Last weekend, I preached 3 back-to-back services in a congregation where I'd never preached before. S. and I had gone to stay with my parents in Georgia and he refused to sleep more than 45 minutes at a time for two nights in a row.
On Saturday night I had a weepy meltdown—maybe the system is just too hard. It would be easier not to do this work, not to keep fighting over and over for space for myself as a mother, to justify the beauty of my embodied roles that weave into my priestly roles.
Sunday morning after the first round of my sermon (Father Óscar Romero as one who, like the man born blind in John 9, had his physical and spiritual vision transformed and followed a risk taking God into costly grace—Amen?), I stood dutifully by the door of the church between the priest and deacon, shaking hands. "Thank you, beautiful day, happy to be here." A woman, probably in her 70's, grasped my shoulders and leaned to my ear. My stomach plummeted in the half second of waiting. What on earth had I said to warrant this? Am I in trouble?
"Did I hear you say that the Holy Spirit is a 'she'"? she asked in a loud whisper. "Yes ma'am you did," I whispered back. And she hugged me tight then let me go again to clap her hands and exclaim, now loudly, "I always thought so too!"
We chatted a bit more and I told her what I'll tell you: This isn't some shock value contribution, a sneaky added pronoun to ruffle feathers. The female Spirit is part of the Christian tradition, moving from Lady Wisdom in Proverbs to a God experiencing labor pains in bringing new life in and from the world in Galatians. It matters that Spirit is comforter and counselor, roles of feminized association. That which is debased as women's work is the divine person and work of God. And that matters a lot.
While God is beyond the social construction of gender, we have so far to go on our anthropologies and theologies of gender before that can be practically meaningful. As long as I have to retreat to my car to pump breastmilk between services, separated from my breast baby for hours in order to preach the gospel, we need to name and highlight the "she-ness" of God. As long as a guest can still assume that the two full-time women priests on staff at the chapel must be filling in for their part-time male counterpart like some sort of spiritual understudies, we need to name and highlight the "she-ness" of God. My little nieces and nephews and my son need Her, comforting and counseling. The seventy-some-year-old church ladies need Her, seeing themselves made in God's image in their particularity. God knows, when I'm crying because I don't know how to shoulder through one more sleepless night, doing the work that my female body must do, I need Her, nourishing and tirelessly keeping watch with me.
Yes ma'am, Spirit is a She!