When I Think About God As Mother I…
May 13, 2018
Hey everyone…just in case you missed the barrage of advertising, this weekend includes Mothers Day. That is important for all sorts of reasons (including our existence as a species), but it can easily turn into an occasion for saccharine stereotypes and bad greeting cards. Indeed, it can easily become an event that brings those two things together in a kind of colossus of adult guilt and bad taste. On the other hand, it can remind us to pay attention to people first, and to focus our time and energy on kindness to others, even if the relationships are complicated. And sometimes, our relationships to our moms and even to motherhood as a idea can be quite complex. God (or more accurately, any notion we have about God) plays a part in that complexity. If we imagine God as a personal being, we’re far more likely to imagine that being as a male than as a female, and that’s not even beginning to take into account all the other ways we might relate gender to our imaginations about the Divine.
If we wanted to explore this arena in with any thoroughness, I expect we would be at it for a while. As an alternative, we’re going to start with a conversation about God as “mother”. To get the ball rolling on Sunday, several people from the community are going to address themselves to the sentence, “When I think about God as Mother, I…”. I anticipate a quite fascinating dialogue to follow. Come if you can. We won’t be podcasting this one.
Location – As follows:
This week we’ll be meeting at the University of Winnipeg Club Room. It’s located on the 4th floor of Wesley Hall. That’s the castle-ish building that faces Portage Avenue on the main U of W campus (515 Portage Avenue).
Details about finding our gathering: Enter the building by the main front doors (right in the middle of the front of the building, on the Portage Avenue side). There is a red and white campus sign on the grounds to the left of the doors that says “Wesley Hall”, and we’ll put out our sign as well. Once inside, go straight ahead up the first short set of stairs, and take the wide curving hallway to your right. Once you go around the curve (which turns to the left) you will find yourself in dead-end alcove-ish space. Look to your right for a second alcove with the elevator in it. It comes promptly when called, and is blisteringly fast compared to the one at Creative Manitoba. Take the elevator to the fourth floor, exit and turn to your left, and you’ll be in the entrance to the Club. Listen for the sound of voices, and proceed in that direction until you find humans. That’s us. Whew!
Parking: There is parking on the surrounding streets, most notably convenient on Balmoral, the first street to the East of Wesley Hall. If that’s full, I’ve also arranged for us to use the empty spaces in the Booth University parking lot, which is located one block further east off Colony, behind the Investors Group building off Portage Avenue. If you do park in that lot, be sure to only use spaces that are labelled for Booth University. Booth administration have assured me that if you are in the designated spaces and some over-zealous parking lot monitor still gives you a ticket, they will take care of the matter. So do feel free to park there. Note – it is illegal to turn right off Portage onto Colony, and the police like to park right there and write out citations. Not a fun way to start off your Sunday.
Peace to you all…I’ll see you on Sunday.