Artist credit: Naomi Colvin

There is much ado about religion versus spirituality as if they are at war with each other and only one must or can win. I say Not So! We live in a relational world and things are mislabeled as black and white. In truth life is one huge continuum.

Religions usually begin with spiritual experiences and often times spiritual experiences emerge out of a religious context. The key factor is our awareness.

In the same way, the feminine and the masculine of divinity or S/spirit is actually a spectrum of functions and expressions that don't entirely exclude either end. When we say BOTH 'God' AND 'Goddess' we are adding to the understanding of S/spirit in an inclusive way. If, on the other hand, we use the word Goddess only, as a title for S/spirit, we are limiting I/it as much as we are limiting ourselves. Adding options is an inclusive move. Limiting language, metaphors and symbols is exclusive in its intention and result.

As the years go by, we will see more and more feminist women interpret the Hebrew Bible and Christian Bible (these are the politically correct terms for Old and New Testament, by the way). With each wave of these feminists I predict we will find more that it was not the monotheism itself that was 'at fault' for deriding and displacing nature and women, but rather the later predominately (white) male interpretations of these Scriptures that brought on the problem of exclusivism, et al.

One of the hardest things in life is to separate out the issues and really look at just the one issue that is really in need of revision and re-visioning. While it may be that monotheism needs such revision and re-visioning, there are really two issues that many critics of monotheism raise and conflate. One issue is whether monotheism itself is inherently patriarchal, exclusivist, mysogynist and/or anti-nature, etc. The other issue is if it is the interpreters of monotheism who have built the system into such a travesty against diversity and nature.

I return to my first point. Life is about continuum. So the answer is both/and. But to arrive at a clear both/and answer, we must first ferret out the separate issues and deal with them individually. After clarity on those issues has been attained, we can then bring them back together for a conversation and see where they intersect and diverge. From this clarity, our awareness is raised and thus also our consciousness.