Inclusion?

Everyone is buzzing about the Episcopal Diocese of Washington's resolution to adopt gender-neutral language for God.  Curiously, most of the reporting about this is from conservative or reactionary sources: whatever.  Friends are celebrating.  I am too, mostly, but I have a caveat.

The resolution calls for "inclusive" language and images, but also, and more clearly, for "neutral" ones.  I've spent a long time praying in gender-neutral language, and it does indeed make God more accessible to me and many others.  I've also learned from that, however, how deeply the masculine abides within the neuter/neutral.

When I say "God" instead of "He" or "Father," people are mostly OK.  But if I say "She" or "Mother," I can hear the breath drawn in throughout a congregation.  This reaction isn't just from opponents; it's often a breath of delight, of daring to claim such an affiliation with God.  I have heard of parishioners who've said it's "disrespectful" to refer to God in the feminine.  Both sets of reaction tell me that "neutral" is often a license to avoid the fact that "God" is still masculine.

We learned this more deeply by reading the daily lessons as written, but substituting feminine pronouns for God.  So "She" goes to war, issues commandments, punishes, as well as nurturing and covenanting.  It sounds different.  It will bend not only your image of God, but your image of the feminine.  That's a good thing.

When the language is neutral, we don't have to notice.  It's like the Elizabethan compromise: you can believe what you want, just use these words when we pray together.  And that may be as good as it will get for a generation - or longer.  But it's not the goal.

My goal is that we can really celebrate God's excess of meaning, God's beyond-ness, not by silencing but by multiplying images.  Father and Mother.  Divine Daughers and Sons.  Fierce mothers and tender fathers.  Plus all the images from the Scriptures that don't have easy genders.  Plus all the gender-bending mothers and fathers and daughters and sons.

Julian of Norwich wrote that Jesus is our mother.  That's where I'm going.
God, Wondrous Mother.  Until we can say that without stumbling, we won't be an inclusive Church.

Onward!