Working with a male God is decidedly different. One would think this would be obvious. I, as that one, was not prepared for how different. Granted some of that is particular to the God, but still. The energies come through differently. Power comes through differently, not more, not lesser, but threaded differently and carrying a new shape. This should not be such a surprise, yet it is.

The Methodist church I was raised in called their God he, him and father, but that never felt like a masculine thing, but more of a cultural “all genders default to he” thing. After all, I was learning in elementary school about the founding of our country and “all men are created equal” was never explained to mean “just the men”. We were in fact taught that we could just sub “everyone” for he or him when we encountered it in that type of context. (Oh how funny, only to grow up and find that the overarching institutions took “he” literally!)

As I was growing and forming my ideas about God I understood the Christian God to be not genderless, but genderful ~ encompassing both genders. I was unaware at that time of any genders other than male or female. Later I figured genderful meant all genders. This just made sense because of their stories and all men (everyone) being created in His (all of everyone’s) image. When I left Christianity it was a lot to do with the humans in that institution and the institution that protected atrocities, but also a serious disconnect with the personality portrayed of their God in the old testament. Add in the story of tossing up one’s son for sacrifice to make the old testament punishments not occur again (floods, famine, pillars of salt) just seemed twisted. Feel free to disagree with how I viewed their God, but understand that this is how he was portrayed to me or how I conceived him to be based on how he was portrayed to me.

The disconnect I felt with the personality was the breaking point for me and when I left there was no feeling of admonishment, nothing bitter between their god and myself, just a relieved sigh on his side that I wasn’t going to be a thorn in the religion’s side anymore and a version of, “No shit, Sherlock” when I announced my departure because I belonged to Others.

So, I moved into Goddess spirituality not to get away from a patriarchal deity, but because the process and underlying beliefs about existence and will and changing my world all made sense there. Goddesses were a bonus! Oh look! Gendered Beings! Imagine that. No, we are all the same encompassing all stuff. Being cis-gendered female it made sense to me to explore them. Gods were over there doing their own thing, but not really calling me in any deep way. I interacted with them in a superficial way compared to the Goddesses I encountered. These Gods I associated with extreme maleness and I just felt no need to explore them deeply living as I am in a patriarchal society I felt I knew maleness fairly well. And I’m female! Let’s stay there!

Then Poseidon came. Ha. Ha ha ha. Full tilt masculine, no pretense, and not giving a right shit how I felt about it. “Waaahhhh?! But I don’t do male Gods,” I replied. “Well, ya do now,” was the answer. So, it’s been interesting already even only being in the first phase of this relationship. Interesting and different and truly fascinating because I’m exploring something that feels very much unknown. Something a bit foreign like an unknown object under a bare foot that you try to identify before you bend at the knee and lift to see if you’ve guessed right.

I haven’t lifted my foot high enough yet to see all of the object, but from what I’ve seen thus far I’ve only guessed about 50% correctly That’s a failing grade. Even on a curve.  I expected no higher grade seeing as how I’d plopped the male Gods into my “over there, we’ll touch, but not hug category.” So again, it’s different and interesting and new and I do so enjoy new challenges even when they look intimidating. Ok, in the interest of honesty – especially when they look intimidating.

This entry was originally posted at http://pj.dreamwidth.org/407499.html with tags: all gods are feri gods, reclaiming/feri, religious work,  spiritual growth in fits and spurts, spiritual practices