[Music] Welcome to the Loved Called Gifted podcast. This is your place to come for musings about spirituality, identity and purpose. I'm your host, Catherine Cowell. [Fade Music]

C: So I'm really delighted to be joined by Joan Wright Howie, who is in Australia. Do you want to tell us a bit about who you are and where you are?

J: Thank you, Catherine. It's really lovely to have the opportunity to join you in this conversation.

So I'm in Melbourne in Australia. In Australia, we often sort of acknowledge country when we begin talking with each other. So I'm on the lands of the Wurundjeri people in Melbourne.

Yeah, pay my respects to elders and look forward to reconciliation with Indigenous people of this land.

C: Thank you. Do you want to tell us a bit about what you do?

J: Yeah, so I'm a Uniting Church minister and I've been ordained for about 27 years. I was actually pregnant with my daughter when I was ordained, so I'm not sure what that does tell you about my ordination with her and sort of, I suppose, mothering's all interconnected with ministry for me in some senses. But yeah, so I've been a minister for a long time and have had various roles in the life of the Uniting Church. But most recently, I'm working on a PhD exploring the attributes of spiritually informed care and how they could be fostered amongst staff who work in organisations where they seek to provide spiritual care as part of their model of holistic health. So that's my project at the moment. I'm a supervisor. I provide professional supervision and spiritual direction to people in my private practice alongside doing the PhD work.

C: Wonderful and we met, because I'm also doing a PhD, looking at spirituality and additional needs parenting, and we met at a conference for researchers in spirituality and had some really great conversations. And the one which that really caught my attention was that we ended up talking about God as mother and the different sorts of mothering that God does for us. And I thought that'd be really, really, really interesting to explore in a bit more depth. I'm wondering, Joan, how that idea of God as mother, when did that first become alive for you? What was the catalyst for that?

J: It’s a good question. There's lots of images of God in the Bible doing mothering kinds of things. And those were presented to me in my early formation. But the image of God as father is almost predominant and kind of takes over those mothering images often. But I started to, I suppose, have a real sense of knowing God mothering me as I started being a mother myself. And I mentioned before, I was pregnant with my daughter when I first became a minister. And I do remember having this feeling of all the things that I used to be able to do in my prayer life easily because there was enough time. There wasn't enough time anymore. And I had a spiritual director who I was reflecting on this with.

And she helped me start to think about my mothering as part of my ministry. And then that kind of put me into mind, I suppose, of this sense that God is actually also a mothering God who's mothering me in my mothering of my children. So yeah, then returning to the scripture as well, we're going, "Oh, there's so many images of God in the Bible that describe God as doing mothering things for us." So I wanted to balance that father image of God with also the maternal embrace that God has for God's people.

C: How do you think that shifted your experience of God, that kind of increased emphasis on God's mothering?

J: Well, I felt like it was company in a way, a very affirming company in the work of mothering. And I actually ended up writing my masters theses on exploring grace as God’s maternal embrace, And I think that really came out of my own lived experience of sensing God embracing me as I sought to provide that kind of loving embrace to my children.

There was one really vivid moment which I write about in my master's thesis where I've described a memory of a time when I was with my second child. I was really tired, and I'd had a hard time at work during the week, and I'd come to a place on the weekend of rest. I had a toddler and a baby, and I was exhausted. And my little boy put his arms around my neck, and I was trying to get him to go to sleep for his nap during the day. And I just held him on my chest and then leaned back on the bed. And I had this overwhelming feeling of, this is how God was embracing me through his little embrace too. And I felt very soothed by that, of that sense of being held by God as I was holding my little fellow, and he was holding me. And this feeling of this is, there's this embrace that's happening here. It's a maternal embrace of holding and soothing and comfort that comes with that. And I have a memory of just leaning back on the bed and just thinking, I wonder if this is what it feels like to be embraced by God, as I was embraced by this little guy. And that was really a springboard for that exploration in my master's topic, is this idea of this, this feels like grace. This feels like God's grace just holding me. And then I did a whole bunch of work on thinking about the nature of God, that sort of embodied experience of kind of sensing God embracing. So it's not just the idea of we need God with flesh on. And here was this little guy being God's flesh for me and holding me in the time when I needed, and also that sort of reciprocal dynamic of me holding him. And yeah, I think that's where it began in earnest.

C: That’s really beautiful, that image of God holding you through your little boy. That's really lovely. In your masters, you were talking about the different ways in which God mothers different elements of that. Do you want to tell us a bit about those?

J: Yeah, so as I started exploring this idea of the embodied experience of grace as maternal embrace, I came across this notion that there are possibly three motifs of a maternal embrace that's present in the scripture.
And the first one being like a nurturing embrace, which I suppose is like the one that I felt with my son, where it could be perhaps exemplified in the Madonna and Child with the mother having a real nurturing embrace on the lap. And God kind of holds us like that, like a little loved child on God's lap. There's also in the scriptures a sense that God offers us an enabling embrace as well, that sense that there are images of God as the mother eagle who carries her chicks on her wings and then drops out from under them so that we can fly.
And that image, that's what mother eagles do. In the King James Version, the eagle was a he. But actually, that's not what father eagles do. It's what mother eagles do. So the gender of the eagle was changed in the English translation. So that's not really very helpful. But that is a maternal embrace.

And there's also lots and lots of descriptions of God clothing God's people and feeding God's people and disciplining God's people and weeping over God's people not doing the right thing. That's all activities that mothers would traditionally do, not fathers.

So there's a sense in which God is doing all the mothering kinds of things for humanity.
That's an enabling kind of embrace and that helps us to kind of get out there in the world and do life.

And then the third motif I thought about was the enduring embrace of the maternal embrace. And that is depicted by the image of the Pieta and the mother of Jesus holding Jesus' body as he comes down off the cross. And this sense that mothering is actually about endurance as well and that God really holds us through suffering and is present with us right through the depths of despair and suffering.

And I suppose that's really what mothers do as well. And a sense that this maternal embrace has got these three elements in it. The nurturing embrace, the enabling embrace and the enduring embrace.

C: Yeah. So I wonder if it'd be worth just exploring each of those a bit. So that sense of nurturing embrace, it does sound very much like what you were doing with your son.

J: Yeah.

C: I’m wondering if there are particular pieces of scripture or images that were significant in exploring that element.

J: When you think about the mother hen gathering her chicks under her wings and God is like that. There's also an image in the Bible of God being like a mother bear who would gouge the eyes out of anyone who tried to come and do any harm to her children. Which is a bit gruesome, but that's there in the scripture as well. The sense that this nurturing space is just being really protected.
And I think when we consider what it feels like to be in a relationship with God, there are times when that nurturing embrace is what we really need and that is what God offers to us. And it's really available to us. And I suppose we can then offer that to other people too on behalf of God. That space of overall nurture and love and generous holding and protection that's fierce.

C: It quite often struck me, you know, Psalm 23, the Lord is my Shepherd. And there's that bit towards the end which says, you've prepared a table for me in the presence of my enemies. And that's always struck me as being quite interesting because the idea of it being safe to sit down and eat whilst there are enemies around is really interesting.
And as you were talking about that, that kind of really came to mind.

J: Yes. And even that idea of God preparing a table, that's a maternal thing to do, isn't it? It's like that's what women do. So again, it's sort of echoing that sense that God's gender is both male and female. Well, not at all gendered, but just supporting us to sense God's presence in all of the different aspects of mothering and fathering.

I often think about that image of the Madonna and Child and just being traveling in, well, we did the walk to Camino and to Santiago de Compostela and lots of images in Catholic churches there of the Madonna and Child. There's standing crosses all along the way that sort of mark pathway points between one direction and another. And on one side of the cross there's like the crucified Jesus, but then on the other side of the cross there's the Madonna and Child.
So it's this image of the Madonna and Child and this holding embrace that's nurturing it. And then there's the crucifixion on the other side. So that's sort of to your point of even in the presence of my enemies, there's this space of a table or a holding space where we can actually be safe. And we sort of really need that. It's such a key part of becoming a human, isn't it, too?
Sort of in early childhood development, we know that the children need a safe enough place so that they can venture out into the world and become themselves. I think that attachment theory talks about the need that all humans have for a safe enough holding environment so we can attach ourselves to a safe parent figure. And that idea of even the good enough parent doesn't have to be perfect but where our needs are met often enough for us to then develop a sense of, "Yeah, the world's a safe place and I'm an okay person." And then if we have those two foundational senses of who we are then we can venture out into the world and do all sorts of things. But if we don't have that nurturing space initially in early life it can become quite hard as adults either to trust that the world's safe enough or to trust that we're good enough in the world and they can become quite disabling.
So the nurturing embrace is from a psychological point of view as well is such an important part of human development in a dangerous world.

C: Yeah. And then you were talking about the enabling embrace of God. Do you want to tell us a bit more about that?

J: Yes, I suppose that's that sense of the way that God supports us to try stuff out and to figure out who we are and blesses us with gifts and talents and skills but we've got to try and work out what they are and how we can use them in the world. So this idea of a God who enables us to discover who we are gives us freedom as well. There's a sense in which the maternal embrace of enabling is kind of that stage of parenting where it's a coach, "Okay, off you go. Try it out." And it's very encouraging as a sort of coach that gets behind us and says, "Yes, we trust you can do this." And I think God's like that for us, offering that kind of embrace of trusting ourselves by sending us off and giving us a lot of reassurance that we could trust ourselves and that God is with us and can get out and do the tricky things and that God will keep on providing for us and keep on encouraging us and even when we muck things up will help us to get up again and keep going.

C: Yeah, there's something about knowing that almost that the mucking things up or the it not going perfectly is sort of part of what's expected and that is part of parenting, isn't it? That you don't expect that your children are going to do everything perfectly. Sometimes I think religion kind of has with it this sense of you must get this right and so that sense of an enabling maternal divine who is expecting to support us and coach us as we kind of find our way is really rather, that's really helpful, isn't it?

J: Yes, yeah. There's some freedom in that to be able to not have to be perfect and also a sense that God's kind of really longing for us to find our way as well. So even when we're lost, really longing for us to be found again. There's quite a lot of stories in the Bible about people mucking things up and yet God's love is ever present. Yeah, there's so many characters in the Bible that fall short of what we might imagine the right thing is and yet there's an invitation to restoration and a desire in God for us to find our way.

C: Are there any particular examples that kind of come to mind?

J: One thing I was thinking about, I don't know why, that came to my mind was of those bridesmaids with their lamps, the ones who fell asleep and the other ones who stayed awake when the bridegroom came.
But there's something perhaps about the ones that fell asleep, they missed out and they kind of had to go off on another journey to come back and find their way. There's the ones who were kind of righteous and kept their lamp lights burning but then there's also the ones who fell asleep.

So yeah, there's a sense in which there's a desire in God that we all find our way, even the ones who fall asleep. But then sometimes we do have to fall asleep to God and have that experience and then find that we've missed out and then work out how to find our way back again. I think as parents that's what we kind of need to let our kids do as well, to have experiences of things not working right and so that they can then discover how to be themselves and find their way back.

That's just one story. What do you make of that one?

C: I think that's a lovely take on that story because it's very much told that there were some bridesmaids who were in and some who were out. But once you're seeing God as this enabling maternal one who is wanting everybody to get there, then that sense that where the parable end is not the end of the story, they would have found their way through that somehow.

I think it's really beautiful.

J: Yeah, a sense of this desire of the maternal loving God for us all to seek our way toward restoration of a relationship even when we really stuff things up.

C: Yeah, it gives a very different character to our spiritual lives if you've got that underlying sense that God's love is maternal and therefore it just doesn't shift, does it?

I think that's what mothers are very good at is just continuing to love and to love and to show really quite divine amounts of patience.

J: Yes.

C: Because you just kind of do as a mother.

J: Yeah, I think it's really hard for a mother to write our children off when they do dumb things. It's just almost impossible, isn't it? Sometimes I'd like to, but it just feels like that maternal love kind of holds us to continuing to believe in the best for our children.
I think God is like that as well, just really longing for us to find our way.

And also there's something about freedom in it too, I think, of a God who's not necessarily got one path. Although sometimes people feel like, "I don't know, I've got to find what God's plan is for me," as if there's just one right way. I sometimes think about more of the tapestry of possible ways that are woven through life and that there's a richness in that as well. I suppose the whole free will thing, that God actually hasn't created humanity that just follow God's way automatically. So we've got this free will in us that we have the opportunity to grow up and choose the right way, which is part of the experience of being human as well. And the desire in God for us to choose the way toward God. There's also passages in the scripture where we hear of God weeping over the choices that people make and feeling really distressed that we've got stuck. That sense that God actually doesn't want there to be suffering and war and distress. But that humans do it. We've also the freedom to make wrong choices. But the desire in God, I think that is part of that enabling embrace that's enabling us to find the right way through life by experimentation sometimes. Finding our way through.

C: Yes. I think seeing God as an encouraging mother and enabling mother in that context is really helpful because quite often the picture that we have that you were sort of alluding to there that God has chosen the path for us and our job is to work out what it is.
You wouldn't think much of a mother who'd done that, would you? “I have decided that you are going to be a midwife. So your job is to understand that that's what I think you should do and to find your way there. If you decide you want to be a jazz pianist, I will be very disappointed. That will be a failure.” You'd think she was nuts, wouldn't you, if you found a mother like that.

J: Yeah, absolutely. To think that God's like that is sort of odd. But a lot of people do have an image of God. That idea God's got a plan for my life and I have to just try and figure it out. If I don't do the right thing, I might be being punished by God. When bad things happen, that's God somehow punishing us for doing the wrong thing. Well, I don't know. Maybe we've just made a bad choice.

C: Yes.

J: Or maybe just really other people have made bad choices too. Humans do harm to one another. I'm sure God totally laments when that happens. Is God controlling that? My sense is that there's a desire in God, a yearning toward the path of freedom and healing and wholeness for everyone. But we don't always kind of get there. Like a mother has for children, we really want our children to be their best versions of themselves. As you said, if we told them what to do, they wouldn't necessarily want to do it. They have to find their own way.

C: As a mother, I'm just delighted when there's something, I don't care what it is. Well, there would be limits if it was forgery or something. I think that would be less pleasing.
But whatever it is that my sons find to do that brings them life and that lights that spark of who they are, I'm just really, really chuffed. It's just lovely. If they're little and they're interested in dinosaurs and they're excited about it, or they want to make a sand castle, all of those things are really, really lovely. And there's a delight.

J: Just imagine that's how God feels about us as we find our way and rejoice in the great sort of experimentation that we might be doing in life. He's a great coach and cheerleader in enabling us by giving us the sort of support and love that gives us courage as well to try things out.

C: Yes. And then the other side of that, that you were describing of the God who is weeping when things are going wrong and when our own difficult choices or other people's choices lead us to really difficult places. There's that kind of persistence.
And I'm thinking of the mothers of children who end up in jail, who continue to love them. And they're just looking for any opportunity out there to continue to show support and love, even if circumstances have made that really hard.
So if I can visit you in prison and bring some comfort, then I will. If I can send you a care package, then I will send you one. If I can help you to raise your child who you're struggling to raise, then whatever it costs, I will do it. That kind of persistence, we see that in mothers all of the time, don't we? So for that to be a picture of God is beautiful.

J: Yeah, that's right. That sense that God is actually like that type of mother for us, will not give up on us ever. Yeah, that's lovely. And then you were talking about the love that you saw in that Pieta, the image of Mary holding the crucified Christ.

J: Nice segue there into that enduring embrace that mothering has and that sense of really being present through suffering. And I suppose I have experienced that from time to time in my own parenting. I remember a time when one of my boys had croup and was in hospital in intensive care for 10 days and just sitting by the bedside, really holding him too in his, like really, like I was suffering as he was suffering. I think my husband was as well and at that sense of enduring, like, "I'm not going to leave you here in the hospital alone." And that powerful presence of God with us through the deepest of suffering.

I suppose I sensed God with us in that time when he was in hospital and various other times in our journey through life as well that I've experienced really difficult circumstances and had a sense that God is in this suffering with me. And I think that image of the Pieta is a great example of that, of Mary and the women who stayed at the foot of the cross, the mothers who did not abandon Jesus in his suffering and other ones also who went to anoint him on Easter morning and stayed with, you know, stayed with their embodied presence of love through the darkest of suffering. I think God's like that with us as well.

C: Yeah, I'm thinking that surely God was like that with Christ on the cross. Sometimes there's this image of the cross being a place of separation within the Godhead that Jesus and the Father were separated. But your description of God's maternal enduring love that's shown through the women and through Mary, surely that was there whilst Jesus was on the cross too.

J: Yes, that's a lovely thought that Jesus in some of the Gospels is more conscious of God's presence with him than others. But we do have in Mark's Gospel a feeling that Jesus has been completely abandoned and left alone and yet wasn't left entirely alone. And even that it's human experience that Jesus has a feeling like that and yet not because that's what we sometimes experience as humans as well. Like we feel completely abandoned and yet we're not. So this presence of the divine love that holds us beyond our even knowing of ourselves being held.

C: When we're in the midst of very difficult suffering it can be hard to be aware of that presence and love just I suppose just through the kind of the physical and the emotional experience of being in that very dark place.

J: I think that sense of what it feels like can feel very, very alone. I remember listening to someone describe themselves feeling like they were stuck at the bottom of a deep dark well and she said she was all alone. She'd been through a very difficult time and some really, really awful experiences and the felt sense of it was like being stuck at the bottom of a deep dark well.

I asked her what's your sense of God in relation to where you are right now and she said, "Oh God's at the top of the well pointing down and laughing at me." It was an awful image of God. So I asked him, "Well if you look up what does God look like?" And she said, "Oh it's my dad."

Her father had been a quite abusive father to her and she had that sense of realizing that she kind of projected this image of her father onto God. This sense of God was like that and judging kind of, "Well you've done the wrong thing and you're stuck down there." Which was part of her experience of her own growing up time.

When she realized that it looked like her father I said, "Well what would you like to say to that image of God?" And she goes, "Sod off!" Which was sort of released to her and then after a while in the conversation I asked, "Have you got any sense of what's happening now?"

And then she started to describe this feeling of something, a presence with her at the bottom of the well and she said, "I'm not alone here in this dark place." And in time she felt like there's a presence of Christ there with her in the darkness of the bottom of the well. In fact she was stuck in the bottom of the well for quite a bit of time but it was like less alone by kind of having that sense of company in the struggle and in the suffering.

And I mean there's that whole part of the Saturday experience in the Christian story of, you know, there's a tomb that we're in through suffering for a period of time. And I think we often want to jump quickly to the resurrection but there's a sense in which God does stay with us through that deep suffering period. Yeah and that is part of that, I think that enduring embrace that God has of being with us through the darkest of things that can happen in life. And so to be able to have that gift of feeling the company of God in that is very powerful.

C: Yeah, it's really interesting listening to you describe the woman who had God like her father kind of at the top of the well looking down and pointing and laughing. That sense that actually it's really helpful to attend to what our image of God is and where that is from because quite often there are all kinds of layers that we inherit and we pick up culturally or through our experience of people in our lives. And it's interesting that her aloneness, her perceptual aloneness was partly caused by this kind of quite callous image of God and by shifting that she was able to connect with the divine loving presence that was with her.

J: Yeah, I think that's such an important thing to remember that these ways of speaking about God are metaphors. They're like there's a metaphor of God as Father and for some people that is just such a wonderful way of talking about God and people have had lovely experiences with their fathers and God is like that and to then say well God is like a loving Father. Yes, that's a way of making a connection with God.

But for people who've had fathers who like this woman I'm talking about to say that God is Father actually is not an appropriate or helpful association because her father wasn't loving and kind. He was actually quite cruel. So for her to then find another way of imaging God, a different sort of metaphor becomes really important.

And I think there's a great risk that we assume that because we say God is like a father that therefore God is male or that God is an old man in the clouds or Michelangelo version of God. They're just images of God and that these images and metaphors because a metaphor is trying to use language that's known to speak about something that's difficult or hard to describe or beyond containment. So Jewish people, I love that they don't actually have a name for God because God cannot be contained by a name. It's the Yahweh, this breath, this beyond naming and I think that's quite helpful.
So we use metaphors to speak about this beautiful presence that is beyond kind of containment. So any metaphor we use, even the maternal embrace, is just a metaphor. It's a way of describing a felt sense of connectivity with the divine life.

C: Yeah, so if we've got one which is not serving us we can switch it out. We can find another one.

J: Find another one, find something that actually serves.

C: Yes, if your God is at the top of the well laughing at you or telling you that you're going to fall off because you're going to get things wrong, then yes, find a different image.

J: Yeah

C: I think that that reminded that it is all metaphor because it has to be because Yahweh is utterly beyond description but metaphors can be so helpful can't they in helping us to make that connection. Then gives us the freedom, gives us the freedom actually to be a bit more conscious of what our metaphors look like.

I remember a conversation with my spiritual director a while ago and I've had what had felt like quite a positive sort of encounter with God. Quite a lot of awe going on and quite a lot of sense of me being very small and God being very big and I was quite excitedly describing this because it had felt really quite profound to my spiritual director who then asked me the question of what God was like. And I suddenly realized that although much of this was quite positive, God in my image was like a bunch of kind of pastors and elders from a church from my youth who were incredibly authoritarian. I suddenly realized that actually this God who I was experiencing was quite distant and quite male and quite authoritarian, patriarchal and it wasn't, it might have been profound but it wasn't the most helpful image actually.

J: Yeah, so what happened with that image? Did something shift?

C: Yes, it did. So I sort of did some imaginative prayer. I envisaged the church that I'd been part of and I in my imagination I walked into that church which had a, it had a huge platform on which these kind of suited men would sit. So I walked up to the platform and I thanked them for all that their ministry had given me, and then politely informed them that I didn't need them anymore. And then in my imagination the scene shifted and I was walking with women kind of across the countryside, across hills and things and there were some particularly sort of significant women, both women whose works I had read and women who had been with me. And I was freed from that particular sort of patriarchal image of God and it was one of those steps on the way to encountering God as feminine which has been a journey that I've been on for a while now.

But yeah, but it was interrogating who is the God who I'm encountering here and all the images of the divine that I'm encountering in this context, are they truthful actually? Are they helpful?

J: I think it's a really important question to ask. Yeah. Because there are images of God that people hold that I don't think are truthful.

Yeah. I mean just to use like classic language, Satan can be disguised as God or the dark forces in the world can disguise themselves as good forces and we can get tricked into thinking that that is God when it's actually not. So to be discerning around that, to kind of go, how do we test that?

Is it bringing life and is it pathway toward the fruits of the spirit of love and freedom and joy or is that image of God actually causing distress and harm and undermining life? And I think those sort of discernment around an image of God is probably quite helpful. And maybe an image of God that serves us for a period of time can be helpful and then can get to a point where it's actually not helpful anymore.

And then God's kind of going, hey, I'm also like this. I'm also like this. I'm bigger than your little box.

C: Absolutely. And understanding that all of it is metaphor is so helpful in that. And in my experience, what was really interesting to me was the subtlety that it wasn't that my picture was entirely unhelpful, but there were elements of it that I really, really needed to challenge. I think I was connecting with that sense of God as being huge and enormous and greater and something bigger, which I would still say is helpful.
But because that was attached to this very patriarchal, authoritarian, masculine image from my past, there was also something quite toxic in it. But it needed, well, it needed my spiritual director asking the discerning, awkward question.

J: Yes.

C: But I remember that feeling of, oh, I thought I was doing so well. And yet there's something in this which really needs challenging. But the freedom from that has been really helpful.

J: Yeah. And it's sort of like a shift between, sometimes that language that can be used is like a espoused theology and an operative theology, sort of like the things that we say and think about the nature of God that we espouse. It doesn't always line up with what's operative in us. And so to be able to pay attention to, well, I think I ought to think this about God, but actually my felt sense is that something's shifting here. This doesn't feel quite right, what I'm saying. So I think to be able to give some freedom to go, well, what am I thinking I ought to say about God, but what am I actually feeling about God?

C: Yeah. Which is something that is not always paid attention to. Quite often discipleship is about helping people to assent to external truths or doctrines. Whereas actually real spiritual growth comes when we are attentive to our own inner journey and what's going on within. And so helping one another to do that discernment, I think is really valuable.

J: Yeah. I think that's such an important thing.

I remember one time with my spiritual director after I'd, I mean, I was early on in my ministry and I'd had a really very difficult experience in the parish that there was sort of also a difficult experience with a colleague who was treating me in a way that actually was harmful to me. And I was having a conversation with my spiritual director about it. And I have this vivid memory of me feeling really ashamed because I'd let God down because God had called me into that ministry placement and God had called this colleague as well. And I ought to be able to make it work. It was all about me feeling bad about myself. And she said, "Well, have you got a sense of God at the moment in relation to this?" And I just put my hand up against my face.

I just feel really ashamed. I just feel terrible because I had this espoused idea about God and calling blah, blah, blah, but I actually just felt really ashamed. And she said, "If God was in the room, where would God be?" And I said, "Oh, probably over there." And behind me, "What would you say if you looked to it?" I said, "I can't look because I just feel like I don't want to look." And then she said, "If you were to look, what might you say?"

That was the question.

And then I realized that God was just right there with tears, just tears just down God's face that this situation had occurred, that we had got so stuck. It was such a powerful shift between this idea about God that I'd had that was somehow, yeah, a bit like your version of an authoritarian God who was kind of telling me that I ought to be able to whatever, to kind of have this really powerful sense of God right there over my shoulder, just really upset that we got so stuck. And it was nobody's fault, but it was just sad.
Yeah, that sort of felt like an awakening in me to a God who's with me, alongside me, not far away, but just really present and kind of wanting to be able to find a way through the difficult things. But sometimes it's hard and sometimes it really hurts and feeling sad and disappointed and aggrieved as well.

C: Yeah. And we're back to that enabling mother who is distressed with us when things are not going well. I think that that theme of closeness comes through all of those descriptions that you so eloquently described for us of the maternal grace.

J: Yes. Yeah. This lovely sense of God is closer than breathing. Yeah. If we can just get in touch with that sense of God who's present, just so intimately connected with us. And I think the maternal embrace metaphor is a lovely way of remembering that closeness.

C: Yeah. That's been a brilliant conversation. Do you sense that there's anything that has not been said that it feels important to say?

J: I suppose just that I know sometimes people say, well, I don't feel like God's, I can't get in touch with God. Like I don't know how to feel God for those people. And perhaps there's something about finding someone to companion you in that conversation. Because I think sometimes there's stuff that there's almost like resistances in us that are part of ourselves is protecting us from really feeling what we feel. And it may be that there's a really big thing that's quite hard that might be in the way of that connecting. And yeah, it might be nice to have an opportunity to kind of find a companion to work through that with.

C: Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. Those sort of inner protections, they're always there for a very good reason, aren't they?

J: Yeah. Yeah. Not to diminish or dismiss it, but to kind of go, oh, right, I better pay attention to this.

C: Yes, because somebody's love or that kind of closeness can be quite triggering. Both of my boys are adopted when they came home, coping with somebody's affection and love was really difficult because of their early experiences. Embrace was really threatening for them. And it's taken a long time to move through that. But it would be so easy. And I think this happens to quite a lot of us. It would be so easy to feel, well, the reason that I can't feel God's love is because there's something wrong with me, or I'm not worthy of it, or I am as crap as I always thought I was. And that's how God sees me too.

And I don't think it's ever that.

But we might have really good reasons why opening up to that really intimate presence of the divine is really difficult. And it's a journey. Yeah.

When I was younger, I never felt it. It was a really, really slow journey towards any kind of sort of felt experience of God. I mean, I had a very deep faith sort of from my early childhood. So I know that kind of age four or five, I would have called myself a Christian and I had a deep faith. But I was probably 25, possibly slightly younger than that. But kind of, you know, we're talking definitely well over a decade between that kind of initial sense of belief and any kind of real, persistent, internal sense that God's presence was tangible for me. And I remember I would sometimes come out of meetings and other people would say, "Oh, well, I could really sense the presence of God there today." And I would think, "No, absolutely not." Very slow, gentle, persistent journey.

J: Yeah. Yeah, that's right. Even noticing our longing for it, I think is the key. Just even noticing, "Oh, I just really would long for that." And then listening to that and following the lead of it, saying where it leads can be helpful.

C: Yeah. Yeah. And what are the images and assumptions that are getting in the way of that?

J: Maybe the maternal embrace might be a helpful one for some people.

C: Yes.

J: Maybe I can explore a different way of sensing God with me because I've got so fixated on a version of God that's sexually not serving me anymore. But maybe letting go of those things and inviting God to be revealed in a new way could be really helpful.

C: Yes. Is there anything in terms of your work or your presence in the world that you would like to be able to point people to?

J: I have just launched a new website called The Golden Thread. And on that, there's a whole range of different resources and reflections that I've been working on that sort of relate to my research topic, exploring this sense of a thread that connects us into the divine.

And on that, there is a podcast that I've been working on with a colleague of mine, a friend, Damien, where together we're reading Mark's gospel. Now, Damien is somebody who grew up rejecting Christianity. He started out as a Catholic, but their family pretty much left the church when they were very young. And he's just recently kind of gone, "I wonder what this Christianity thing is about?" and has asked me. And we thought maybe a good place to start is just reading Mark's gospel. So it's a very interesting conversation. I think, Catherine, you'll put the link in your notes.

C: Yep, that sounds really, really interesting. Yes. So there is a link to that in the show notes if you'd like to explore The Golden Thread. Thank you so much, Joan Wright Howie.

J: It’s been a lovely conversation.

C: Thank you for your time.

[Music] Hope you enjoyed this episode of the Loved Called Gifted podcast. If you'd like to get in touch, you can email lovedcalledgifted@gmail.com. You can find a transcript of this podcast at lovedcalledgifted.com. And that's also the place to go if you're interested in the Loved Called Gifted course, or if you'd like to find out about spiritual direction or coaching.

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