10
The Feminine Incarnation
From now on, all generations will call me blessed; for the Mighty
One has done great things for me, and holy is his name.
—Luke 1:48–49I am going to take some risks in this brief chapter, but I believe it will be
worthwhile because for many, this could invite the most important
breakthrough of all. Since I am a man, my own perspective on the feminine is
surely limited, but this is such a crucial and often ignored theme that I must
invite us all to reclaim and honor female wisdom, which is often qualitatively
different from male wisdom. I will draw from my own experiences with my
mother (I was her favorite), sisters before and behind me, many women friends
and colleagues over the years, and the very nature of some of my God
encounters. I hope this perspective can invite you to trust your own experiences
with the divine feminine as well. For many, it is an utterly new opening, since
they always falsely assumed that God is somehow masculine.
Although Jesus was clearly of the masculine gender, the Christ is beyond
gender, and so it should be expected that the Big Tradition would have found
feminine ways, consciously or unconsciously, to symbolize the full Divine
Incarnation and to give God a more feminine character—as the Bible itself often
does.*
Whenever I go to Europe, I am always struck by how many churches bear the
name of Mary, Jesus’s mother. I think I encountered a “Notre Dame of
something” church in every French city I ever visited, and sometimes even two
or three in one small town. Some of these churches are big and ornate, most are
very old, and they usually inspire respect and devotion, even among
nonbelievers. Yet even as a Catholic I sometimes wonder, Who were these