Does God have feminine attributes?

Greetings! I am writing after a couple of weeks' hiatus because I was trekking in the mountains of northern Pakistan. Will write about my adventures there in another piece. Today’s piece is about a reflection I had during this trip.

I was on a bus ride and was reflecting on a few sorrows in my life. Nothing extraordinary, just life’s usual misgivings that every human being is exposed to every now and then.

As I reflected over them I was hoping for more compassion and love around them from people in my life, especially ones closest to me. While I thought this thought, I wondered, why don’t I ever ask for these things from God?

This made me reflect on my relationship with God. With God, in my experience, I have quite often sought help, for strength and offered my gratitude when good things have happened to me. However, seldom have I asked for love, compassion, and understanding from God.

Qualities like provision & protection are typically attributed to masculine traits while qualities such as softness, gentleness, and compassion are attributed to the feminine realm. A balanced human being, man or woman, should ideally have a good balance of both these masculine and feminine energies, the yin and the yang. Then why shouldn’t our God also have this balance?

I reflect that God has a great balance of both the masculine and feminine, it is what we ask of God that we get in return. Throughout my life, I have always prayed to, argued with & sought attachment to a masculine God. When I was a child it used to be this big bearded fellow up in the sky, when I was a teenager it was an authority figure that I resisted and now that I am an adult it’s the “just” figure that is running the world order. However, the attribution has always been of a masculine figure.

For the first time in my life, I have understood that God is neither masculine nor feminine. God is both and God is neither, if that makes sense.

What does this mean for me in life on a day-to-day basis? This means that the next time I pray to God, I won’t just ask for protection and strength, I would also ask for Love and compassion. I would ask for Gentleness and Nurturing. If my needs for any of the above are not being met by my surroundings, I know I could always reach out to God to address them.

It’s a short musing, perhaps a complex one, but something I thought I would share.

Love & Peace,

Mohsin