THE FEMININE GOD
The Spirit
Rediscovering God’s Feminine Side: Part Eight
I became a Christian within the charismatic tradition, where much store was set on the experience of being ‘filled with the Holy Spirit.’ This was seen, in my church, as something to seek after and desire.
Apparently, the right order to do things was to be baptised and then pray to be filled with the Spirit.
So the evening that I was baptised, aged 18, I was ushered to an upper room where the elders and pastors of the church, all men, all older than me by at least a couple of decades, sat me down, stood around me and laid hands on me. The whole experience was deeply intimidating.
And very male.
These were the wielders of power in a very patriarchal little church. I was terrified. I thought God was going to do something intimidating and scary and that I was honour bound to let him.
“You do not need to be afraid of The Holy Spirit,” they reassured me, “because the Holy Spirit is a gentleman.”
Unsurprisingly, this wasn’t reassuring at all, and I did not consciously encounter the Holy Spirit in that little room.
Though I’m sure that She was there. I was far too intimidated, and the fact that nothing spiritual happened when they prayed for me meant that I came away feeling very inadequate.
Ruach, the word used in the Hebrew bible to describe the Spirit, happens to be feminine. And although you would never have guessed it from any of the church services I was part of or the sermons I listened to or the books I read, there is a long and rich tradition of understanding the Holy Spirit to be feminine.
Several years later, I found myself in a prayer meeting, sat next to a lovely, middle-aged, catholic woman, full of warmth and gentleness and joy. As we sat side by side, she put her arm around my shoulder and gently prayed for me.
That evening I had a very beautiful encounter with God the Holy Spirit. That wonderful woman en-fleshed the Holy Spirit for me that evening far, far more effectively than that gang of well-meaning men all those years before. It was a moment that changed my life very much for the better.
I’m going to take us on a whistle-stop tour of some of the famous Holy Spirit landmarks in the Bible. You may well be very familiar with them but they do feel different if you see them deliberately through a feminine lens.
Going right back to the beginning, to the very start of the creation story, the first two verses of Genesis could reasonably read:
In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and She was hovering over the waters… (Genesis 1:1–2)
The Holy Spirit is the person of the Trinity who comes closest and is most intimately present. The psalmist writes:
Where can I go from your Spirit?
Where can I flee from your presence?
If I go up to the heavens, you are there:
if I make my bed in the depths, you are there.
(Psalm 139:7–8)
It’s the Holy Spirit who endows us with spiritual gifts and inspired the prophets, was there in creation, gives us life, and assures us of God’s presence. It is She who Jesus promised would come and bring God’s comfort and counsel and power. It’s the Holy Spirit who breathed inspiration into the scriptures. It was the Holy Spirit who rested upon Jesus and enabled his ministry, as Isaiah predicted:
The Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon Him,
The Spirit of wisdom and understanding,
The Spirit of counsel and might,
The Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord. (Isaiah 11:32)“The Spirit of the Lord God is upon Me,
Because the Lord has anointed Me
To preach good tidings to the poor;
He has sent Me to heal the brokenhearted,
To proclaim liberty to the captives,
And the opening of the prison to those who are bound;
To proclaim the year of God’s favour… (Isaiah 61:1–3)
Jesus promised that the Holy Spirit would come and be with us forever, calling Her a counsellor, a helper, an advocate. True to his promise, Christians experience the Holy Spirit as a tender, intimate companion, walking with us and guiding us on our journey of following Jesus.
Paul says that the fruit of life walked in companionship with the Spirit is that the character of the Holy Spirit rubs off on us, and we become increasingly full of love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.
Christians often talk about the power of the Spirit. And Jesus promised that the Holy Spirit would come upon the disciples with power. But this isn’t power as we usually understand it. Zechariah the prophet actually has God contrasting power with the Holy Spirit:
‘Not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit,’ says the Lord Almighty. (Zechariah 4:6)
This power is the power of goodness. It’s not about coercive force. It’s a feminine power, not a masculine one. The ultimate source of soft power, if you will.
Just to take a diversion for a moment, increasingly, there is an understanding that traditionally masculine approaches to leadership, which prioritise tasks, hierarchy, assertiveness and telling people what to do, have severe limitations. They can so easily slip into force and threat and coercion, which is no good for anyone.
More feminine approaches to leadership and management are about cooperation, relationship, equality, empowerment and persuasion. They are so much more humane. Although from the perspective of our patriachal society, a feminine style of leadership might look as it it could be ineffectual, these approaches are usually far more effective in the long run. Not least because they seek to use the wisdom of skills of everyone, not just those at the top of the ladder. They attract people to be part of something because it’s good and they want to be involved.
My experience of the Holy Spirit is that this is exactly how she works. Always gentle, patient, and tender. Sometimes challenging but never violent. Always beautiful.
The Holy Spirit isn’t only gentle and loving, she is also playful and creative. Wild and unpredictable. Jesus compares people who are led by the Holy Spirit to be like the wind. You never quite know what they might do next.
Or where they might go. If we’re up for it, the Holy Spirit leads us on adventures. Little adventures and big ones. Opportunities to bless people and to be blessed. Moments when the ordinary world suddenly resonant with beauty.
The Holy Spirit is not a conformist, she’s a dancer. Steve Turner’s poem Spiritus captures it well:
I used to think of you
as a symphony
neatly structured
full of no surprises.
Now I see you as
a saxophone solo
blowing wildly
into the night,
a tongue of fire,
flicking in unrepeated patterns.
So when I think of what it means to be a woman of God, a woman following Jesus, I think of the Holy Spirit. Wild, creative, non-conformist, loving, persuasive, bringing counsel and wisdom, binding up the brokenhearted, setting people free. Quietly powerful. Full of love and joy and peace and patience and kindness and goodness and gentleness.
And I remember that I am made in her image.
Next part of this series:
To start reading this series at the beginning:
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