Novelist Sue Monk Kidd describes why cultivating an image of the Sacred Feminine is so important, particularly for women raised within Christianity:
A young girl learns Bible stories in which vital women are generally absent, in the background, or devoid of power. She learns that men go on quests, encounter God, and change history, while women support and wait for them. She hears sermons where traditional (nonthreatening) feminine roles are lifted up as God’s ideal. A girl is likely to see only a few women in the higher echelons of church power.
And what does a girl, who is forming her identity, do with all the scriptures admonishing women to submission and silence? Having them “explained away” as the product of an ancient time does not entirely erase her unease. She also experiences herself missing from pronouns in scripture, hymns, and prayers. And most of all, as long as God “himself” is exclusively male, she will experience the otherness, the lessness of herself; all the pious talk in the world about females being equal to males will fail to compute in the deeper places inside her.
When we truly grasp for the first time that the symbol of woman can be a vessel of the sacred, that it too can be an image of the Divine, our lives will begin to pivot…. Internalizing the Divine Feminine provides women with the healing affirmation that they are persons in their own right, that they can make choices, that they are worthy and entitled and do not need permission. The internalization of the Sacred Feminine tells us our gender is a valuable and marvelous thing to be. [1]
Public theologian Christena Cleveland explores how an exclusively white, male image of God is limiting and even oppressive. She shares a mystical experience of encountering the unconditional love of the Sacred Black Feminine while on a mindfulness retreat:
I sat cross-legged on my mat, and as soon as I closed my eyes and turned inward, a wave of Love crashed into me, a wave so formidable that it forced my upright body backward and onto the floor pillows behind me…. This was a mighty force that didn’t abuse. It was force without manipulation, force without control, and force without shame. It was the force of Love—a force I had never encountered in whitemalegod’s world….
I had never before experienced formidable strength in the form of Love and it undid me. I marveled that after an entire day of earnestly clearing my mind of fearful clutter, what lay beneath it all was not another to-do list from whitemalegod…. No, Love was underneath it all, just as I had hoped. That day, I discovered that at the heart of reality … flows wave after wave after wave of Love … for me….
This experience showed me that no matter what is going on around me and no matter how much fear tries to consume me, the Sacred Black Feminine is always available to guide me into Love. [2]
References:
[1] Sue Monk Kidd, The Dance of the Dissident Daughter: A Woman’s Journey from Christian Tradition to the Sacred Feminine, rev. ed. (HarperOne, 2016), 38–39, 117, 161.
[2] Christena Cleveland, God Is a Black Woman (HarperOne, 2022), 64, 65.
Image credit and inspiration: Jyothisha R, woman holds the sun in her hands (detail), 2025, photo, Unsplash. Click here to enlarge image. The strong, soft light of the Divine Feminine is available for us all to touch upon.
Story from Our Community:
Recently, I had been in conversation with a small group of chaplain interns about whether they addressed God with a particular gender when praying with patients and their families. Later in the day, I asked my 16-year-old daughter if she thought praying to God as Father or Mother made any difference. She paused and then said, “Of course it does, Dad. You talk to your mother about different things than you do with your father.” That conversation inspired me to create a vision board, working with feminine images for Mother God. It has been transformative for me—in fact, it has shifted my experience with the Divine. I experience a greater closeness with God. I can feel the warmth of God’s compassion, and a fuller sense of being heard and loved.
—Wes M.
