Pronouns

Are you still in flux with using pronouns for God? I thought I had it figured out to my satisfaction, but then something happened.

Like many folks of my persuasion, I’ve been substituting God for he wherever possible, while avoiding clunky constructions like God sits on God’s holy throne. For me, this approach still works in many instances.

Lately, though, it’s lost some of its luster, because it takes me away from the personal. There is something profoundly, unutterably personal about the divine presence—at least I perceive it that way—and I need to express it. So I tried something hardly new, but still controversial.

I threw in a few shes.

The effect was unexpected. The feminine pronoun suddenly opened me to ways of thinking about God that I hadn’t known existed. There’s something mind-expanding about “She shall judge between the nations, and impose terms on many peoples,” or “She comes to rule the earth.”

Praying these passages gives me a sense that God does not transcend gender so much as God encompasses gender—both genders—in the same way God encompasses, and is within, everything. I can also see, once more, the power of language to shape our thinking.

As my wise sister-in-law says, “Words mean things.” May we always be attentive to their transformative power.