Monday, January 31, 2011

January in Review

January is over! Here's the month in review.

Heavenly Mother and Father liveare justwere in the Beginningare the parents of Christsanctify the Sabbathmake all possible, and commandjudgeedify, listen to, care for, are reverenced by, and are served by us.

My book review for January was Mother Wove the Morning. I also wrote about the word "goddess" and also my first experiences with Heavenly Mother and why She's important to me.

Heavenly Mother in the Bloggernacle:
Sara K. S. Hanks wrote about her book group reading, Dance of the Dissident Daughter, which is conveniently, the book I'm reviewing in February!
Jenni wrote Contemplating the Mother Goddess at Mother Wheel.

Did you see any other articles this month? I have the feeling I missed a couple I should have caught. Also, if you're in RSS reader, come check out the new header! Thanks for reading!

4 comments:

Mallory said...

I've enjoyed reading this blog. It has been something my husband and I have been talking a lot about lately (mostly after reading a post that I particularly enjoy). One of the things we recently discussed was whether or not we thought there were multiple Heavenly Mothers. Polygamy has been accepted many different times throughout the Bible and in the Latter-day church? It seems to make sense that our Heavenly Father may have several wives. I'm interested to see what you think about it.

TopHat said...

I know of that thought, but I don't personally subscribe to it. I think that polygamy is inherently sexist and I don't think Heavenly Father and Mother would live in an arrangement like that. As an example- the idea that men can (and are allowed to) love more than one woman, but women aren't (are they not capable of loving multiple people like men are? is their capacity for love not as great as a man's?) is one of those aspects. The agency of choice in spouse is another issue. If polyandry were 100% chosen by the people involved, I would be ok with it, but in the early church years, it wasn't. So I don't subscribe to the multiple Heavenly Mothers idea, though I do know it exists. :)

Sara K.S. Hanks said...

Thank you for including my post in this.

I've definitely thought of the multiple Heavenly Mothers thing as well. In a way, it makes for a convenient idea in the sense that it would explain why we don't know more about our Heavenly Mother: because there isn't just one. But, like TopHat, I ultimately don't subscribe to this concept. It doesn't settle with me spiritually, it doesn't jive with my understanding of celestial marriage, and logically, the one thing that makes it most unlikely from my point of view is the idea that we, as children of God, would all have a common father but a few/several different mothers. I just can't get my mind around the idea that we're all in a half-brother/half-sister relationship setup. In that way, it doesn't make sense to me. I feel like we're all of common parentage and part of a synchronized, eternal, global family.

Ultimately, I believe in A Heavenly Father and A Heavenly Mother, but I'm open to learning more and being totally wrong in my present understanding. Either way, though, the fact remains that I have a Heavenly Mother and I want to be close to her, regardless of whether she's the sole female parent or one of many.

Jenne said...

Heather, can I request a running list of the attributes of God that you include in each month's review? I think adding the December list to the January list and continuing it on would be doubly (and exponentially) powerful. What a wonderful lesson in the attributes of Divinity.

On the topic of polygamy/sexist, have you seen anything that promoted polygamy as a feminist idea? Here's one article: http://articles.latimes.com/2010/sep/25/entertainment/la-et-sister-wives-20100925

You might also want to link to the Winter Exponent Issue which has an awesome article on the possibility that Heavenly Mother might be the Holy Spirit. In my ponderings, it makes a bit of sense to have sister Goddesses sharing the wealth of comforting, teaching, guiding with each other rather than leaving that monumental task to one woman (even though that one woman would be all powerful and completely capable of handling it). Personally, I still think of one Goddess and believe that polygamy in the afterlife would be due to a temporal need rather than a spiritual requirement.