Let get in touch with God's feminine side: just because we call God "Father" and "Lord" doesn't mean we can't name God in other ways, too.

A RECENT CONVERSATION WITH MY 15-YEAR-OLD daughter went something like this: When you think of God, do you think of God as male or female?" I ask.

"I don't think of God as male or female."

"How do you think of God?"

"As a being, a person, but not as male or female."

"Well, when you pray, how do you pray?"

"I just talk to him."

"Him?"

"Oh--that's weird," she says, laughing at the inherent contradiction. "Well," she emphatically states, "I don't think of God as a man."

A day later I join friends for breakfast. Married women and mothers, we are all active in ministry or catechesis.

"When I'm looking for a card for a Baptism, if I see the word he or him for God, I put the card back," one comments. The others acknowledge they do likewise, and not only for Baptism cards.

"We couldn't refer to God as he when writing papers," notes another, a recent graduate of a major Catholic school of theology.

During the same week I speak with a 60-year-old religious sister, a respected spiritual director and retreat leader, who says, "I haven't used the word Lord or Father in my prayer in years." She goes on, "Try addressing God as 'you.' It's not a new idea." She then directs me to a prayer from the fourth century attributed to St. Gregory of Nazianzus:

   O you, the One beyond all things,
   how could we call you by any other name?
   What song can be sung for you?
   No word can express you.
   What spirit can perceive you?
   No intelligence can comprehend you.
   You alone are inexpressible....

Inexpressible, yes, but still we must use words to name the one to whom we pray, the one with whom we are in relationship. Each of the women I've mentioned is seeking words that are faithful to her understanding and experience of the divine. Their experience is new wine for which the old wineskins are inadequate.

WHY DOES IT MATTER WHAT WORDS WE USE TO NAME God? Because words have power to shape us and change us. Think of how we feel when someone we love speaks words of endearment or forgiveness. Consider the way language is used during wartime to demonize the enemy, making it possible to use violence that would otherwise be unthinkable.

Likewise, the language we use in prayer, whether our personal, private prayer or our public, communal prayer, is potent--why else would we pray? So it is fair to ask what happens to us when we consistently use the pronouns he and his for God.

The first chapter of Genesis tells us that humankind, male and female, is created in God's image. What images of God mirror this divine image to young girls and women? How are we created in the image and likeness of God?

A number of years ago controversial feminist theologian Mary Daly shocked many into awareness with her statement, "If God is male, then the male is God." While that may seem extreme to many, it's worth pondering. Why, for instance, is the Vatican so insistent that God always be "he" and that humankind be "men" or "mankind" in the English liturgy?

Such decisions remind me of Stephen Dedalus in James Joyce's Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man. Stephen is very sure that "God was God's name...." And while the French may say Dieu and God would understand that a French person was praying, "God's real name was God."

We know that God is neither male nor female, that our words for God function as metaphors, symbols, and images that help us approach the mystery of God, who is ultimately ineffable, beyond all names. But isn't that precisely why we shouldn't limit God to "him"--or to anything else? The key word here is limit.

Drawing on Thomas Aquinas' recognition of the need to give God many names, theologian Elizabeth Johnson, C.S.J. writes: "The tradition of many names for God results from the genuine experience of divine mystery and acts as a safeguard for it." Don't we know this instinctively?

As a catechist for 3- to 9-year-aids, I observe that a favorite hymn of children of all ages is "Jesus, Name Above All Names." It goes: "Jesus, name above all names, Beautiful Savior, glorious Lord! Emmanuel, God is with us! Blessed Redeemer, Living Word!"--all traditional names that, when sung in sequence, draw us into the mystery of Jesus more adequately than any one term alone.

Jesus, rabbi and good teacher that he was, knew to employ different images when asked, "Who are you?" Jesus stunned people by claiming his identity as the Son of God; he positioned himself in the Jewish tradition by applying the enigmatic but historically resonant term Son of Man to himself.

Yet neither was sufficient to disclose the fullness of revelation, nor do the terms draw his disciples, then or now, into the heart of Jesus' message. For that Jesus drew on more familiar, particular, and vivid images to spark the imagination and enflame the heart: I am the good shepherd; the gate; the vine; the light of the world; the bread of life; the way, the truth, and the life; I am.

As a catechist I meditate with children on the images Jesus uses in his parables to speak of the reign of God. Together we ask: What is the source of the mustard seed's growth or the leaven's power? What is it that drives a woman to search for a lost coin? Or a man to sell all he has to buy a field? Such images lead us to wonder, to want to know and to experience more of this reign of God. These images invite us into relationship.

This is precisely why it matters what word images we use to name God. I am not suggesting that we eliminate traditional words such as Father, King, or Lord from our prayer lexicon. And I agree that when we use those words, the pronoun he is correct. But let's not stop there, or we risk idolatry by holding up an image of God that is false because it is incomplete.

ANSELM OF CANTERBURY, A DOCTOR OF the church, and Julian of Norwich, a 14th-century mystic, had no trouble speaking of Christ as our Mother. Certainly the experience of God's mothering is not limited to the mystics. More recently Pope John Paul I said, "God is our father; even more, God is our mother." If God is our mother, if God the Holy Spirit is Sophia, Lady Wisdom, can we not also call God she?

The Latin root of mother, mater, suggests the English word matter. If we spent more time praying to God our Mother, might we have a different sensibility about matter, particularly the matter of creation, our earth? Might we be more reverent and respectful of the created world, of air, seas, and skies, because we sense their sacred origin?

As I write this, rain is beginning to fall on the drought-stricken part of the Midwest where I live. The grass shows signs of returning to life; the parched flowers lift to drink the drops of water and a moist sweetness infiltrates the air. I begin to wonder if new ways of speaking about God might also bring forth new life to our suffering world. If we had a sense of God as our holy Mother, might we do a better job of feeding the hungry? Of caring for the widow and the orphan? Of beating our swords into plowshares? Of respecting this unique planet we call our home and our Mother Earth? Should we not try?