I'm Just Saying...and a new revelation

So it's official. I feel very unintelligent. I just finished reading a paper on low level and high level abstractions in language and for the life of me, I can't even tell you what the author was trying to communicate. Wait, I thought I came to study theology...how is this supposed to help? I really haven't the faintest clue. It took me back to when I was in high school and hated physics and I would stare out the window during the lessons, because in my simple mind, I didn't think it was imperative, for my existence, to know Pascal's law or relative gravity, is there such a thing as relative gravity? Maybe I'm just making it up, but either way, it's going to happen whether I know about it or not. Right? I'm still thinking in the same terms here... The jury is out at this point so you'll have to come back to find out where I end up on this.

The, technically speaking, first week of school is over and to say that it was intense would be an understatement. I really felt like I had chosen the wrong program. I could have sworn that I came to seminary so I could understand more about God...or at least in my previous revelation, be reminded of God...but that hasn't happened yet...at least not according to my imagination. It felt as though all week I was trying to catch up to the next assignment before class or reading group and there was no space to sort through all this information I was hesitantly trying to absorb. It, instead felt as though I was dusting cob webs off my brain so I could at least understand what a hermeneutic process is and it's a little frustrating, because like I said it makes me feel unintelligent.

For the most part, the classes are very discussion oriented, which can be great, but also overwhelming when there are so many ideas floating around. Two particular classes have left me aching for more and at the same time awakened the reality of fucked up I am. But even beyond this I've come to realization that Mars Hill will not give me the answers I've been searching for in the last 4-5 years. Instead it will create more questions, and I don't even know where they will lead me.

Here's something I've been trying to chew on for the last few days. In a chapter by theologian Jurgen Moltmann about God and Creation introduces, to me at least, an idea that I believe is very foreign. Paraphrasing what he says, God the Spirit has always, to the Hebrew mind, been viewed as feminine. I remember when I first read the statement, it's as though my brain couldn't quite comprehend what that really meant. I know what God the Spirit is, at least I'd like to think I know, and I know what feminine is, again, I think I know, but to put those two together seemed too beyond the confines of my finite mind. And I think here's why.

For as long as I can remember, I was always taught that God came in male form...even though it clearly says in Genesis that He created man and woman in His image. Never once was I, as a woman, taught to see my face in God's face. Therefore, it becomes a complicated issue to reconcile, after 30 some years of seeing God in male form, to this idea that God the Spirit is actually feminine. But I guess the question then becomes, what is my view of 'feminine'?

Honestly speaking, it's the weaker sex, it's the gender that's been trying to fight for equality with the male sex. According the church, the woman is only good for being a submissive wife, for child labor and maybe teach Sunday school...just maybe. Sadly speaking, in my mind, there's really nothing celebratory about seeing God the Spirit as feminine, with this kind of context, and I think that's why my brain couldn't quite put the two together.

The more I thought about it, the more I wondered...why the hell not? If I really was created in the image of God, why should I not find my image and/or similarity in God, outside of the half-hearted answers the church gives about being created in the image of God? But to push this even further, how does this affect my understanding of God? This is where I'm stuck and I intend to pursue this till I can find my face in God's face. But then what would it mean for men to also see this reality??????

And that's my new revelation...