Seeking Sophia: Meditations and reflections for women who no longer go to church

By Josephine Griffiths

A new edition of reflections and meditations for women who foster their spiritual lives within the Christian tradition but maybe without the commitment to church going.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Josephine Griffiths
• Release date: Mar 28, 2022
• ISBN: 9780648169727

Book preview

Introduction to 2022 on-line edition

Sometimes our best efforts do not go amiss, sometimes we do as we meant to.

The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow that seemed hard frozen: may it happen to you.

Sheenagh Pugh Sometimes

This revised edition of Seeking Sophia has been prepared for use on-line. It may be thought that in a world where so many books are published each year one that has been around for quite some years would not need to be re-issued. Two factors have persuaded me to make it once more available. Firstly, since it has been out of print there have been many enquiries for it and secondly, I have often received the heartening notice that women who have had the book for years keep returning to it and finding refreshment, so I conclude there is still value in the work.

Originally the book was arranged in two parts, now it is in three. For the first section I have grouped material under the title ‘The Past is Another Country? The first five chapters are as they appeared in the in the original book, though I had pondered revitalizing them as much of the material is dated. Not only is the status of women in the church vastly different from when the book first appeared but the shift towards greater equality within society has advanced so far that young women today find this ‘historical material’ both fascinating and unbelievable! This is why I decided to leave it in, not merely to fascinate but also to instruct. My essay Things that Only Grand-mothers Know" sets out fully my reasons for deciding not to up-date. I have a very strong belief in the importance of knowing where we have come from and these essays, which no longer describe how things are, remain a testimony to how they were only a short while ago.

The most obvious and dramatic change for women since this book was first published is the official place of women in some parts of the church. Probably this is seen most blatantly within the Anglican Communion where many women have been ordained to the priesthood and a few have even been consecrated bishops. This is a massive change from the historic model but how far this has altered the status quo is harder to gauge. From the outside one does not get the impression of the organization having been, as it were, feminised, by the inclusion of women into Orders. But then, from the outside, does one have the right to an opinion?

I have discussed these issues in the additional chapter which I have entitled Phoebe, the Goldfish and Subtle Woman. The last thing I want to do is dribble on in anachronistic angst which I do not feel. I would prefer to think out loud about the difficulties of feminising the church and to investigate some of the reasons invisibility is a comfortable, not reprehensible, choice for women. We need affirmation, encouragement, enjoyment far more than we need yet more criticism and that from either side of what once was ‘the gender divide’ but is now a continuum on which we all find our place.

The new essay goes deeply into the issues that face women in Orders and dwells, also, on another subject which has occupied me over the years, that of the invisible woman. Originally, I wrote of Mary Magdalene as a template for the invisible woman, now I delve further into this idea because there are more layers or rather something universal, pervasive and more ancient underlying this pattern of invisibility. Perhaps we need to think in terms of an archetype rather than a template. In archetypal terms, of course Mary Magdalene has carried for centuries the archetype of the reformed prostitute; this misnomer has been discussed fully in her chapter. If there were to be a biblical representation of this archetypal form ‘the Invisible Women’, those who ministered, alongside Mary Magdalene and the Mary the mother of Jesus at his death, would fit the bill. They served Him but were not recognised in their individuality. Paul’s friend Phoebe, mentioned at the end of Romans, or Claudia, the only Brit in the bible, could well carry the archetypal image for us.

As a testimony to how women have felt, and in some cases still feel, the book has merit. There is within plenty of material which I hope is of value both as academic reflections of a feminine nature and as a devotional work that is specifically designed for women. The accent on the Sophia tradition recurs in most of my books and might therefore seem needlessly repetitive but as I find it amazing and daunting that this tradition is still neglected, I do not feel the need to apologise for the repetition. I hope that the meditations and reflections herein may encourage, support and nourish women who still value a spiritual path that has been formed by the faith which underlies our history and our culture but would like some alternative views on familiar themes.

It has become a passion with me, to find new ways of looking at the gospel material that might speak to grown-ups in the here and now. The material is so familiar and its interpretations so formulaic that it may seem impossible to present them as new and vital. However, if we believe the message of the gospel is for all time, then this must be authenticated by their re-interpretation in the language and world view of now. It is not the enduring interpretations that are claimed to be for all time but the message contained in the stories themselves, time conditioned as they are, and they, we, deserve to find our own ways of looking rather than following those of generations who lived within a world view so vastly different from ours. I hope that the material herein will have relevance for people within the church who struggle with their commitment to the faith as well as those who gave it up long ago and maybe also to those young women who have had no religious background and now would like to know what it is about.

Josephine Griffiths

Perth

February 2022

Part One: The Past is Another Country?

Of Has-beens, Dropouts and Invisible Women

The world is full of Christian Has-beens and Dropouts but, by definition, the church is not. Invisible Women, on the other hand, may be found in abundance both inside the church and out, as well as anywhere in the world. However, it should not be assumed that when a person stops going to church s/he ceases to care about spiritual matters or that Christian issues are no longer a topic of concern. Many people who leave the church continue to have a profound interest in spiritual matters and often continue to hold a particular attachment to a Christian worldview, even if their parting with the church was not without pain.

There is not a great volume of material available to nurture the spiritual life of people who once were churchgoers, who still find their beliefs lie within a broadly Christian framework and who would like some alternative views on familiar themes. The material herein will, I hope, also have relevance for people within the church who struggle with their commitment to the faith.

Christian Has-beens or Dropouts I take to have participated in the ethos of the church but to have given it up, probably on account of irrelevance rather than for ideological reasons. Life goes on, they say, and it is too busy, too exciting or even too hard to waste time on the formal religious frame. God, if He exists must be more than the Deity the church promotes. However, the here-and-now realities of life are more important and pressing issues than pondering the imponderable. Christian Drop-outs tend to find the parochial and domesticated Deity of the churches a trivialization of Something too large to think about, so they try not to. They live meaningful and productive lives and, in a very small corner, rarely looked at, the unresolved questions are tucked away. This book is designed to stimulate some activity in that small corner.

The Christian Has-beens and Dropouts I know are decisive, go-ahead people, men and women with a concept of self-actualization, personal responsibility and deep spirituality. Their honest contribution to religious debate would be of the greatest possible value in a genuine re-visioning of Christianity.

All of the above may apply equally to both women and men, but there is a condition which applies specifically to women vis-à-vis the church. I have chosen, with good reason, to designate this condition invisibility. Invisibility, in varying degrees, is the most common status for women in respect of the church. It is a slippery reality, hard to grasp, easy to argue against, yet, once recognized, the experience is unmistakable. Subtle or blatant, women know how it feels when they have ceased to exist in the purview of the male. Male clergy have been particularly prone to this technique of rendering a woman invisible.

Mention this issue among church women, or among women who were, and there is no need of further explanation: they know exactly what is meant. The capacity to generate a sense that another person is not there comes so easily and naturally to some clergy that one is tempted to wonder whether their smooth and casual rudeness is not the real cause of women’s defection. This is not idle speculation or cynicism. Denying a person in this way is an unconscious or non-verbal statement to the effect that, at best, that person is an object, not a subject. At worst, it betokens an attitude that is at the core of patriarchy, which relegates women to a less than fully human status and makes her personal reality of no account.

The behaviour is common, not the least among men who claim sympathy with women’s issues in the church. Old habits die hard, the arrogance of an age-old, assumed superiority often goes unrecognized, even among the converted. If male clergy truly desire to incorporate the full strength of women within the church, their nonverbal, as well as their verbal communication, must create a sense of acceptance, valuing, and enjoyment. The politically correct is an inadequate mode of discourse, demeaning to men and women alike.

Women who remain within the church do perpetual battle on this front. Many accept it as a condition of the time, praying for enlightenment for themselves and for their brethren. For themselves, the prayer is for enlightenment to find the way to nurture a more generous spirit in the discourse of their brethren. These women suffer constant indignities, largely in silence. (One cannot keep on waving one’s arms and legs about saying, Excuse me, I’m here, this space is not empty, I’m in it!.) Women who choose to stay in the church, even though they are frequently treated as invisible, are to be admired for their commitment, their tolerance and their willingness consciously to cloak the fullness of their being for the cause of spiritual values which they believe in even though they recognize these values may not come into being in their lifetime.

There are other women, no less spiritually inclined, given to soul-making, who have made the decision to quit. These are truly invisible women: being outside the bounds of the church they have, to the church, become invisible. They, along with many husbands, fathers and brothers, have joined the ranks of Christian Has-beens. These women can no longer bear to go to church; the very idea makes them nauseous, but there is a sense of loss. For such women, their religious heritage has been meaningful throughout their lives; in giving up going to church many women have become spiritually adrift. There were things they loved about the church experience which they have had to leave behind, and the nature of the experience itself seems to preclude the possibility of salvaging some of what was once treasured. Christianity is a storehouse which still holds riches to be enjoyed; perhaps there are new ways of understanding which can be appropriated – new views of the familiar, shorn of those patriarchal patterns which deny and diminish true personhood. There are people spiritually starving, or floundering, who once were fed by the Christian story. Maybe they can still be reached and nurtured by the written word.

Many former church members took the Christian devotional literature, both classical and modern, as part of their staple diet. In some that hunger remains. I hope, here, I can whet the appetite, to encourage foraging for the real and substantial spiritual food which is there to be found in the Christian story. Here, such readers will find more than a whiff of their favourite authors who have also nourished me, recognizable by their influence, if not by direct quotation.

In recent years I have made a practice of concentrating on women writers on soul matters. That is not to say that men contribute nothing of value to the life of the spirit; but masculine experience, masculine theologizing, masculine sins have for too long defined the norm of human experience. Only rarely and spasmodically has the question been raised whether the masculine way of being in the world has much to do with women’s experience. In the moral exhortations of the past, the virtues we were taught to cultivate and the vices we were warned off were shaped by men’s view of goodness and sin. Likewise, Christian women’s writings from earlier centuries, whose works have become available, mostly speak from this perspective. Women need material which comes out of the female spiritual experience which will encourage and challenge them to claim their own truth and to live their own uniqueness, rather than have them slaving to be virtuous according to alien, imposed standards.

There are some splendid works available on myths, fairy stories and ancient goddesses which encourage women to value their own experience. These works nourish starving souls and liberate the spirit. They are immensely valuable, but they are extrinsic to the Christian story. The design of this book is to stay within the story, with its familiar themes and traditions, not because they are necessarily superior, but because they are at the core of our spiritual heritage and have shaped our religious perceptions. I believe that the traditional symbols and images can still bless and inspire us and that we can relish the wealth of beauty and depth of meaning that abide in the faith we know best. It is a faith based in an icon of the invisible God whose promise is constantly to renew all things. I hope that the invisible women, who have left the church, whose spiritual longing is met in the depth and meaning of the Christian faith, may find some nourishment within these pages.

In various ways each of the pieces in this book is playing with possibilities of re-visioning Christianity. Naturally, they do this from a woman’s perspective, and accent issues of women’s spirituality. There are points where the pieces are complementary, others where they contradict; that is all to the good. The spiritual journey is seldom a straight line and there will be, so far as the eye can see, women who are approaching new places of questioning which others have left behind. The lack of coherence reflects these shifting realities. Three of these pieces have appeared previously in print; some have been shared with a group of friends who pray together; the rest are presented here for the first time.

The essays cover a variety of topics, some ancient, some modern. They reflect my passion for relevance and my desire to give form to experiences which many women know but few have found the words to express. Women share some common desires, longings and hurts which they ponder privately but seldom make public, and they rarely air them in the church. The need to shape these musings is reason enough for putting this handbook together.

For more than thirty years I have been giving retreats and courses in spirituality, particularly for women. These events have often not been within a typical church scene; in the last decade they have catered more particularly for people who are outside of the church. My experiences over these years have shown that there are many people who once were Christians who look for spiritual nurturing, in depth, within the faith they have known and loved.

In the third part of this book, I have presented some reflections and meditations especially for people who value or have valued the Christian message, but can no longer relate to it in the forms in which it is currently presented. These reflections, on familiar fasts and festivals, reframe traditional themes and suggest new and, I hope, relevant ways of reappraising the customary, and no longer riveting, material. The final offering is the text of a Quiet Day for Mature Women to celebrate St Hildegard of Bingen. Hildegard was invisible for centuries, but has now become something of a role model for women exploring and developing their creativity in the second half of life. She is a very satisfactory figure with whom to close this book.

I hope this re-presentation of traditional material will resonate with, or comfort, people for whom the Christian forms were once the Bread of life. The book is intended as an offering towards a revisioning of Christianity, a collection of pieces for people who, underneath it all, would like to draw some spiritual refreshment from the faith in which they were raised.

It is, of course, impossible to write about the difficulties which Christian women face in the quest for self without mentioning the obstacles, but the primary concern is not to dwell on how badly women have been treated in the church; the overarching purpose is encouragement with pleasure. The book is addressed, most particularly, to those people who struggle with the conflict between their faith and their sense of self, but I hope it may also speak to members of the church who are aware of this conflict even if it is not their own. It may also give to men some insights into the experience of women within the context of religion. Joy abounding would be if it should reach the hearts and minds of those who have, until now, preferred to deny that there is such a conflict.

Even unto Virgins or How to Get a Bishop Down

The concept of virgin has, happily, regained something of its former glory. No longer does the word simply designate a female who has never been possessed by a man. The notion of virginity more fully signifies woman unto herself alone. This interpretation is not predicated on sexual experience, but rather refers to woman as an independent being, not defined by the man to whom she belongs.

The Goddess Artemis/Diana is the most familiar paradigm of the virgin understood thus. Mary, Mother of Jesus, has been interpreted in this way by some modern women writers, but her history is so stickily wrapped up in masculine adoration of ideal woman that, as an icon for the independent woman, she is seldom helpful. Virgins therefore, is an apt, if ironic, title for women who have chosen selfhood and self-definition, rather than mere submission to men within the church.

Even Unto Virgins comes from an Office to celebrate Virgin Martyrs in an old monastic daybook. The theme of the Office was thanksgiving that God has bestowed the mystery of martyrdom even unto virgins! Presumably as the weakest, most unstable members of the human race, it was indeed a miracle if they should demonstrate the staying power martyrdom required.

A more helpful, if personal, icon was given to me in the form of a dream which illuminated the role of virgins in the struggle to dethrone the power of patriarchy within the church. Every picture tells a story, and this story tells simply and vividly the process of dismantling male power. It is worth noting that the dreamer is not a nun: she is a wife and mother.

A bishop is very high up on an old wooden building. He has to come down and there is only one way: he must drop from floor to floor, on the outside balcony posts. He can only make this descent with the help of the nuns who are on each floor, prepared to assist him down.

Nuns are the symbol, par excellence, for virginity. They are women dedicated to Christ alone and possessed by no male. In this dream they represent women who know their strength and how to use it. They have to bear the weight of the descending bishop. They are decisive and can make the choice to be there for him as he comes down. Rather than uphold his position, they are there to help in the dismantling of it. In order to fulfill their task, they must stay put, maintain their integrity and find the way to help the man (the bishop, indeed) climb down from his high position.

Furthermore, the whole action depends on the willingness of the bishop not only to climb down, but also to allow himself to be visibly dependent on the women who will support him in his drop from the heights. The bishop must descend on the outside of the building. He must be seen to be coming down from the heights.

The action of the dream plays on the theme of kenosis. Kenosis is the theological term for Christ leaving his heavenly throne to empty himself, taking the form of a servant (Phil 2:5f). He was dependent on the Virgin to make possible his descent to earth. In this dream we see the bishop, consecrated to follow Christ his Master, likewise as a servant, being dependent on the virgins’ aid to make possible his descent. Just as Jesus’ kenosis was conditional on Mary’s consent, so this bishop can only be earthed by the consent and cooperation of dedicated women.

This is a hard thing to ask of Christian women, who have been trained in obedience and submission. Old habits die hard and, on both sides, the recognized model runs on oiled wheels. The dignity of the cloth, Father knows best and the ideal of obedience are deeply embedded pseudo-doctrines which have to be