GOD THE MOTHER

To the Editors of the Crimson:

The women students of the Harvard Divinity School who object to the male-orientation of religion and the church, with God universally regarded as a male, might be interested to know that Eugene O'Neill anticipated them in Strange Interlude more than forty years ago. The eminent playwright, however, apparently thought that women themselves were responsible in part for the establishment of a masculine Godhead. In Strange Interlude the dramatist has his heroine say, when her father dies and she can find no comfort in prayer:

"The mistake began when God was created in a male image. Of course, women would see Him that way, but men should have been gentlemen enough, remembering their mothers, to make God a Woman! But the God of Gods--the Boss--has always been a man. That makes life so perverted, and death so unnatural. We should have imagined life as created in the birth-pain of God the Mother. Then we could understand why we, Her children, have inherited pain, for we would know that our life's rhythm beats from Her great heart, torn with the agony of love and birth. And we would feel that death meant a reunion with Her, a passing back into Her substance, blood of Her blood again, peace of Her peace! Now wouldn't that be more logical and satisfying than having God a male whose chest thunders with egotism and is too hard for tired heads...?" Louis Sheafier