In the Hindu tradition, unlike the religious traditions of the West (Judaism, Christianity, Islam) God is imaged and worshipped as feminine as well as masculine. Here is a beautiful prayer which expresses devotion to the Divine Feminine.
Hymn to the Divine Mother
O Thou, the giver of all blessings,
O Thou, the doer of all good,
O Thou, the fulfiller of all desires,
O Thou the giver of refuge,
Our salutations to Thee, O Mother Divine.
O Thou Eternal Mother,
Thou has the power to create to preserve, and to dissolve.
Thou art the dwelling place and embodiment of the three gunas, (law, virtue, and energy.)
Our salutations to Thee, O Mother Divine.
O Thou, the savior of all who take refuge in thee,
The lowly and the distressed--
O Mother Divine, we salute Thee,
Who takest away the sufferings of all.
(From God Makes the Rivers to Flow by Eknath Easwaran)
(This prayer is taken from the Chandi, a Sanskrit scripture which glorifies the Divine Mother as protector and vanquisher of all negative forces in consciousness)
Prayers and devotion to God as Mother, it seems to me, provide a necessary balance to the focus on God as Father or King which have been predominant in world religions in the West.
While it is true that God is beyond gender, it is also true that we humans experience life through a filter of gender, and to view God through the lens of both masculine and feminine qualities makes for a fuller, truer concept of God. Reflect for yourself on how this might be true for you and how everything in faith and life is profoundly influenced by whatever concepts of God are primary for each of us.
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