Portions of a book I'm thinking of writing

Hey people.

I'm thinking of writing a book about cities and want to include their mythic elements. Please give me any feedback on the posted sections.

Peace
________________________________________________
Part One

The question has been asked in various ways, but the gist of it is this; ‘why is the dominant spiritual expression of this country a masculine one?’ Because when you deconstruct and simplify our nation’s overarching spiritual influence (Christianity) it boils down to a father and His Son (New Testament) and a God—read anthropomorphized male figure—and his new creations (Old Testament). While the question is a valid one, it is not important to this discussion. This paper will argue that the more important question is ‘where are the expressions of a divine feminine in our modern society?’

It is a social fact that our nation is operating under a heavily masculine agenda. From the wage disparities between men and women in the corporate arena, to there never being a woman president in the United States 217-year history of electing individuals to govern our nation, the idea that the masculine has smothered or has completely wiped out the feminine is not too hard to believe. It becomes even more poignant when one takes the spiritual consciousness of the country into account.

Lately we have been hearing a lot of talk about what God wants for this nation or how the God of another nation is the enemy of our God. Also, many atrocities have been committed in the name of God. But who has the right to speak for God? Is it the clergy of the many Christian denominations? Is it the politicians who attempt to wed God, nationhood and unrepentant violence under the same banner? Or is it the fundamentalists, evangelists and the folks that sit at train stations or go door-to-door, spreading the good news? And why is it that God always possesses the capitalized masculine pronouns of He or Him? Where is the balance? The balance is all around us. The divine feminine is all round us, and to reinterpret Jesus from the Gospel of Thomas: You have to have the eyes to see it.

Expressions of the divine feminine permeate our daily existence, but they are very difficult to see because they are not phallic skyscrapers piercing the sky or heavily testoteroned A-type personalities demanding to be noticed. Expressions of the divine feminine are hidden—some would say trapped—in architectural metaphors and/or have been thrust to just beyond our normal vision. Simply stated, the divine feminine has not been stamped out or erased; it has simply changed form and become something unrecognizable to the untrained, uninitiated person. The divine feminine, once touted in stonework, painting and songs has now become the cities that we live in. We are living in a divine feminine metropolis.

This may be a hard concept to understand. With the previously mentioned skyscrapers, the majority of government officials being men, and women in urban areas being grossly mistreated; it might be near impossible to see the city as anything other than violent, oppressive and male. But if we look just below the surface, train ourselves to see the feminine in our daily routines, they way we view our world will be both different and wondrous.

It is a commonly held belief of many who consider themselves spiritual people, that nature (read: birds, trees and bodies of water) is the only thing that can truly be a spiritual/holy/divine site. A metropolis is looked upon as encroaching on the sacred, an eyesore, and an obstruction that disrupts the natural flow of the world. And these locations, nature and the city, have been assigned genders: nature is female and the city is male. This is dangerous thinking because no one, no thing, is a single expression. By doing this, we eliminate balance in our spiritual environment. This may seem a contradictory statement because this paper is arguing that the city is an expression of the divine feminine, but the argument is to include the divine feminine metropolis as well as the masculine principles of a city. But this paper will focus primarily on the feminine because the masculine is ever-present. To view this sacred feminine, one must be able to experience the world through a mythological filter.

--Shawn Taylor