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Where Does the Wild Goose Fly To? Seeking a New Theology of Spirit for Feminist Theology Mary Grey
Every day in the farm where I live the shrill scream of the wild geese flying overhead is heard. The cry is so strident as to make us stop our activities and ask, ‘To where does the wild goose fly?’ The well-known line from John’s Gospel comes to mind: ‘The wind blows where it wills, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know whence it comes or whither it goes...’ (3.8) For the wild goose is an ancient Celtic symbol of the Holy Spirit-made popular in contemporary spirituality by the Iona Community in Scotland. The cry of the wild goose-and the sheer power of its wings-evokes a sense of the unknown, that wild transcendence and yearning for freedom which lifts us from our daily frustrations. And that is why faith in the Spirit seems to offer hope and renewed possibilities to a ‘tired’ tradition: it is certainly why Feminist Theology attempts to develop a Theology of Spirit as a means of redeeming the oppressive structures of patriarchal theology and Church.
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A New Beginning At first glance this would seem to be a straightforward activity. Already, for the last 20 years, systematic theology has been complaining of Geistvergessenheif-the almost total neglect of the Holy Spirit by mainstream churches. Slowly aware of its ‘Christocentrism’, it has become conscious that the almost exclusive focus on Christ has encouraged a static view of salvation as something ‘accomplished for us in the past’. The focus had also fostered an authoritarian model of relating in the Church-which Dorothee Soelle called ‘Christofascism’since the male priest’s claim to power as after Chrisfus seemed to legitimise a hierarchical style of government. God as a Trinity of persons-in-relation had been almost totally lost sight of. But this awareness of Trinitarian theology as being both abstract and male-dominated stimulated theologians such as Jurgen Moltmann and Leonard0 Boff to rediscover a theology of Trinity as rooted in relation, and deeply involved in bringing about justice in the world. Yet ‘the relational Trinity’ did not necessarily solve the difficulties of feminist theology, where the questions of gender and personhood within the Trinity were not tackled. 89