The Receptive Partner

by Marilyn J. Gustin

from Where can we find her?
searching for women’s identity in the new church
edited by Marie-Eloise Rosenblatt , pp. 92-100.

Published by Paulist Press,1991.
Republished on our website with the necessary permissions

Scattered through recent church documents concerning women are a few references to the need for spiritual renewal. This is meager acknowledgement of the urgent need for the deeper development of an interior capacity, for allowing the Holy Spirit to act through us as women and men and as church. It is toward this inner possibility that these comments are directed.

A professor once observed that “the soul is always feminine before God.” When a startled male student pressed him, the professor pointed to two things: the wealth of mystical literature written by women and men alike, in which the soul is almost always called “she;” and the receptive quality which characterizes the mystic of either sex when fully present to God.

Receptivity Is a Feminine Principle

Unfortunately, in our western habits “receptive” has most often been equated with “passive” as opposed to active. The equation is inaccurate. It is untrue to human experience. Receptivity is simply not passive. It requires a very active openness, full of eagerness, interest, cooperation, and considerable courage, as well as solid ability for decisions. All intuition depends on the ability to be receptive. It is attention to one’s own inner knowing and the freedom to respond trustfully to that knowledge.

It would be helpful to correct our western bias by considering a few symbols which can expand our perception of the receptive capacity. First, we will consider the heart as symbol of receptivity, and then the cup, both of which are found in virtually every spiritual tradition. Then we will look briefly at the mythological principal pair Shiva/Shakti in the Indian tradition, and at Durga, the mother/warrior, also Indian.

The Heart and the Cup: Symbols of Receptivity

The receptive heart is universally recognized as the center of the being. Physiologically, this is clear enough: the heart holds a central position in the body. It is primarily responsible for the circulation of the blood on which life’s continuation depends. This very position implies that the heart is the center of the inner being, and thus is the center and source of the total living creature. Here within the individual is the ground of warmth, of light, of genuine feeling and of intuitive intelligence (but not of reason, which is brain-related).(1) Therefore the heart is the seat of all wisdom, which is much more than a rational faculty, being expressive of profound intuitional knowledge.

The physiological function of the heart, to receive blood and then to give it impulse to travel the system again, is analogous to the function of the soul before God: to receive the fullness of the Godhead and to give it the necessary expressive impulse to release it into the world. This indeed is precisely what Mary did with the Word of God: received it, enfleshed it, and sent it into the world. Mary was herself not the source of the Word, but the receiver. For this reason, i.e. symbolically as well as physiologically, it was necessary for her to be a woman. The feminine principle is the receptive principle, which is also the heart. The heart is the center of the individual.

However, the heart is not only the individual’s center. In the heart is also the dwelling place of the divine presence within the human person, as the symbol is used in all major religious traditions. The individual heart is the seat of the divine within. Moreover, St. Clement of Alexandria calls God the heart of the universe, meaning the center and source of all that is.(2) So the heart symbolizes the center of all, divine, universal, and human.

Further, the heart is the point from which everything comes and to which everything returns. The lifeblood flows out from the heart and returns to it again. The individual soul is created by God and returns to God again via the spiritual journey. God, as heart of the universe, is analogous to our body’s heart. God includes thus a feminine function: the receiving of our being, returned to its creator.

As center of both the individual being and of all being, the heart vivifies the whole of existence by supporting and ensuring the circulation of lifeblood. God as heart is the source of all life, the very life of all existence, and the heart of the person is both the life of the body and the seat of God who is heart of all.

Receptivity, the receiving of divine life and the supporting of human lifeblood, is hardly an invitation to passive stagnation. It is an urgent necessity to continue the flow of all life, first by receiving, then by giving, by expressing. In actuality, receiving can never take place by itself. If the receiver stops with that, then only death can result, just as bodily death results if the heart does not pass along the blood it continually receives. The heart actively receives and must actively give. Indeed, physiologically, this double function is one motion: the same movement that enables the blood to enter at one valve pushes it outward again at another. So it is with receiving/expressing: the two aspects may be separated for understanding, but functionally they must be held firmly at one.

Nothing, no life, no being, can happen then without the function of receptivity symbolized by the heart. The feminine principle is as essential to all life as the woman is to the continuation of biological life. But no heart is passive.

Similarly, the symbolism of the cup is receptive, and related to that of the heart. A graphic bridge between the two is seen in the fact that each is sometimes drawn as a triangle with the point downward. We may recall the actual shape of many chalices, for example. The heart is likewise schematized in this way, from ancient Egypt’s hieroglyphs to contemporary eastern art .(3)

Like the heart, the cup is to receive liquid. Without this feminine function, the cup would have no reason to be. It carries a liquid only to give it further, either by overflowing its own rim or by releasing its contents to one who drinks. For Christians, the cup par excellence is the chalice which receives the blood of Christ. In earlier Christian lore, the Holy Grail was the chalice which received Jesus’ blood at the crucifixion. What is this blood for the Christian? It is the blood of eternal life. It is the innermost essence of divine wisdom. It is inexpressible because it is so profoundly interior, but to the one who receives knowingly, eternal life is forever symbolized by the cup of the altar.

Interestingly, all other major religious traditions also include a holy cup which receives and contains the drink of immortality and of sacred wisdom.(4)

Again, the capacity to receive the most profound life of all, that which is eternal and ultimately wise, is a feminine capacity. It is symbolized by the cup. The sacred cup holds and then gives the only gift that matters ultimately: the interior experience of God in one’s own living, the lifeblood of the Lord of all, the divine itself momentarily in material form.

Thus women, insofar as they embody the feminine principle itself, receive ultimate reality. They are its containers, its heart, its cup, its womb. They hold God and the possibility of God-fulfilled human life. They give it for the life of the world, as Mary received and gave the Word of God for the redemption of humankind.

Feminine Creativity Is Power and Wisdom

Though there may be a methodological question about our use of another tradition, the purpose of turning now to the Indian tradition is not conclusive demonstration, but to help ourselves loosen our mental grip on the assumed identity of femininity and “passivity.”

In the strain of Indian tradition called Kashmir Shaivism, one constantly finds the pair Shiva/Shakti. In this configuration, Shiva is male, completely absorbed in the most profound interior stillness, and represents the formless, undetermined nature of the absolute reality. Shako is his consort, female, and is totally active in creation. All that is, in the whole manifested universe, is totally dependent on the power of Shakti. This feminine creative power is responsible for all existence. Shakti is consort because that power cannot be separated from the absolute, but she is female because creativity is rooted in the feminine principle. It is even fair to say that she is the source of all that is, because without this power, nothing would be. The absolute is “beyond being” in this understanding. So in this tradition, all creation is rooted in the feminine principle. The analogue of physical gestation and birth is obvious.

Ultimately, of course, Shiva/Shakti is one, bearing different determined aspects. For our present purpose, it is enough to note that Shiva, the male, is utterly still and Shakti, the female symbol, is utterly powerful and active. Creativity always is.

Similarly with Durga, who is one form of the divine feminine principle in Hindu mythology. Durga took form first, according to an ancient text, to help the devas (shining ones) in their battle against the asuras (demons). In the battle, she rode a gigantic tiger and fought a bull as huge as the sky. In the final stage of a violent conflict, she drinks from a divine cup. Then she instantaneously beheads the chief demon, freeing the devas and the earth from bondage. Again and again in Indian epics, Durga battles in the most ferocious and skillful manner for the well-being of the world and of its human inhabitants. She succeeds when all the male warriors have reached their extremity and are failing, because ultimately all powers are hers. She is utterly wise, because she knows her divine powers and how to use them for her totally benevolent purposes. She uses them on behalf of humankind because ultimately she is the divine mother of all, the creator of all. She is forever the great nurturer and protector of all her children, whether in tenderness or ferocity.(5)

The feminine principle, then, is receptivity and creativity on both human and divine planes. In Christian tradition as well, we find a devotional tradition about Mary which hints at something of the same power: that her Son cannot deny her requests. This is usually dismissed as much too sentimental, and indeed it is often understood sentimentally. But does it not also suggest that Mary’s receptivity is power, that her creative receptivity in bearing the Word is an indication of power in relation to that Word?

Now let us notice that in each of these symbols, wisdom is found: the wisdom of the heart, which is deepest intuitive intelligence, capable of knowing God directly; the cup of wisdom, sustenance and expression of the life of Christ in the one who drinks fully of it; the wisdom of all creativity in Shakti; the wisdom of skill and power, close to protection and nurture, in Durga. Mary can be symbolic for us as well as historical, for she embodies the receptive wisdom which is total “yes,” the creative wisdom which gives the Divine Word to the world, and the powerful wisdom to which nothing can be ultimately denied. These are symbols for women, born of the receptive capacity of the feminine, expressed in the creative capacity of the female, ultimately wise because they contain the secret heart of life itself.

Feminine and Masculine Principles Are Companions

In several traditions and forms, a story appears which always contains the same elements:

Two pilgrims were traveling to the Holy City. They were both struggling greatly, since one was blind and the other crippled. In this condition they literally stumbled into each other on the road. Upon discovering their shared goal and their mutual difficulty, they fell into deepest sympathy with each other. The cripple knew it was impossible to reach the goal alone, being unable to walk properly. The blind one kept losing the way. Talking about their plight, it suddenly occurred to the cripple what could be done. The blind one could walk, and so it could carry the cripple. The cripple could see the way and envision the goal, and so it could direct the blind one. Together they could reach the Holy City. Apart, neither would ever arrive.

In the ancient interpretation of this tale, the two figures are wisdom and method, what one knows and what one must do. Both are required for the interior spiritual journey. There must be efforts made, and these are method. Equally, there must be wisdom to know where one is going and how to use method. Traditionally, the crippled wisdom with clear sight is feminine, and the blind method is masculine. They cannot arrive at their divine goal without each other.

In our present context as well, wisdom is feminine. The heart is wise because it is receptive to divine wisdom. Yet, as we have seen, the heart does not only receive, nor the cup only receive. As they receive wisdom and power, so they also give it in expressive action in the world. This expression, directed outward, is the masculine aspect, then, of heart and of cup. Both are symbols of expression as well as of reception, and so they are doubly significant for our present purpose.

When we transpose these symbols and principles into human life, we find that they are not exclusive to women or to men. They are aspects of the life of human beings. Women and men can be wise. Women and men can be receptive. Women and men can be giving, expressive. In the interior life as well, the feminine principle of receptivity is found in men, and the masculine principle of expression-in-the-world is found in women. Each of us is both, interiorly, and each of us is thus bound to be both exteriorly.

For women, it is not so much a matter of setting ourselves over against men as superior in some faculties, though individuals vary widely within both sexes. For women it is today extraordinarily important that we discover fully that our receptivity is vision and wisdom, that our creativity is power and effectiveness. It is not important – or true – to say that men do not have these qualities. It is vitally important to know that we women have them.

Only as we deeply know that our receptive heart is also our expressive heart can we ourselves fully appropriate our own power and creativity. Only on this basis can women and men fully accept each other as partners in the adventure of life and redemption. We can go companionably toward the holy city only as each of us knows our innermost capacity and equally acknowledges the value of the other’s innermost capacity.

It is hardly new to think that people must know, appreciate and activate both their interior femininity and their interior masculinity. Psychologists have said it often enough. But it is important to give our receptivity as well as our expressivity deeper attention when we consider the spiritual aspect of life. We cry for spiritual renewal in the church. It can come only as we open ourselves receptively to our own individual spiritual renewal, be we women or men. Here person and church are analogous. As it is dangerous and deforming for the individual to receive and hold wisdom without an avenue for its expression, so it is distorting for the church to contain its great wisdom without its full expression in the world.

In our world, love of expression and the desire to give in service often far outrun our desire for and interior receptivity to wisdom. Patriarchy, as a distortion of the whole human being, does precisely this. Consequently, it often gives from the bottom of an empty vessel. It acts without having first received. Matriarchy, if there were such a system, would do the other: hold wisdom to itself, receiving for itself only. But like the two pilgrims, neither will ever arrive at the divine goal alone.

When the church denies to women the opportunity to express their received wisdom in every role and form, it deforms them and damages its own receptive identity before God. Insofar as the church denies men (culturally or otherwise) the approval of their leisure to receive wisdom, to cultivate their receptive heart, it deforms them and damages its identity before God.

Only as we, women and men, open our hearts courageously and powerfully to be fully receptive to God will church become true. God is ultimately the only active one, the Spirit is the only do-er. Only as we all receive that Spirit in our deepest heart can we become in fact what we are in virtuality: a God-empowered, receptive, expressive people. Only as we express what we have first received in our own cup does the church have anything to offer the world.

Women and men alike must be fully feminine, i.e. receptive, before God. Women and men must likewise be fully masculine, i.e. expressive toward the world. External roles, being only external, must not be generalized or limited, even as each heart discovers its own forms for receiving and for giving.

Thus the receptive partner is not, as our culture still wants us to assume, the woman. The receptive partner is the human soul. The expressive partner is our shared life-in-the-world. One blind, the other crippled, we must walk together toward the holy city, the heavenly Jerusalem. The active partner is necessarily only God in Christ, the ruler of that heavenly city.

So there are really three partners who travel this interior road to the heart of the universe. One only, often hidden, knows the fullness of the way. But the wise, sighted one receives that knowledge, and shows the way to the blind, who is active in expressing that wisdom in the world. So all will arrive: Christ, whose home is there already, and the feminine and the masculine together. Even more gloriously, however, the whole universe will also arrive in Christ. It is, as St. Paul said, waiting for us all to fulfill our true universal function of redemption.

Notes

1. René Guenon, Symboles Fondamentaux de la Science Sacrée, ed. Michel Valsan (Paris: Gallimard, 1962) 408.

2. René Guenon, Symbolism of the Cross, trans. Angus MacNab (London: Luzac & Company, Ltd., 1958) 15.

3. Guenon, Fondamentaux, 39, 44.

4. Ibid. 40.

5. Peggy Bendet, “Durga, the Mother of the World,” Darshan 6 (October 1987) 97-104 passim.