In His Image

 "So God created mankind in His own image, in the image of God He created them:  male and female."  The first time I truly absorbed this as my own, as a female, was a bit of a temblor for me.  I wanted to run barefoot into the backyard because, all alone, I was  standing on holy ground in front of the unsayable presence of God in a burning bush.  I was shattered by the idea that all of me in my womanhood was a reflection of God, not just an afterthought of man, a secondary, a helper, a companion, but part of the fullness of the picture of Who God Is, without whom the picture of Him is not complete.  It took me a long time  to accept God for Who He was trying to tell me He was and not to see Him as a presentation from others. Sometimes listening to others' representations made me dislike God a little bit with every telling.  I heard His voice as my dad's booming didactic, pistachio shaking, female belittling presentation and I felt, "no thanks." I took the long way around back to Him just to avoid many perceived Herods and I had to strain to hear His voice above the din.  Hilariously when I heard God tell me that I was made in His image, I  didn't bask in the revelation for long.  No, I immediately ran to tell my dad.  And my dad did not disappoint.  "That's ridiculous, God isn't some sort of giant hermaphrodite"  In my head brayed, "No shit Sherlock, I was just telling you, God isn't a giant version of man, the great news is this:  all of the best of us, male and female, are a reflection of what is God."  So then we see, the no shit Sherlock part will indicate that I had a lot of growing still to do.  Why had I run to my father with this revelation?  Because I wanted him to understand the fullness of Who God could be for him? Or because I wanted to say, "Yeah your theosophy sucks and the way you twisted the bible against me nearly made me miss out on God."  We can probably guess that sticking my thumbs in my ears, waving my fingers and blowing raspberries was my motivator.  When will I ever grow up?

Yup, I have miles to go before I sleep.  My father has been dead for nearly ten years and I still have arguments with him in my head, especially every time I read something in the bible about God being like a mother and Jesus going out of his way to be kind to women.  I can feel my head start to waggle and a shiver of steel ram down my spine saying, "In your face Dad....and you too Paul you pharisaical misogynist."  But I am getting better.   As I grew up I craved my parents' approval, as I imagine all children do.  In order to gain my mother's I tried to hide my worst self and made a sneaky, not precisely true presentation of me.  To gain my father's approval I tried to be more like a boy...or less like a girl?  I would take out the garbage, mow the lawn, run faster, jump higher, try to be tougher, cry less (impossible), be smartest because somehow my father made me think that smart and male were synonymous. And my father approved.  Possibly I was making inferences that weren't being implied but I don't think so.   I cherished every attaboy I got.  I was listening to a book by Madeleine L'Engle called "Walking on Water" and she was blithely saying how she grew up in a home where "they were created in His image:male and female" was a given and she doesn't feel like she has to justify herself as a woman writer.  Lucky.  Indeed, I wanted to scratch her eyes out for a minute for having it so easy.

As I got older, being less of a girl continued to manifest itself as being louder, more aggressive, first with my hand up, first to finish the race.  This became a bit of a tightrope walk because loud, aggressive and domineering was not exactly how a young lady was supposed to comport herself. And as with all growing adolescents and young adults, parental approval was less of an umbilical cord. Precisely at this juncture, my family got involved with a cult.  Most of institutional religion smacks hard of patriarchy and putting women in a second class role.  But this little cult was run by a man named Barnabas who was dying to bring back the good old days of women in complete subservience.  Seen a Handmaid's tale?  That.  We had to wear head coverings, no makeup, only skirts.  All the restrictions seemed to be placed on the women and consequently my feelings toward God became conflated with my feelings towards this Barnabas quack and all his brood of viper followers.  Honestly we were only in the club for approximately a year but it changed me.  I went from 'Jesus loves me this I know', 'His Banner Over Me is Love' arms over head, point to self, hug myself, felt and sequined hand puppets of the Good News to-- I must hate Jesus because I don't want anything to do with any of these people and any of the bible they're reading and or any of the songs they're singing.  Fortunately Jesus wouldn't let me go.  He didn't let me hate Him.  He kept calling to me in a voice so different from the ones I was hearing that I was unable to completely shake Him off.

Then one day I was around sixteen and I told my mother I was extremely lonely, that I wanted to be loved, I wanted a boyfriend.  I think she was on the other side of the bathroom door because I couldn't look her in the eye to say these things.  But I can imagine her shaking her head with wisdom and knowledge as she said, "Meghan, let Jesus be your lover."  Man, was I annoyed.  This, from a woman who had a husband of probably at least 25 years, nine children, a house filled with noise and laughter and fighting and busyness and then a whole private love relationship with the boy she had loved since she was fourteen years old.  Thanks for nothing.  Self-centered and sixteen I could not hear what she was telling me.  I wanted the empty parts of me filled up with love, someone to see me and be crazy about me, somebody to listen to me, somebody to help fill the void.  I thought a man might give it a whirl.  

And yes, I've been incredibly lucky in love and this has gone a long way for me in helping to heal my personal war of the sexes.  I read something today in a "Grief Observed" by CS Lewis that made me nod along saying, "Yes, sir you are correct."

        "There is....a sword between the sexes till an entire marriage reconciles them.  It is arrogance in us to call frankness, fairness and chivalry 'masculine' when we see them in a woman; it is arrogance in them to describe a man's sensitiveness or tact or tenderness as 'feminine.'  But also what poor, warped fragments of humanity most mere men and mere women must be to make the implications of that arrogance plausible.  Marriage heals this.  Jointly the two become fully human."  

Now obviously CS was also very lucky in love because marriage is not always the healing in the war of the sexes, is it?  In fact... enough said.  And yet I have had the opportunity to heal my regard for both men and women in my relationship first with my husband and then my sons and daughters.  I am not in a constant battle of self-justification and subsequent justification of all women.  I don't have to  be soprano in the Opera of Womanhood, singing the aria of female wondrousness because my husband doesn't need convincing, in fact sometimes he’s singing that high harmony for me.  On the flip side, I don't have to pay unnecessary obeisance to my husband and all of manhood because  he doesn't require it from a petty throne.  Simultaneously, I don't have to be angry with the entire male sex because I am not angry anymore…well not all the time anyway.  I am free to admire the qualities that I love about both my husband and my sons.  How horrible would it be to be at war with these children whom I loved at first sight  with a fierce and torn, aching  and exhausted heart.    Which makes me sad for my dad all over again.  What happened to him that he couldn't overcome his feelings against women by virtue of  the existence of his beautiful daughters?  How could the amazing patience and kindness of Wendy Harter not have bewitched him to worship at the altar of womankind? 

So let's circle back to my Mom telling me, "Let Jesus be your lover."  What did she mean?  Why point to Jesus as my lover?  Because her marriage wasn't healing her in the war of the sexes?  Possibly and probably, but I think she had discovered something much more profound.  Even in the best relationship where hurt is being healed and misunderstandings are being rectified, we cannot fill each other up in all the emptiest of spaces.  We can, together, be an echo, an image, a polaroid of the fulness of God.  But it’s not enough.  When the hot sweaty, feverish thrill of sex has dimmed, the poignancy and profundity of becoming one with another is magnified.  The receiving of another into your body, the entering in to someone else's body is a physical union to be sure, but the spiritual union is shocking, as earth shattering and body quaking as the climax itself.  Now here's where it pays to have no readers.  Talking about relationship with God and climax in the same context is a potential cringefest.  But I am not without precedent.  The Song of Solomon is a lush ode to sensuality and carnality wielded to  demonstrate the depth of love that God has for us.  When I read "Arise, my beautiful one and come with me."  That is a love note, a song, an invitation straight from God's heart to mine, saying, no matter how lost you get, I'm looking for you, I'm scanning the horizon anxiously searching for you.  As I have grown up and relinquished my childish grudges against  others' religiousness, I have allowed my ears to be unblocked so I can hear the love song being sung to me.  I hear it in the ocean, I hear it in the wind in the bamboo, I hear it when I read Isaiah, I hear it in my own tears when I just can't any more, I heard it the moment each of my children were born, I heard it when I fell in love with my husband, I hear in my sore throat when I've been screaming in frustration.  I hear it, I hear it, I hear it.

So my mother's advice of letting Jesus be my lover was something bigger, wider, longer, deeper.  She took my teenage complaint and heard my primal cry for completion that hearkens back to a time unremembered when I was complete and perfectly knitted in the image of God.  In her life experience she knew that a human being would never complete me in the way my heart was yearning for.  She jumped me out of time to the place where I needed to go and I couldn't hear her.  Because even now, when I have the closet thing to a perfect complementary partner in my life, it is not enough to fill the eternal longing.  My children, though they sparked a fire of love, company and challenge that I could never have anticipated, still do not fill the eternal longing.  My home, my things, my clothes, my garden, writing, singing, reading, friendship...all of these are only a reflection, an echo of a phrase in the love song that is being sung to me to woo me into communion, oneness, completion in God.  The song is "Let Me be the Lover of your soul, let Me see you in all your ways, heal you, love you, thrill at your every word, laugh at your stupid jokes, wait attentively for your smallest thought, let Me be one with you."  If I had grown up in a home like Madeleine L'Engle,  maybe I wouldn't have been so amazed by the revelation of belonging to God in celebration and complete acceptance of my female self.  I probably wouldn't  want to wash His feet with my tears and wipe them dry with my fading strawberry curls.  And even though my first instinct was to run across the playground to tattle to my father, I am growing.  My ears are opening and my heart of stone is becoming more absorbent.  I am opening myself up to the song being sung to me and I am hearing this:  we are made in His image and the whole, intricate long and short story is a reflection of the story of getting back to completion.  Selah.