Life-and-Destruction Page 23
The Maker is a Creator and the story in the poem is a creation story that plays
with mirrors; an "image and likeness" story. The Genesis story of human
beings made in the "image and likeness of God" has been interpreted mainly
through a male perspective, concentrating on the rational attributes of the soul
or mind.
Given the powerful ways the ruling male metaphor has been expanded
to become an entire metaphysical world view, and the way it perdures
in imagination even when gender neutral God-language is used
correction of androcentric speech on the level of the concept alone is
not sufficient. Since, as Marcia Falk notes, "Dead metaphors make
strong idols"18, other images must be introduced which shatter the
exclusivity of the male metaphor, subvert its dominance, and set free a
greater sense of the mystery of God.19
"The Maker" suggests strong earthy images of a creator who is birth-mother,
one who sets her creation "free in the dance". She takes into herself the joy
and pain of her creation in such a way that the Maker and the reflected image
are seen as identical. The identification with "all living things that are" comes
about through love overcoming fear. Fear is seen as a rigid being of "fixed
will", hard and unyielding. Love, while cancelling fear, is nevertheless neither
soft nor undemanding. It is linked with fire. the "scarlet spirit" of life and it
transforms through burning:
since love who cancels fear
.. .burned my vision clear
and bid my sense be still.
18 Marcia Falk, "Notes on Composing New Blessings", in Weaving the Visions:
New Patterns in Feminist Spirituality (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1989) p. 132.
19 Elizabeth Johnson, She Who Is: The Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse (New York: Crossroad. 1993) p. 45
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