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Could Christ Have Been a Woman?
(2 - continued)
Fr. Pennington: Some of those distinctions are certainly
true. I mean, a woman will find holiness in bearing a child, while
a man will never find holiness in carrying a child in his womb for
nine months. So there are some things that are just realities, and
they will remain. Others - like study or prayer, for example - well,
I don't see how you could put them specifically in a male or female
category. But the point, I suppose, is that even if we were to go
beyond all social conditioning, there is still some difference that
remains, as I was trying to say before, and what that difference
is isn't always as easy to understand as the physiological capacity
to bear a child. The way men pass on life and the way women pass
on life are different, and because that is a tremendous expression
of divine energy going through us, it certainly is a part of our
innate holiness, and the significance of that difference is easy
to see. And, when you come to things like immanence and transcendence,
there may ultimately be some difference there too - something that
reflects itself in the physiological way we each pass on life. But
having said all that, I'd still want to be very cautious because
I think that our socialization, our acculturation, would tend to
see concepts like transcendence and immanence too imaginatively
- or too physiologically based - and also because I think that transcendence
and immanence ultimately come together. There may be more naturalness
to a woman moving through the immanent and into the transcendent,
or to a man moving out of the transcendent and into the immanent
- that may be so. And that may not be just sociological, either.
But when people make these sorts of generalizations, the tendency
is so to debase these things - if that's not too strong a word -
that I would be very cautious in saying anything like that. I'd
want to put a lot of signs around it that say, "Be careful
here," because certainly the indwelling Divine, once a man
really goes on the spiritual path, is as strong in him as it is
in a woman, even though physiologically he functions differently.
And at the same time, women can certainly be as transcendent and
ecstatic as any man. So I would be hesitant to make too much of
that.
Interviewer: Continuing in this vein, in our time there
are also many people who view their own experience of gender or
sexual preference as the very basis of their spiritual path. For
example, there are women who worship the Goddess; there are men
who champion a distinctly male spirituality; and there are many
gays and lesbians who regard their sexual orientation as requiring
unique forms of practice and worship. In fact, some advocates of
a distinctly "gay spirituality" have even suggested that
because the male and female polarities are theoretically more fully
integrated and balanced in homosexuals, theirs is an inherently
superior form of spiritual practice. For all of these individuals,
gender and sexuality are seen as central to the path and as giving
rise to fundamentally different paths for men and women, homosexuals
and heterosexuals. What do you see as the advantages and limitations
of a view that focuses on gender identification or sexual orientation
as a path in itself to spiritual freedom?
Fr. Pennington: I would say that the differences are not
that fundamental. What's much more fundamental is that we are all
in some way expressions of the Divine Being and Life. Of course
it's a reality that we come out male or female, but once again,
those are secondary. They're a part of reality, such that when you
come into the fullness of who you are in God, and the expression
of God that you are, they'll still be there. But sexual orientation
is even farther down the road and also a little more problematic
than gender, because even though we pride ourselves on having learned
and understood so much about sex, I don't think there's anybody
who can tell you what the basis of sexual orientation really is.
And I think that ultimately we're all bisexual anyway, which makes
me even more hesitant to speak about sexual orientation as being
a fundamental part of one's spirituality. So while I have no doubt,
as I said, that the male/female distinction is an essential though
not a fundamental part of becoming fully, integrally divinized,
I'd be much more hesitant to say that in order to be that full expression
you're going to be gay or straight. And, as I said, ultimately I
think that a person who's really free knows that they're bisexual-that
we all have the capacity to relate to our sexuality in these different
ways.
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