Life in a Motherless House

This week I received my tape of Carol Lynn Pearson's talk, "Mary Poppins and the Return of God the Mother" from the 1998 Sunstone Symposium. In the talk she speaks of the Church as a "motherless house." Carol Lynn says that she has found that the longing for a Divine mother is a universal hunger which pops up in the collective unconscious often. To illustrate this she mentions several well known films which speak of the transforming of the patriarchal family through the receiving of the divine magical woman. I plan to outline Carol Lynn's conclusions about these films, but first I would like to ask a question of any males that happen across this blog. Do you feel the lack of a mother figure in our Church? We have a Heavenly Father, and we have a "father of the ward" (bishop), both of whom are heavily involved in our daily lives. It is to the Heavenly Father that we pray several times a day. It is the Bishop who gives us the callings which often define us and take up so much of our time. We are told that we have a Heavenly Mother, but that we need not strive to know her personally. We have women who affect us and teach us in Primary, but after the age of 12, males have no further contact with women in the Church as authority figures nor are women Church leaders available to them for guidance or counsel (as men are available to women in the Church). Do you feel that this constitutes a "motherless house?" Do you ever feel longings for a spiritual feminine?

More about Carol Lynn's talk to come!