This was initially posted on April 16, 2012
On Good Friday, Easter Saturday, Easter Sunday, and Easter Monday the blogs on feminismandreligion.com celebrated moms and God the Mom.*
That is my physique, given for you.
That is my blood, given for you.
Whereas these phrases are the middle of a Christian liturgy celebrating the sacrifice of Jesus because the Christ, they’re extra appropriately spoken of our personal moms. Your mom and my mom and all moms, human and aside from human, mammalian, avian, and reptilian, give their our bodies and blood so their offspring might need life. True, moms don’t at all times make aware decisions to get pregnant, however virtually all moms affirm life of their willingness to nurture the younger who emerge from their our bodies and from their nests. Had moms—human and aside from human–not been giving their our bodies and their blood from time immemorial, you and I might not be right here.
The Easter liturgy fails to acknowledge that the unique providing of physique and blood is the mom’s providing. Christianity “stole” the imagery related to beginning and attributed it to a male savior. If that was all Christians had achieved, it could have been dangerous sufficient. In most international locations in the present day there are legal guidelines in opposition to theft. Christian theologians and liturgists also needs to be given an “F” for plagiarism–outlined as presenting the concepts of others as if they’re one’s personal. Z Budapest was proper when she famously famously opined, “Christianity didn’t have any authentic concepts.
Not having any authentic concepts is maybe forgivable. If moms had nonetheless been honored, certainly they might have forgiven their sons for desirous to be honored too. Most moms are fairly keen to share what they’ve with their youngsters. The essence of motherhood is generosity, loving the opposite because the self. But Christians proceed to insist that the thought of self-giving love originated with Jesus, and that nobody would ever have considered it, however for him.
Christians didn’t cease with stealing concepts from mother-honoring cultures. They thumbed their noses at moms. They stated that the physique that gave them beginning was evil: the supply of sin, the “satan’s gateway” within the notorious phrases of Tertullian. They compounded the crime of theft, including to it the crime of libel! Actual ladies have been punished for the “sin” of “Eve” ever since.
The denial of the mom is inherent within the Platonic worldview adopted by Christianity. The Platonic worldview, like different paths of “renunciation” of “the world” is the top of ingratitude. Stripped of its trappings, its backside line is that this: beginning into this world via the physique of a mom simply isn’t adequate. Beginning into this world simply isn’t adequate. Beginning via the physique of a girl simply isn’t adequate.
Whereas I acknowledge the hope for everlasting life on which the rejection of life on this world relies, I contemplate renouncing life within the physique and on this world to be a elementary “class” mistake. Those that select the trail of renunciation are “life” rejecting “life.” Life within the physique isn’t life with out demise. However ought to we reject the reward of life as a result of it doesn’t final eternally? Ought to we reject flowers as a result of most of them bloom solely in spring? Or ought to we enjoyment of ephemeral magnificence and in our personal lives which aren’t everlasting? It appears to me that our so-called “increased” civilizations took a incorrect flip a few millennia in the past.
Perhaps it’s not too late to show again. We will start by giving thanks to our moms, our ancestors, feminine and male, to the net of Life, to Earth itself, and to the cosmos, with out whom and with out which we’d not be. My Easter prayer is straightforward:
Allow us to bless the Supply of Life,
And the cycles of beginning, demise, and regeneration.
With this easy prayer, we are able to change egotism with an affirmation of our interdependence, and our greed for what we wouldn’t have, with gratitude for all that has been given to us.
*In the present day is Easter Monday in Greece.
