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.

So for this episode, I'm really delighted to be joined by Anni Ponder and Kim Eckhart.

So I met Anni and Kim through a group called Finding Mama God and as part of my exploration of the Divine as feminine,

one of the things that has been really hard to find has been other people who are also on the same journey

and also wanting to encounter God as feminine as well as masculine.

So that was kind of how we met one another and so Finding Mama God is a beautiful little gathering that occurs by the magic of the internet about once a month.

So Anni and Kim are not particularly close to Stoke-on-Trent, England.

Would you like to introduce yourselves and let us know where about you are? Do you want to go first, Anni?

Sure. Good morning. Hi everyone. I am Anni and I am coming from smack dab in the middle of Washington State, north central Washington as we call it.

So it's bright and early here, but I'm just delighted to be with you.

Yeah. And Kim?

Hi. Yes, I am from United States in a little place called Ohio. Most people have not heard of it because we are a flyover state.

I kind of consider myself to be just an ordinary churchgoer who asks a lot of really big questions about who God is.

Excellent. And how did you two meet?

Oh, you should tell this story, Kim. This is fun.

We actually have a common friend and we don't know who this person is, but they connected me with Anni, I think like an Instagram post.

And we both have kind of shared this understanding that God has revealed God's self through the Holy Spirit as this feminine expression of Mama God.

And so finding each other through the internet and mostly by the retreat that Anni planned, and you should talk about how that retreat was birthed.

Yeah, there's a long story there, but I'll just highlight this part.

I felt very inspired that it was time to circle up with women around the concept of particularly those of us with Christian roots and heritage and current practice and belief.

Could we find maternity or femininity in the Trinity? Is that okay?

And so I was inspired and I felt commissioned to circle up some women.

And I put this retreat out on the internet, and this is in the days when I was just starting up my online presence and I was on Instagram and Facebook.

I'm really not much anymore.

And I put out something and then I was actually getting out of the shower.

I remember my phone dinged and it said, "Somebody signed up for your retreat."

And it's this woman named Kim Eckhart. And I was like, "I don't know this woman."

So far only people who were local to me had signed up.

And so I reached out and I said, "Hi, I'm so delighted you're coming. How did you hear about this and where are you?"

And when I learned, she was in Ohio, and she said, "Well, a friend of mine saw your post and they're a mutual friend."

And she told me who it was and I was like, "I don't know this person."

And so another mutual friend maybe must have connected us to him and him to her.

So we actually don't know how it all happened, but we're delighted that it did.

Yeah. So do you want to tell us a bit about what you get up to in your daily lives?

What do you do in Washington and Ohio?

Yeah. So I, on top of hosting my podcast, which I named Barely Christian, Fully Christian, for reasons that are probably apparent to any of your listeners, Catherine, and writing on Substack.

I'm also full-time going back to school studying for my Master's in Theology, Culture, Peace, and Justice.

And I'm taking my studies through St. Stephen's University in Canada.

So those things plus mothering and being a wife and being a human and a friend and a member of my community keeps me pretty busy.

Brilliant. What about you, Kim?

Yeah. I don't have much of an online presence other than I do have a Substack that's called Finding Others Along the Journey that has been just a wonderful way for me to connect with other people.

And this journey is very much about asking big questions about God and not being confined to the traditional confines of how people conceive of God.

And so I talk a lot about basically the story of how I learned to pray and the journey that evolved as I began to relate to the Holy Spirit as Mama Spirit and just the amazing, incredible journey that that has taken me on since then.

One of the detours or kind of like side paths where that took me was I decided to take a different kind of job so that I could write a novel. So I'm only working part-time now.

And I really felt like I kind of came back to this childlike love of using my imagination to create story.

And so I wrote a novel and I'm in the process now of kind of figuring out what to do with that as well as really discerning like, am I being called to some other type of vocational ministry?

So having a lot of conversations with people about that.

Yeah. So tell us about your current job and what did you move away from to do that?

Actually, I was serving as the interim director for a nonprofit that does public policy advocacy and my specific passion, I guess you could say, is advocating for students who have been in foster care.

So you can imagine the sort of barriers that they face, especially when it comes to their education.

And so we were working really hard on a legislative campaign so that they could have a full ride scholarship, basically, if they managed to get through school, secondary school, they could go on to post-secondary school.

And so that was until they hired a new director and I was able to kind of transition into some more consulting work doing other similar types of projects in the child welfare space advocating for, in this case, very young children in foster care.

So that's always been sort of the heart of what I do in sort of the secular professional space is related to making sure that all of God's children have an opportunity to thrive.

Yeah, I was going to say it doesn't sound very secular at all to me, that deep care for children who are needing and young people.

I know a little bit about the world of sort of foster care and adoption and adoptive mother myself.

So yes, that just warms my heart to know that that's where you've been. And people have huge, huge barriers to overcome, don't they?

Yeah, the generational trauma that kind of lays the groundwork for your life is, you know, we don't even think about the family privilege that we have of like just kind of understanding that you're safe in the world and that you're provided for.

And that's a foundational outlook on life that is just not everybody has. And so anything you can do to support young people who didn't get that foundation is so important.

Yeah, and so many of those young people come with that sort of double thing of both vulnerability and trauma, but also deep life experience and wisdom.

Yes. Yeah, a big part of our work is when students are in a stable place to bring them into the process of advocacy because their stories and their ability to kind of tell their stories as a way of creating change in systems is so impactful, both for us as a society to hear those stories, but also for them to kind of see the full circle moment of they're healed through that process.

So that's been such a wonderful gift to be a part of that process.

Yeah, thank you. And that kind of feels like it links tangentially to what we're talking about in terms of connecting with the maternal heart of the divine.

So all three of us are from Christian traditions that wouldn't center the feminine divine or even notice it, let's be honest.

I would be really interested to kind of hear both of your stories of how you were led into connecting with that aspect of the divine, you know, what were some of the markers along the way for you in that. You're nodding, Anni, do you want to start us?

Sure, I'll jump in. Yeah, I love to tell this story. In fact, this is kind of what Kim and I do, as you know, when we join on Zooms monthly for our online, it's kind of church, we just tell stories and how did you find your way into the arms of the beloved divine feminine?

So, like Kim, questions have become my most precious possession, really, other than the people that I have in my life. But my deep questions have led me on journeys that I am so thankful for.

And years and years and years ago, the first question that really popped open my mind just formed a crack in my really well-fortressed theology at the time. I heard God ask me, "Hey, is there anything about me that you believe that's not true?"

And you can imagine that I was a young fundamentalist, I had been born and raised in a very fundamentalist church that was so completely separate, it wouldn't even identify as evangelical.

And I was absolutely floored and shocked and, "How dare you ask me that, God? No, I don't believe anything about you that's untrue. Do I?"

And God was so gentle and loving as I agreed to hold that question. And then together we explored many things that I was holding on to as absolutely true that God was like, "Hon, I got to tell you, I am so much better than that."

So it was a few years later, I was driving along and I was on my way home from some errands. I had one young child or maybe the second one at this point, and I heard a question come again. And the voice, the internal voice, I always like to clarify, I don't hear this with my ears, said, "How would you relate to me if I were a woman?"

And, Catherine, I was so floored, I almost rear-ended the car in front of me. I was stopped at a stoplight and I almost, I just like went to press on the gas because I didn't know what to think.

What, what? If you were a what? That had never occurred ever once in my whole life. And I had lived, you know, three decades in this very highly religious environment.

And so I had no idea what to do with this question. I kind of agreed to hold it in my heart, but I went about my life and I buried it so deep in my heart that I didn't even think about it for many years.

And then things transpired in my life and fast-forwarding many years after I had experienced divorce and a whole lot of struggles involving mental illness and some custody issues that nearly destroyed my soul.

One day I was in a bookstore and this is where I like to say, "I have Mary Magdalene to thank for awakening this question that was planted like a seed in my heart." There was a book on the shelf about the gospel of Mary Magdalene.

And now she's always been one of my very favorite characters, probably other than Jesus, she's always been my very favorite. And I had never heard that perhaps Mary Magdalene maybe might have possibly written a gospel.

And as I saw this book on the shelf, the tiny little seed began to grow, or if you like the fire metaphor, the coal began to just shoot up a little tiny flame.

So I took this book home, well I bought it, I didn't steal it. And as I was reading, here's the amazing thing, I'm not even sure I could tell you what this book says.

It's not as though the book itself were speaking to me, it's as if opening the pages of the book I was looking at a portal through which I could hear many more important questions that I had either not considered since that question in my car, or I had somehow silenced through the busyness of all the things that were happening.

And the first question was, why in our Orthodox Christian tradition, why aren't there any books in the canon written by women?

We were there the whole time, and we had valid, important experiences with God on our own.

And why are our voices so suppressed? I mean there are two books called, you know, The Women that they're written about, but they're probably written by men and not in the women's first-hand experience.

And more questions began to pour in. It was like my mind was cracking open and the light was pouring in, and I looked at my bookshelf and I said, "Why are 90% of the books on my shelf, my shelf, written by men?

Why is that? And why don't I know women's history? And why don't I know who's responsible for the women's vote? I just know this tiny little paragraph in my history book says, you know, when women got the right to vote."

And then the questions got bigger and bigger until they pointed to the Trinity.

And I'll tell this one other story and then I'll let Kim share.

During this time, I was talking to Jesus all the time, "Are you sure this is okay? Father God, do you mind that I'm asking about Mother God? Is this weird? Is this pagan? Are you mad?"

And I just got so much warmth and love from who I call Papa and my brother, Jesus.

So, as I'm considering, "Could there be a mother part of the Trinity?" I heard an instruction and it was, "Go watch Mrs. Doubtfire."

Do you remember the film?

Yeah, yeah.

Okay. So, for any of your listeners who don't, it's a beautiful old Robin Williams film. Oh, goodness, how I miss Robin Williams.

And he's separated from his children and so he dresses up as a British nanny, right? And he gets a job caring for his own children but in disguise so that he can be near them every day.

And God is speaking to my heart as I'm watching this film and there's this poignant moment where Mrs. Doubtfire, who won't take any flack from these kids, sends them marching upstairs to go do their homework and they're grumbling against her.

The oldest one says, "I miss Dad!" And the middle one says, "Me too!" And the littlest one says, "Me most!" And then the camera zooms in on Robin Williams' face and in his own voice, too quiet for the children to hear, he says, "I'm here, guys, in some form."

And at that moment, it dropped into me completely. She's been here in some form all along. Our mother has perhaps had to wear a suit and tie in our imagination so that we would let her in the door and so that we could, in our very androcentric, masculine-focused Western civilization, we could even allow her to be there under the guise of being some kind of man or it.

Nobody really knows this bird person of the Holy Trinity, what is that? But I just realized, oh, she's been here all along. And everything changed for me after that.

Yeah, thank you. Thank you. That's really beautiful. And it's interesting, isn't it? Because actually within our own scripture, we see God mothering so much. So much of what God is doing is mothering. And of course, if we're all created in the image of the divine, then our femininity, our womanliness, everybody's kind of feminine side, it is the image of the divine.

So obviously it's there, but that sense of it being hidden, I think, it is really poignant.

And it was amazing then, after my mind was open and ready to accept that, that I could go to the scriptures and find exactly what you're talking about. It's hidden in plain sight.

All of the feminine imagery and the names for God that are expressly feminine, they're all right there. I just never knew to look. I never knew I could.

Yeah, I've spoken about this in other episodes, but the word for compassion comes from the Hebrew for womb. That's possibly, that could be feminine.

I mean, let's just ask ourselves who in creation has wombs?

Absolutely. And the name El Shaddai, of course, is the Lord with breasts, basically the breasted one, the one who nourishes us. And the most obvious and the most kind of hidden in plain sight, the sense that we are born again. Jesus says you need to be born of the Spirit.

So it's there, it's all there, but we just don't see it. And your description of that sense of it being heretical and possibly not allowed, you know, is this all right to think like this? Yeah. I so recognize that in my own experience too.

So thank you. Kim, do you want to tell us a bit of your story?

Yes, it was so fun to hear Anni's story because I felt there was so much overlap in the sense that there was no outside person, you know, planting these seeds. It was all just an internal curiosity and these budding questions that were welling up.

And, you know, I think the real key for me was giving myself permission because when you come from a Christian background, there's so much of a sense of fear of getting something wrong. Like if your theology is wrong, you might lose your salvation or something.

I really felt a deep faith that my questions were good and it was gradual. It wasn't a kind of overnight process, but I had been sort of in a dry season of my faith.

I was a young mom, basically for the first decade of my children's life, I was just exhausted. And I don't think the spiritual life thrives in that season until you begin to see how your motherhood reflects who God is.

And then you begin to kind of have mystical experiences of God every day because you're like, "Oh, this is what God is like." But I remember seeing a child with their hands up, raised in church, you know, and their mother was like walking with them so that they could continue to kind of like walk even though they weren't old enough to really use their legs on their own.

And there would just be flashes of that.

Well, let me pop in and say there's a verse in the Bible that literally talks about this. It says, "God holds my right hand with His," it says, "Right hand and then helps me walk."

And if you put these thoughts together, you picture a parent standing over a toddler, right hand and right hand, left hand and left hand, helping us walk.

Oh, beautiful.

Pretty beautiful.

So there would just be these flashes of insight along with a growing sense of permission.

So as I began to read more, the overall impression that I had was that God wanted me to begin to relate to God more as a mother.

And there would just be books that would come into my life.

So for example, there was this book called Our Lady of Cabejo, which is a story of kind of an apparition.

So this was a Catholic tradition.

And there's so many stories of apparitions throughout history, but this one occurred fairly recently in Rwanda.

And the descriptions that these young girls, there were three young girls about 13 years old who had a series of apparitions over the course of probably over a year.

And the description of what they experienced and the way that this kind of maternal vision just delighted in them and just wanted to dance with them and would sing with them.

And, you know, ultimately she was encouraging them to speak out in kind of a warning against the genocide that was to come.

So it was this very loving, tender, you know, the way they described her is just the most beautiful, peaceful presence that you could imagine.

And, you know, how this book came into my hands, I have no idea because I did not come from a Catholic background.

But it was just seeds like that that were planted that I sensed God wants me to have an understanding like this because it would enrich my prayer life.

And as I was able to draw closer to God in that maternal loving presence, it really healed me.

It really gave me a deeper ability to attach to people in my life more generally.

I didn't have a wonderful experience of attachment in my childhood.

And so, you know, there was this real ability to confide.

And I'll say just one more thing. One pivotal thing was a book that I, again, I was in the middle of the night having a very hard time with a lot of rejection and not knowing my place in the world and struggling with insomnia.

And I had this impression as I was praying that I needed to read a book called The Story of a Soul by Teresa of Lusso.

Somebody had mentioned it offhand in the church service.

And I looked it up and it was this beautiful introduction by the author to the mother of her convent.

So again, another Catholic story.

She was addressing this letter of the story of her soul to her mother.

And even though I understood that in practice, that it wasn't actually to God the mother, in my heart, the deep impression it left on me was God was saying, "I am a mother who can understand the story of your soul.

No matter how much you stammer, I will cherish it."

And I just had this deep feeling of like, I need to write my story.

I need to narrate what's happening in my life as though the primary audience is my mother.

And that is honestly how I started the Substack journey.

And the narration of it has become just so wonderful, both in my ability to understand and give language to what's been happening to my soul,

but also almost like sending out signals to others that are on the journey to create this network,

which is I hope what we'll talk about if other women who somehow have landed on this wonderful epiphany too.

That's beautiful. Thank you.

My experience is that this is not just a deepening and a broadening of our understanding of the divine that is important for women.

It is for men too.

I mean, I started writing on Medium a number of years ago now, and quite a number of my most faithful readers were men who were finding it deeply helpful.

And I think in just the same way as it can be helpful to see God as a father and a brother,

it's really helpful for everybody to have an understanding of God as feminine, both in that maternal sense, but also women are not just mothers.

For me, some of the imagery around the Holy Spirit as creator.

At the beginning of Proverbs, the character of wisdom is evidently divine, talking about kind of being there, part of the creating of the world, the creating of the universe.

And our understanding is that the character of wisdom in Proverbs is the same as Jesus.

So that tracks across. Yeah.

Katherine, can I just piggyback there? One word that comes up in every conversation I have ever had about divine femininity, it's so interesting.

Somebody always mentions how healing her presence is, how she is the antidote to shame.

That usually comes up too, and not that Father God or Brother Jesus do not bring healing and restoration and honor, but there is some healing quality to she who is.

And I would also highlight what you've said, yes, women, even though we may be mothers and we are not all, even though we may be wife and we are not all, we are much more than those roles.

Our presence is much larger and wider. Her presence is so much more than only our need for her mothering.

And that's been a really rich vein of conversation I've found also.

Yeah. So one of the things on my journey in this has been battling with, struggling with the fact that for me too, much of this kind of exploration and revelation has been very individual.

It's been me reading and occasionally listening to somebody speak, but kind of not in person.

And because we have this cultural understanding of the divine as so masculine, like even for those of us who are exploring God as feminine, we've still got so much kind of coding within us of God as masculine.

It's really difficult when every time you step into any sort of communal prayer or worship or fellowship setting, everybody else is seeing God as entirely masculine.

And you know that because, I mean, because from my own story, I know that to refer to God as she or as mother will probably freak people out.

Yes, very much so.

And will be difficult to process. I mean, I do in public, but I'm always very aware of it.

It's not like I can just do it naturally and without thinking about it.

And on occasions when I've really felt, I think the prayer that you need is to mother God in this moment.

I think you need God's maternal presence.

I would sort of say to mother, father God or father, mother God, kind of like just to let people know that I'm not, you know, just to try and help people to kind of connect with that.

And so having spaces where there is a shared, just a shared basic understanding that we can see God as feminine as well as masculine is really helpful.

And being part of the Finding Mama God gathering has been the first place actually that I have been able to do that.

And I'm really, really grateful for it.

Do you want to share how that came about?

Oh, you start Kim, because I think it started in your heart.

So we had our retreat last November, and it was an in-person gathering.

And for me, it was just as you described, Catherine, it was the first time when I did not feel so isolated in this expression of this kind of experience.

And being in that community with other women who felt comfortable using a different style of pronoun, and it was a way of doing church.

You know, it wasn't formally church, but it felt very much like church in the sense that we received communion together.

And it was the first time in my life that I understood communion as the nourishment that we receive in our bodies, similar to the nourishment that we receive as infants from our mothers.

It was only because I had been saturated by that experience of other women in that space that that epiphany came to me.

And so I had come back home to my very conservative place in Ohio, and just was very much missing that component of that shared experience.

And so I had a friend reach out to me and say, "I didn't know that you were as fascinated with the Catholic tradition of Mary as I am."

And so when she said that, it sort of prompted me to say, "You know what, I wonder if we could keep going with this virtually."

So I reached out to Anni, and we decided that we're going to continue with the same theme of finding Mama God, but we'll do it on a monthly basis and just invite people who are from that retreat, and then anybody I could find here in Ohio, which is not many.

I'll be honest, we're not finding the community as readily welcoming of this idea as maybe Anni has found in her community.

Well, meanwhile, when Kim was having the beginning ruminations for There Should Be an Online Zoom, I began to have a knowing, as I've heard you talk about, Katherine, I think before, and every woman I've ever talked to in this circle also talks about having knowings. It's fascinating.

So I began having a knowing that there should be an online gathering where we could do this.

And I also had a knowing that it was not mine to start because I was involved in a few other things and full-time school.

And so I just kind of quietly knew that that needed to happen.

And then I got a message from Kim, and she said, "I think there need to be monthly Zooms."

And I said, "I know there do, and I'm so glad you reached out. Let's do this together."

So what difference has it made to you both to have this regular gathering?

Well, for me, like you said, having a circle where we can be free and we don't have to preface everything with, "I'm not getting rid of God the Father."

Like when I start this conversation with someone at the very beginning of their journey, I give like eight or nine disclaimers.

"I'm not getting rid of God the Father." "I'm not saying that we don't need Jesus." You know, like all of these things that take a lot of energy but are necessary to allay the fears that they will have before they can be ready to consider that God might be feminine as well.

But to be in a circle where that work has already been done, that ground's been laid, and we can simply be together in her presence.

We can let her direct because she does. She will inspire really beautiful things.

One day in one of our circles, I think you might have been on the call at that one, Catherine.

She spoke to me and said, "We need to do some discerning," which is a new tool I had just learned at my school.

And so I said, "I'm feeling like this is what we need to do," and everyone agreed, and we did it. And beautiful things came right from that that are still having ripple effects months and months later.

So just having the freedom to be, take off the masks, and revel together in her presence without needing all the qualifications and disclaimers.

Oh, it feels so freeing. It feels like what I imagine it must feel like to take off a really tight corset and just let it all out and breathe deeply again and just let your hair down and really be. It is so freeing.

Yeah, I think for my journey, it's really kind of helped me to imagine what a gathering would look like if we sort of started from scratch. So I think we've inherited, in the Christian tradition, we've inherited a couple millennia of the male imagination of what a gathering could be.

And so we have buildings, and we have pews, and we have pulpits, and all of those things are in some ways a function of how men approach life.

And what I have found as we've been gathering is that my imagination for how church could be has just grown. Part of that is that we have another person on our calls that has actually started a wild church.

And if you're not familiar with wild church, it's just a way of gathering outside in nature. And listeners may remember the recent episode about the practice of contemplating nature and how beautiful that can be.

So it's sort of a cross between that natura divina that she described and the gathering of people together to kind of share and give language to the wisdom that they're gaining through those practices.

And one thing that I think is so interesting about it is that I'm kind of obsessed with the Gospels right now. I listen to Jesus and all of the stories about Jesus on my audio Bible pretty much every day.

And what I have kind of understood is that's actually the model that Jesus used when he called his disciples.

And unfortunately, the only ones that were documented were the men, but there were many, many disciples that were going with him out into the wilderness.

And they would sit together. And you know, the Sermon on the Mount grew out of an occasion when Jesus and his disciples were sitting out in the wilderness.

And just that beautiful message of "Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth."

You know, the earth, they were in the earth, they were experiencing the beauty of the earth at that moment.

I feel like he's receiving the wisdom of the Holy Spirit in that moment and passing it along to the people around him.

And you know, we can follow in his footsteps in that way and sort of recreate church separate from all of the millennia of what has been layered and layered and layered upon what church should look like.

Yeah, I would really agree with that. A number of years ago, I did some studying and some thinking and wrote a book called Church Uncorked looking at what happens if you get rid of hierarchy, starting by thinking about how do you know what you're called to do?

And how do you decouple that from an organization with a hierarchy and a mission? Because it doesn't really work very well that way around. If you start with how do you help people to think about what is the gift that God is calling people to bring to the world?

And then if you start from that, then you will end up with a very different kind of organization because you're not kind of doing a top-down thing.

And in the process of exploring that, it was really interesting to see that if you look at the New Testament, the New Testament writers in the letters and in Acts, they completely avoid using the word leader.

There was a really useful word for leader in Greek and it's archon, but they didn't use it. They used words like elders and helpers and shepherds and like anything to get away from this idea of leadership, which was the kind of the model of the world.

And then there's that, but isn't there where Paul is trying to help the Corinthians to sort themselves out? And what he describes is how do you hold a gathering where everybody is equal without it descending into chaos?

He says, well, if somebody's talking and then someone else has got something to say, well, then make sure that everybody listens to each other. It's really interesting.

And the simplest way to organize a gathering is to have somebody at the front kind of organizing everybody.

So I think that connection between patriarchy and hierarchy and the way that we've kind of run with that is really interesting.

And in more feminine spaces, there is much more of a tendency for meetings to be in circles.

You know, when women gather, it's often in circles. It's not usually with one woman at the front kind of telling everybody else what to think.

And that connection between nature and the divine seems also to come through really strongly when women are connecting with who they are and with who the divine is.

That's really interesting kind of tracing some of those patterns and resonances.

Absolutely.

The other thing that occurred to me as you're talking is that I'm really interested by the decision that Jesus made in his teenage years.

So you know he gets left behind at the temple because he's really, really enjoying being there and really enjoying being with all of the teachers.

And he's managed to impress them.

And what interests me, and I kind of got to this point doing the Ignatian exercises and kind of meditating on this story.

What really interests me is that he chooses to go home with Mary and Joseph to this backwater village.

And I think he could have had his pick of teachers.

And the conversation could have gone, he's a prodigy, your son, any of us.

Any of us would be honored to have him as a disciple.

He can choose.

And yet he doesn't.

And yet he goes home.

He comes away from the temple courts and goes back to the village.

And his spirituality is shaped by being in that backwater village in the hill country of Galilee amongst the farmers and amongst the land.

And I just think that's really interesting.

Wow.

I had never thought about that angle, but everything in me knows you're right.

Because that's the age.

He was 12.

So that's the age when young men were inducted by rabbis.

And they were told either, "You've made the cut. You've memorized Torah well enough. You've impressed us. You can come and study or go and apply your father's trade."

Wow.

Wow.

So he could have been inducted and he wasn't.

He knew a better way. He wanted to learn at home.

Yes.

From Mary, largely, at that point. Right?

Well, and I would argue that also from retreating into solitude, he was learning directly from the Holy Spirit.

I really think that his mother, and there are ancient sources.

They didn't make it into the canon for one reason or another, and you might imagine why.

But there are sources that do indicate that Jesus understood the Holy Spirit as his mother.

And I think that he retreated to the wilderness.

You know, that was his practice.

And he was gaining wisdom directly from solitude and communing with his mama.

Agreed.

So maybe when he speaks about that need to be born again of the Spirit that is coming partly from his own direct experience.

It must be because they weren't talking about it in Jewish temple.

No. No.

I have been fascinated to read the original words of Jesus that were spoken in Aramaic, and how very interesting the gender of the God he speaks of shows up in Aramaic.

If you want a fun trail of breadcrumbs to follow there, I would send you to Neil Douglas Klotz of his book, The Beatitudes and The Lord's Prayer in Aramaic.

And that'll blow your mind.

Mmm. That's really interesting.

What occurs to you both that we've not already said or talked about?

The journey for me really started with just reading other writers.

And so if you can find us on Substack or, you know, the book that actually helped me to really think about finding community around this was Sue Monk Kidd's Dance of the Dissident Daughter.

And I realized as I was reading that that she had kind of gone on this journey as far as I had, but then she had gone further and found other women who were interested in the same things.

And I will say it was a very lonely beginning of the journey for me.

I would say probably the first six years of this exploration, I had a very difficult time having conversations about this with other people.

And part of it, I think I learned from you, Katherine, is to just acknowledge that it's uncomfortable.

And just say, you know, I know this is like probably going to break your mind because this is not the way we've talked about God for our entire lives.

And so that's okay. Being uncomfortable with this language at first is totally normal.

And also, you know, it's something that you can kind of gradually get beyond.

And that was my story, too. There was definitely a season of the journey that was growing more and more comfortable.

And as I was more perceptive and kind of in tune with how God might be leading me in this direction, those continual affirmations that this was good, this is good, this is good.

So maybe don't start with having conversations about it, but definitely at some point on the journey, this has been so incredibly rich.

Yeah. Sue Monk Kidd was at the beginning of this journey for me, too. And I love this story.

Did you read in the back where after she tells her whole story about how she made this journey, then she says, "And what's been happening now?"

And she tells this little caveat. She was at like an abbey. Is that the right name? Where there's Mother Superior and the nuns living there.

And so she was talking about divine femininity, and she was called into Mother Superior's office.

And she goes in with a little trepidation, right, because she's been called into the principal's office.

And Mother Superior is standing there with her arms crossed, and she says, "I hear you've been talking about divine femininity here in Miami."

And Sue Monk Kidd says, "Yes, that's right. I have been."

And Mother Superior is quiet. And then she says, "Well, it's high time that the Trinity was more than two men and a bird."

Yes. I liked that story, too.

But the other thing that I would mention, if you're intrigued in any way and you're like, "Where do I go from here?"

The first thing I would tell you is, if you live in Western civilization at all, you probably already know this, but let me just add another voice to the choir.

We have some decolonization work to do of our minds. We have some unlearning of white male hierarchy to do.

And so listening particularly to Black women might be the most healing, helpful thing for you to do.

There are so many good ones I could mention. We actually, Kim and I, have put together a list of really useful resources, and it's hosted at findingmamagod.com.

So there's a whole treasure trove there of authors and speakers and people talking about this that you might find useful.

But really listening to women of color because, well, in my experience in America, there's the race and gender and class trifecta of hierarchy.

And women of color, particularly Black women, they have understood oppression from every one of those spheres.

And yet they have the most incredible connection to the divine.

And so keep decolonizing. It's part of the work.

Yes, absolutely. Absolutely. Thank you both so much. I just want to make sure that we've pointed people at all of the stuff.

So Anni, your podcast, Barely Christian, Fully Christian, what are you talking about?

My three favorite things on Barely Christian, Fully Christian, which is available at Apple Podcasts on Spotify and then at my website.

You can go to BarelyChristian, FullyChristian.com.

So the three things that I love to talk about are my love for Jesus.

I just cannot say enough about how great Jesus is.

My repulsion with modern Christianity, how it's showing up now.

When I started this podcast, I didn't quite have the words yet, but now I will name it.

It's Christian nationalism I'm talking about. White Christian nationalism and what has happened to the evangelical church.

And then my personal favorite, the divine feminine.

And as I call her Mama God, she's known by so many names.

I call her Mama God for many reasons.

And when we do circles, we call it Finding Mama God as a nod to Carol Lynn Pearson, our matron saint,

who is thankfully at this point still with us, who wrote a book called Finding Mother God, Poems to Heal the World,

which I have right here and I take it into every conversation that I have about divine femininity.

So if you like poetry, she's a beautiful resource.

And you have a substack.

Probably the best way to find all the wonderful writing about this topic is within Anni's website.

We have a special page called Finding Mama God, and that has all the resources.

So it has my substack and then also a few other wonderful women who are part of our circle.

And every kind of story that somebody has told during our circle, we've recorded it.

And so they're usually about 20 to 30 minutes.

We've had eight sessions so far.

And so we have all eight of those recordings available on that web page as well as my substack,

which, you know, mine's a little bit of a meander through my journey.

And it's a lot of my processing, my life.

So if you're interested in that particularly, then you're welcome to read it.

But if you are just curious about what are the resources out there that can help me kind of navigate this,

that would be a wonderful page.

Cool.

And if people are interested in joining a gathering, is that open to folks?

Absolutely.

We welcome you. If you want to come and share your story or just silently listen and absorb the first,

like Kim said, probably 20 to 30 minutes, we feature a storyteller sharing about her journey.

And so far it's been mostly women who have joined.

We are not exclusive, but this is the crowd that we seem to attract.

And so we do record the main storyteller's story with her permission.

And then after that, we turn off the recording so everybody can just speak really freely if they want

and reflect and mention things that have come up for them while listening to the story.

And so, yes, of course, we would be so honored to welcome any of your listeners, Catherine.

That would be wonderful.

And that sharing is just beautiful, you know, that storytelling and sharing.

It's so far from the sitting in pews, listening to somebody tell you what to think.

We've had enough of that.

Yes.

I still attend church. I will say I still attend church.

And I do love the sacredness of that space.

And my particular tradition minimizes the part of the service that is dedicated to the sermon.

And I do appreciate the attention that is put to that.

And so it's not necessarily that we diminish all parts of the Christian tradition,

but there is so much more that we can explore.

Yes, I'm kind of revealing my biases slightly.

I go to church too, and I do listen to people do sermons.

But yeah, I think there is something very, very rich about sharing together

in that kind of respectful listening to one another, but hearing from everybody.

And I think it really reveals just the degree to which she speaks through all of us, to all of us.

Anni, would you like to finish with your poem?

Oh, I would love to.

Yes, this is a poem that came through me one day in kind of a very unexpected way.

But I knew it needed a home as soon as it was born through me.

And so yes, I would be so happy to read Behold to You as we close.

And this would be a good one for closing your eyes and envisioning yourself walking through a forest.

Whatever type of forest speaks most deeply to you.

For me, it's always a lush redwood forest, which speaks to a lot of my childhood where I was raised.

And so situate yourself in your most favorite forest and join me.

As I step into the forest, this sacred world of grace, I find myself remembering a vision of your face.

It's been a million years or more since I have thought of you.

And yet your memory lingers on and wakens me anew.

Though history and systems have hidden you from sight,

your voice keeps calling from within and beckons from the night.

To every season there's a balance, for each pole there is another.

If God, a gracious Father, be, then surely also Mother.

I've been here all along, my dear, though you may not have known.

I've held you, loved you, guided you.

You've never been alone.

They burned me at the stakes of old.

They buried me alive.

And yet I live and breathe in you.

Your lungs are where I thrive.

I've missed you so, my Mother God, my heart's flag flown half-mast.

Without you I've been faltering, my tear-stained face downcast.

How can it be you've always been? How could I not have heard?

I didn't know to look for you.

A Mother God? Absurd!

And yet I hear your voice afresh, as surely Jesus is my brother.

I've come to know the Holy Ghost, and behold, she is my Mother.

Thank you, Ani Ponder Kim Eckhart. Thank you so much.

Thank you. Thanks for having us.

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.

Thank you for listening.

Loved Called Gifted