Author talks about unusual images of God

Wearing God: Clothing, Laughter, Fire and Other Overlooked Ways of Meeting God by Lauren Winner
Wearing God: Clothing, Laughter, Fire and Other Overlooked Ways of Meeting God by Lauren Winner

Father. Shepherd. King.

The Bible is full of such familiar images of God.

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Special to the Democrat-Gazette

Lauren Winner hopes readers will explore some of the lesser-known images of God that can be found in the Bible. She discusses six of them in Wearing God.

But there are lesser known metaphors for the Almighty, and those are the ones that author Lauren Winner explores in her latest book, Wearing God: Clothing, Laughter, Fire and Other Overlooked Ways of Meeting God.

Fans will know Winner from her previous books, including Mudhouse Sabbath and Still. In addition to her writing career, she is also an assistant professor of Christian spirituality at Duke Divinity School in Durham, N.C., as well as an Episcopal priest. Despite a career focused on religion, Bible reading wasn't always a passion for Winner.

"We're told the Scriptures are important, and we should read them, and for much of my life I didn't really," Winner said. "I can't explain it but that changed a few years ago, and I got obsessed with the Bible."

Winner said she realized her image of God -- whom she often thought of as a professor or a boyfriend -- needed an update, so she turned to the Bible and found an abundance of lesser-known images. In Wearing God she focuses on six -- clothing, smell, bread and vine, laboring woman, laughter and flame.

The author will discuss Wearing God at 7 p.m. Thursday in Worsham Performance Hall in the Student Life and Technology Center at Hendrix College in Conway. The talk is free and the public is welcome.

"I think it's part of the testimony of Scripture that no one image, even one as powerful as Father, captures everything about God," Winner said. "Also depending on who your father is you will hear that image in a particular way -- blessing and caring or as an image of alienation and abuse.

"Different metaphors, like doors, lead on to different paths."

Winner said as people's lives change, their image of God will also often change, and being in communion with others in a church community can also influence or alter their view of God.

"I might be in a moment of life and friendship with God where the language of God as clothing might feel profound and important to me, and my friend in church might be in a place where God is the 'Great Physician' ... and our thoughts rub against each other," she said. "Being in church guarantees we won't get stuck in our little, narrow view of who God is."

Some images Winner encountered in the Bible were more challenging to accept than others. For example, the image of God as a woman in labor in Isaiah 42:14 was difficult for her -- "For a long time I have held my peace, I have kept still and restrained myself; now I will cry out like a woman in labor, I will gasp and pant."

"I found myself deeply uncomfortable with that," Winner said. "It was vulnerable, and I don't want an image of God bound up with bodily vulnerability. Then it struck me that's precisely what the cross is."

While examining the metaphor of God as clothing, Winner looked to the words of the Apostle Paul in Galatians 3 when he spoke of being "clothed in Christ."

She writes, "What might it mean to understand myself as clothed by God? What does it mean to imagine God as a warm winter coat? As a handmade bespoke suit? As a beloved cardigan sweater, purchased at Galway on your honeymoon -- chunky purple wool, with fisherman's knots?"

She explores what clothing says about those wearing it, how it can shape identity and ponders what it would be like to live a life "clothed in Jesus."

Winner said Jesus often used metaphors in his teachings.

"He would walk through a day in life and would see a lily or a sparrow and then take that image and say to people this will show you something about the kingdom of heaven, about holiness, about who God is," she said.

Winner hopes readers who might not have a lively relationship with the Bible will be inspired to delve into the Scriptures in search of the many metaphors for God, as well as to find images of God in their everyday lives. She also hopes readers will expand beyond the metaphors in the book.

"I don't need to convince readers these are the six best and to stop thinking of God as shepherd, but I hope it might provoke people's curiosity to say what are the images that make sense to me? What are the uncomfortable and challenging images," she said. "There's no passage that doesn't contain some images of God."

Winner said writing the book made her realize the limitations of her own view of God.

"I have an appreciation for the kind of endless overflowing of the Scriptures," she said. "They typically have more to say, which is awesome and odd."

Prior to Winner's talk, the 2015 Steel-Hendrix Awards Banquet will be held at 5:30 p.m. in the Student Life and Technology Center. Cost is $25. Winner will also lead the annual John and Marjem Gill Preaching Workshop, 9 a.m.-3 p.m. Friday in Worsham Hall. Cost is $50. Information is available by calling the Rev. J. Wayne Clark, Hendrix College chaplain, at (501) 450-1263 or online at hendrix.edu/gillworkshop.

Religion on 04/18/2015

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