C3/CCC Sermon Transcript for March 16, 2008
“Making Peace with the Divine Feminine"
By Ian Lawton

Sting wrote the song “Dance Alone” after visiting Chile with Amnesty International. He arrived and saw women dancing in the streets. As he got closer, he realized that they were holding photographs of loved ones, killed and exiled by the brutal Pinochet military.

The heart sick women were “dancing with their fathers and sons, dancing with their husbands. They danced alone.   It is the only form of protest they were allowed.  I’ve seen the silent faces scream so loud.”

Sting saw the dual reality of Chile in the 70s and 80s; wealth and poverty side by side. The global community deepened the divide between rich and poor with economic sanctions. This tragedy was captured so well in the “Rich Woman, Poor Woman” drama where two women move dramatically across the stage, at cross purposes while they speak of their parallel realities. Occasionally, they almost meet and have a moment of unity where their circumstances are transcended and their humanity unites them. (http://www.churchworldservice.org/wecantoo/drama2.html)

It was a devastating time. Yet there was something more powerful than devastation. The spirit of the divine feminine embraced Chile even at the awful height of Pinochet’s reign of terror, and inspired the people with hope against all odds to be activists for peace and change.

Consider the creative, transformative power of the women dancing in the streets. They knew that Pinochet’s soldiers used violence to foil protests. They also knew that the soldiers would take a big risk in gunning down innocent women, dancing in the streets. They would risk international outrage and political pressure, even greater economic sanctions. What did the women do? They danced. Dance is a universal expression of the divine feminine, and a symbol of peace. Their dancing protest, with the photographs held defiantly aloft, rendered the guns and tanks powerless. Isn’t that a wonderful image of courageous and creative peacemaking?

Transformative Protest

Doesn’t it sound a little like Jesus trotting humbly into Jerusalem on a donkey? Jesus arrived in the midst of the most dangerous of situations and offered his own courageous, creative protest. The image of Jesus on a donkey functions like the trickster in Native American spirituality. While you expect Jesus entry to be triumphant and grand, maybe on a white horse or a chaise lounge, he disarms the authorities by riding on the most docile, yet persistent, of animals.

Like Jesus, the dancing, Chilean women offered more than protest. Peacemaking in the spirit of the divine feminine is always more than protest. It is transformational. The author Isobel Allende fled Chile during Pinochet’s reign. As she fled, she got to the mountains, looked back and wondered if she would ever return. It took 15 years, but she did return. Much of the power and optimism in her novels grows out of that experience. One of her books is called “Of Love and Shadows” and it is a story of two lovers in a very tragic circumstance.  The last words in the book are “we will return.” 

Many exiles have since returned to Chile. Now the rule of law, rather than the dual regime of Pinochet and the Catholic Church, has taken root. In 2006, for the first time, a female president was elected in Chile. Michelle Bachelet continues to improve the situation in Chile. You have to wonder if the spirit of the dancing women, their dead loved ones and people like Isabel Allende still inspires the Chilean President.

Are you with me? Do you feel the spirit of resurrection that is in Chile and no matter what evidence is presented to the contrary, it is all around you? It is the very same divinely feminine qualities of courage, compassion and creativity?
Palm Sunday and the Divine Feminine
The Easter story speaks profoundly to these themes. Think of Good Friday as compassion, the divine feminine ability to stay in the darkness of a tomb, feel the despair, die to ego, and not allow despair to have the last word. Think of Easter Sunday as courage, the divine feminine quality of allowing transformation to grow out of the ashes of death. Think of Palm Sunday as creativity, the divine feminine ability to cause a shift in perspective with creative protest.

As Jesus rode into Jerusalem, children ran alongside him. What the children could not see, Jesus saw. The temple tower dominated the skyline, the vast temple courts sprawling beneath. The imposing temple walls seemed like cliffs—immovable and harsh. They threw shadows across the gardens and the city below, with a grandeur and beauty that could never be adequately described.

What the children could not see, Jesus saw. It was heartbreaking and brought Jesus to tears. Soldiers swarmed the streets, innocent people hung on crosses, wailing mothers searched for lost children, the smoke of destruction rose above piles of rubble.

What the children could not see, Jesus saw, both the beauty of the city and the tragedy of violence. He wept for the city with a heaving sob of a mother grieving lost children. He longed to gather the children of the city like a hen gathering her chicks under her wing. These words bring to mind imagery from the Hebrew Scriptures, where compassion is understood in feminine terms. The word for compassion shares the same root as the word “uterus”. Compassion is holding the pain of the other as if they are part of your own body. Mothers have special insight into this sort of compassion, but all people have access to it. Jesus manifested this compassion, a compassion that is never overwhelmed by suffering no matter how stark it is. As he had said to his disciples so often- “I will return.”

This is the essence of making peace in the spirit of the divine feminine. The world is God’s body and the whole world is part of you. Nothing sad or tragic or violent happens, without simultaneously happening to you. Peacemaking in the spirit of the divine feminine begins as felt compassion, moves with creative resistance, and rises in courageous perseverance.

Gender and Peacemaking

Isabel Allende was interviewed about the role of the feminine spirit in peacemaking. She said this about women- “Women are very resilient, strong, organized; they are nurturing, they care for each other, and they care for the children, and when they get together, they are capable of moving mountains, physically and emotionally. I've seen women over and over working together, especially poor women, women who are political prisoners, or who are being repressed. They get together and they become stronger, their strength and energy multiplies.”

She also understands that the feminine spirit is not limited to women, even if women have a special insight into the Divine Mother. In fact women can help to draw out the feminine spirit of collaboration, courage and creative compassion in men.
In the same interview, she said- “Men and women both have masculine and feminine values in them. If there are enough women at the table, then men will be able to bring out their feminine part as well, just as women bring out their masculine part in times of need.”

A balance of the divine feminine and the divine masculine exists in all people. You have your own balance.

Men from Mars and Women from Venus- A Partial Truth

You’ve heard it said that men are from Mars, and women are from Venus. That’s a half truth. In reality, the labels ‘men’ and ‘women’ exist only as biological and cultural constructs on a wide spectrum of human existence. On the one hand, you do experience a sense of gender difference. On the other hand it could be said that men are not from Mars and women are not from Venus. Rather, they have been exiled from earth by a society that has suppressed the true complimentarity of divine masculine and divine feminine and in the process, poisoned both.

The divine masculine, the ability to systematically create by healthy competition has been turned into warfare and oppression. The divine feminine, the ability to create by collaboration and compassion, has been turned into passiveness and indecision.
The partnership of men and women, each bringing a healthy blend of masculine and feminine, active and receptive, inner and outer, spontaneous and structured, is the way to seek peace.

The whole ‘men are from Mars business’ is a partial truth. There are of course differences. When men win a competition, their testosterone levels increase. When men lose, their testosterone levels decrease. This even happens when men are viewing other people in competition. Women’s responses to winning and losing usually don’t have this hormonal component.

This physiological difference between men and women is not to be dismissed. Testosterone gets things done. Yet at the same time it can be destructive when not balanced with a healthy dose of compassion.  Testosterone without compassion leads to violence.

There’s a fascinating verse in Jeremiah that speaks to the need for men and women to work together. In amongst Jeremiah’s amazing vision of peace and justice are some fascinating gender references. You heard it read this morning from Isaiah 66 that God promises to comfort the suffering like a mother comforts a child. But there is another verse, Jeremiah 31;22, where the author says that “God has created a new thing on earth: a woman encompasses a man.”

How do you make sense of a verse like that? Well, biologically a woman encompasses a man. Remember that the woman is defined by the chromosome, XX and the man XY. So in that sense women include but transcend men. More significantly, consider the divine feminine as the uterus of the world, holding and embracing all that is. Qualities such as compassion, creativity and courage are the uterus of the world providing a context for all other qualities.

Appropriate Action (Skillful Means)

Peacemaking can take on many different forms. It has the wisdom of Sophia to know when to be blunt and assertive, and when to be creative and humble.

Buddhism offers the image of Tara, who is able to manifest as whatever qualities are necessary for the situation. Tara chose to remain in a female body after attaining enlightenment in a culture where most people prayed for rebirth as a man. Instead she vowed always to take female births.

Tara is the Tibetan version of the Bodhisattva of compassion, Kanzeon, who was unsatisfied with having two arms to reach out and liberate other beings. Instead Kanzeon had many arms, each with eyes on them to see suffering then move to carry the load.

Tara could manifest as the White Tara, compassion and serenity or Red Tara, fierce and protective, Black Tara, powerful and strategic, or Green Tara, contemplative and mindful.

My point here is that, like Tara, you have all manner of qualities and you have the wisdom to know when to manifest the appropriate quality.

You need not be held ransom in any prison of gender stereotype or personality type. You have an extraordinary intuition for what is necessary for the moment, and you have the resources to act appropriately.

You can act masculine and know that it is appropriate but it doesn’t completely define who you are. You are so much more than any role you take on.

You can act feminine and know that it is appropriate but it doesn’t completely define who you are. You are so much more than any role you take on.

What the world needs is two-fold:

Jesus is reported in the Gospel of Thomas as saying, 'When you make the two one, and when you make the inside like the outside and the outside like the inside, and the above like the below, and when you make the male and the female one and the same, so that the male not be male nor the female female; then you will enter the Kingdom.' - Gospel of Thomas, 22

Maybe Jesus was being the trickster again! Maybe he was hinting at the unity that takes place when people meet beyond right and wrong, beyond gender and expectation, beyond the fear of difference.
Be boldly who you are. Take pleasure in confounding other people’s stereotypes.

Look over the work of your life, like Jesus looking over Jerusalem and know that you are so much more than your achievements, and so much more than your relationships. You are so much more than your community service, and so much more than your prayers.

Move on boldly to transcend any expectation you have had of yourself or the world. Allow the world to be fragile and imperfect. Merge the inner and the outer. Merge action and reflection.

Realize your own power. In the name of Tara, and Jesus, Allende and courageous women everywhere; manifest the divinely feminine qualities of creativity, compassion and courage.