Do you believe in God?

Since I was born, I have known God. Being raised in a conservative protestant christian religion, I learned to think about God as a man/father, and Jesus as Savior and unreachable model for behavior. Even the Holy Ghost was a man.  Baptists didn't have any use for Mary once Jesus grew up, so the Feminine Divine was not even a thought.  

That didn't matter much to me. I tapped in to God as best I could, and despite being "saved" and baptized, I was mostly convinced of my evil nature and unworthiness of God's love and grace. That was the preaching. My life did not contradict it. Try as I might to be a good girl, seems like every thought and deed fell short of the Glory of God. (Thanks, Paul, you M-F of an old apostle, you... ooops, my anger is showing. Let me rearrange my skirts. Good girls don't get mad do they)

We learned about Goddesses in School, ancient Greek and Roman Goddesses. When I grew up and Femininism started talking about the Goddess, it did not mean anything to me. I found it distasteful. Though I had stopped going to church when I realized I wasn't having much fun and I needed to sin more to improve my social life, I defended my patriarchal view of God. Once a Baptist, alway a Baptist.

How did my view of God change, and continue to evolve?  When I moved to the Land in Hope,  God called me, the true God I knew as a baby: the trees and stars, and animals and Stones, especially the stone people, in other words, MOTHER Earth. I didnt' know it yet, but I was headed for the sweat lodge and the dance arbor, and Sh'ti M'er, like a train on the rails. When I got over being married, I could hear the voices better, not with my physical ears, but as guidance, as desire, and through the people I met who helped me along the way.

My teacher, Joseph Rael,  knows God as a Woman, and also knows that God is both Mother/Father Creator, and the Great Mystery.  There are many other names for Divine in  his language, and now I know some of those names in my language, which is still English.
In seven years of Ceremony and Initiation into the Feminine, as well as the Masculine, and Sh'ti M'er, Divine Love, I notice that  God the Masculine is right there alongside Goddess the Feminine; in fact, He is inside She. My knowing is that if you ask to see the Face of God, he will show you the Mother, because of his love for her. She is his body and his face.  My other Teacher, Nut Tmu-Ankh Butterfly, has helped me know the Divine as my true nature, something I can't be unworthy of, because there is no separation. I am Divine, Divine Is I.

Well, I didn' t know I was going to say that much.  But it is interesting to uncover for myself and share a little of my story. Belief has never been a question. I couldn't not believe, I just have to stop seeing myself and other people as separated from Divine by an unbridgeable gulf.  Here is a painting I made of one version of the Divine Feminine, the Mer Queen. The Peace Chambers and Fire ceremonies are dedicated to the Mer People, and they are very important now as the earth copes with the inconsiderate activities of humankind.