The Difficulty of Naming the Divine
“I’ve yet to find a term that describes how I feel about the divine. ‘The Spirit’ comes close, and so, sometimes, does ‘Goddess’. ‘G-d/ess’ attempts to convey the difficulty of naming the divine. The dash is an old Jewish practice meant to show the impossibility of confining the divine in a word. The single ‘d’ and feminine suffix are to show that I don’t experience the goddess as different from or inferior to what folks generally refer to as God.”
— Rose Ketterer, 1987
Quaker feminist activist
Today’s Invitation
Try out different names and pronouns for the Divine, noticing how they color your ideas about the Divine.
This Week’s Query
How does patriarchy within the Bible and traditional Christianity affect your relationship to the Divine?
Banner image: Rebecca Hoenig
Read the source of today’s quote
