WESTPHALL

I recently picked up a copy of Julia Cameron’s The Artist’s Way, a bestselling self-help workbook that addresses things like creative block and nurturing the inner artist. The title’s tagline is “A spiritual path to higher creativity,” and Cameron talks about God (or “god,” or “the power within you,” if you prefer) as a sort of ground zero, the origin of the creative electricity that flows through us all. As someone who is always a little wary of lofty claims offering to help channel your inner…whatever, I’ve been surprised at how not-cheesy the content is. Well, mostly. I’ve never been the type of person that identifies with a quote like “The universe will reward you for taking risks on its behalf” (no offense to Shakti Gawain). But so far, the exercises in opening myself up to and accepting the wellspring of my own imagination have been helpful in shifting my perspective as I navigate a new creative undertaking. 

One of the main objectives of the book is to encourage the reader to put aside preconceived notions about the God we believe in and to try to imagine something far greater. A few chapters in, while going through a section about rethinking our limited definitions of abundance, I was totally arrested by a question: 

“What if God’s a woman and she’s on my side?” 

I was floored. Not at the idea of God being a woman or having feminine qualities. Personally, I’ve never been put off by the possibility. I always figured that if God was half as powerful as he claimed to be, he could just as easily be a she, or some hybrid mix of the two that our finite, binary brains can’t really comprehend. Calling God a “he” for me was always more about simplicity than it was a strict belief that God was definitely a man. In other words, as a woman, I have never felt threatened by God’s gender. 

But there was something about the way the question was phrased that stopped me in my tracks. Ok, sure. The thought that God might be a woman is one thing. But what if she’s on my side? For some reason, that felt like exploring an entirely different concept. Simply considering a question like that made me think of all the times I’ve looked elsewhere for inspiration or support as a woman instead of going to God for that very thing, purely because my culture’s posture toward the gender of God has made him exclusively masculine. It’s been an intriguing thought experiment to say the least. 

Anyone attuned to the “woke” culture of late knows there are a lot of conversations happening right now around gender and identity. Even before getting into The Artist’s Way, I’d been thinking a good deal about a phrase I keep hearing:

Gender is a social construct.

I’m rolling the idea around in my brain, tasting it, trying to get a feel for its intents and implications. I’m listening to others talk about their experiences in order to understand its reverberations for real people. In other words, I’m attempting to have an open-minded attitude. I can be honest and admit that I don’t fully have my head wrapped around what that phrase might mean on a broader level. Yet. But being confronted with the chance to reconsider my previously held perspective on the gender of God, how my narrow vision has limited my own experience and stunted my capacity for imagination, is another layer peeled off that onion.

Common statistics indicate that the majority of American individuals are moving away from the idea of God — or at least organized religion’s traditional version of him. If that’s true, it’s partially because we have allowed the predominant Christian philosophy to define limits for who God is and what he (or she!) is capable of. It isn’t God’s fault that we’ve pigeonholed him with our finite imaginations. We consistently choose to place him in a box that says he only operates in ways sanctioned by mainstream church culture, or whatever it is their current messaging requires of him. 

We have to be willing to take stock from time to time. Ask the hard questions, wrestle with honest responses, and maybe reconcile with new, expanded answers. Sometimes, we have to force our reluctant hearts to entertain an open mind. 

As Cameron so pointedly puts it, “If you are still dealing with a god consciousness that has remained unexamined since childhood, you are probably dealing with a toxic god.” And if not exactly toxic, I think we can all admit to subscribing to an unreasonably limited one. That makes today a good day to start (or keep) taking stock.

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