstream religious woman--by which I mean a woman belonging to a sect in one of the Big Three faiths--to be without a divine corollary is often depressing and frustrating, and reinforces feelings of helplessness and unworthiness. The lack of divine female figures allows women to be cut off from Wild Woman, allows those in control to decree what instincts, feelings, and desires are proper. In the LDS church, the missing Mother allows the patriarchs to close women off from the priesthood.

(Danu, the mother goddess of the Tuatha de Danaan in Irish myth)

My heart is with women in these situations, whatever religion they belong to. Since forsaking the LDS way for a life of sin and intellectualism, I have spent a good amount of time reading feminist literature about divine femininity, as well as various ethnographic texts about religions which embrace a female deity. What I have found and continue to find is beautiful and complex and rich. I am not currently in need of a well-broken religious path to follow, but you may be assured that if that time comes, the path I choose will welcome and revere women and sing praises to a divine lady.

(Beautiful "Danu" image taken from Thalia Took's A-Muse-Ing Grace Gallery. You can admire the rest of her amazing artwork here.)