You Know Your a Feminist When ...

So in a rare bout of energy I am working feverishly to get ahead on my items for Sunday. The final piece of my bulletin, besides announcements is my congregational prayer. On Mother's day I tried to compose a nice prayer for mothers as a fitting tribute for the day. I even subtly changed the language in the text of the Lord's Prayer to read "Our Mother, who art in heaven." When it came time for this Father's Day prayer however I struggled. It was much harder for me to write a prayer about fathers than it was about mothers. Weaving the term "Mother-God" into a prayer felt natural though a bit controversial for my setting but the term "Father-God" while perhaps more appropriate for the setting, is impossible for hands to really even type, let alone lead a prayer around. All of my training for the last 27 years has been around language that represents the concept of God that goes beyond gender and so I struggle with language that while balanced in terms of how I have honored mothers, feels like a step backwards because of the patriarchal images it invokes in my mind. I know there is softer language than "Father-God" but I just struggle with how to pray for fathers without invoking patriarchal language and imagery. I hope in time we can have holistic, positive language that properly represents God, but I wonder if that can ever be done while connecting to either gender without invoking negative and oppressive images at the same time. For now I will just soften my prayer this week and move on ... until next year when these holidays come up again.