Guest Post: Walking Out Of The Shadow: Part 2 of The Shadow Side of Faithful Womanhood
Guest Post by Josie Grover
On a prior blog post, I wrote of a dream that helped me process loss of personal authority I was relinquishing to be a fully faithful woman in the LDS church. As a summary, my dream had a powerful woman pursuing me at the orders of a man in military attire. The woman had emerged from a cave, walking from the shadow into the light. The cave is the aspect of the dream that I would like to focus on as a follow up, specifically the difference between being in a cave and enjoying light coming in through the opening, verses stepping out fully into the light of day.
I recently learned the Allegory of the Cave by Plato. In this philosophic story, prisoners are chained in a cave with their backs to a wall, only able to face toward the end of the cave. From the other side of the wall behind them burns a fire from which other individuals are projecting shadow imaging onto the cave surface the prisoners are seeing. One day a prisoner is suddenly freed from his chains and wanders out of the cave into full sunlight. There he sees for first time, real and tangible objects that create shadows on the ground and understands that shadows are only projections of reality. What he was shown in the cave was not at all reality but a controlled version of it. As he makes his way back into the cave to tell the other prisoners, he is met with disbelief and mockery.
This allegory is meant to demonstrate what it is like for someone to be a recipient of group mind control where they are given doses of truth without full context. Many times the people being programmed don’t believe the information being shared by people outside of the controlled system.
As we sit together in the sheltered cave of the LDS church, we do enjoy the light of the divine feminine to an extent. It enters in as God’s love for womanhood. We feel the glow when we are taught that Eve was not the original sinner other Christian denominations frame her to be, but the wise and sacrificing mother of humanity that knew before Adam what must occur. We have paintings in our buildings of the resurrected Christ appearing first to Mary Magdalene. We have the unique opportunity in this faith to at least acknowledge a presence of a Heavenly Mother. These are the controlled version of story. It comes with heavy instructions. They ask us not to pray to Heavenly Mother. Information about her attributes are limited. It is almost in mockery of the divine feminine that it is paired with the idea that godly womanhood does not include leadership, or a very filtered down version of limited leadership. We are left with shadow projections. The shape of reality with out the full manifestations of it.
I have received new and empowering insight on divine womanhood since leaving the cave. For example, author Beth Allison Barr in The Making of Biblical Womanhood provides scriptural evidence that patriarchy is human sin. Barr explains that as Adam and Eve are being escorted from the garden, God is expounding on the trials and tribulations of this life. It is in this context that He tells Eve “thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.” It was not in commandment that this was stated, but a foreboding of the specific earthy trials of womanhood. Patriarchy was not an order that existed when Adam and Eve lived in the presence of God, but it is something that will be persistent in the fallen world.
From Mary Magdalene I have have learned that women have much to contribute to the spiritual stewardship of mankind. Christ appointed Mary as an apostle to apostles, a role that she stepped into upon the death of Christ as she comforted those followers who were in deep mourning. It was also Mary that ushered in the news of Christ’s return in full glory to His twelve. In the Gospel of Mary Magdalene, a text that was living in hiding for hundreds of years, we learn of more wholistic ways of helping our spirit find God while in earthly form. She knew much and Christ trusted her.
From books on the Mother God that is hidden in the text of the Old Testament, we learn that Her main gift to Her children is wisdom. Often she is symbolized by a tree. In a moment of clarity, I understood that the tree of knowledge of good and evil in the Garden of Eden was Heavenly Mother abounding with the fruit of wisdom which Eve, who as Her daughter, gravitated towards.
Walking out of orthodoxy, the full light of feminine Divinity has given me a confidence in myself that I struggled to find under an all male authority. I feel more open in my relationship with God and Jesus. I enjoy moments of praying to my Mother and feeling her gentle guidance as whispers of affirming wisdom. I was neglecting these opportunities for insight and connection while in full obedience to the teachings of the church. While LDS women do have power from on high, I hope that a distinctly feminine power will be able to grow there to the point that men’s portrayal of Her is no longer the dominating narrative. It is one hope of many.
Josie is a wife and mother living in Southern Utah. She works as an ultrasound technologist and spends much of her free time learning about LDS church history and feminism in Christianity. While she is not a full believing member of the church she attends her local ward with her family and loves the community found there. She just started an Instagram account where she expounds on her passions concerning social justice issues. You can find her at @josieunpacksitall.
