Wearing God

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

Lauren F. Winner (2015, HarperOne)

       Have you ever noticed that the Church is in a rut, when it comes to images for God? My home people, the Episcopalians, frequently observe the Good Shepherd in stained glass, psaltery, and hymns; only slightly less popular is a royal God, even if we are letting go of a gendered one. But what experience have most of us with either shepherds or kings? Practically none. 

        In Wearing God, Lauren Winner suggests that other, more familiar, options are available in the Bible, and sanctioned by generations of commentators and poets: God might be as close as a warm robe, as intimate as scented oil, as nourishing as bread or as intoxicating as wine. As fleshly as all this sounds, and it is, it's also intensely scholarly. "Your guide in this exploration is a bookworm who can happily get lost for a few days on a research trail, and I sometimes bring the words of anthropologists or historians or literary critics to bear on our ruminations." 

        It's no surprise that the chapters of Wearing God had their first lives as divinity school lectures. I have never paid much attention to the Christian midrash, the tradition of commentaries and commentaries on commentaries, but, of course, that's what divinity students read. Winner introduces us not only to St. Augustine and Julian of Norwich, but Ephrem of Syria, Anselm of Canterbury, and Theodore of Mopsuestia; Charles Wesley, John Donne, and Christina Rossetti; and plenty of others who are still walking around the planet. The extensive end notes constitute a vast field full of rabbit holes, for those whose appetite is whetted. 

        Amid these treasures, Winner's own writing gets a little lost, which is a pity, because she gives good value. She does not quite persuade me to find God in fragrance; I'm just not wired that way. Nor in clothing, though the picture of God tenderly clothing Adam and Eve in skins before their exile is arresting. Even a moment, though, of "what would it be like, to be clothed in the Divine?" might be salutary. Perhaps this question, or one like it, will snag on our consciousness until we turn and face it. Do I ever look or feel as though God dressed me today? The more I don't want to dwell on that, the more I probably should. Winner says, "I suspect that if I could receive this, something small but important would change. I suspect that the way I inhabit myself would be different if my spinning, whirling brain could receive this, if my heart could receive it, if my body could receive it."

      A child-bearing God, a laughing God, a God who is soothed by the fragrance of burning incense all seem strange, in a way that may stretch our imagination. Perhaps the most profound image of all, because it's the most commonplace, is friendship with God. In what ways is that like all our friendships? "I know that friendship both requires and breeds honesty–perhaps foremost honesty with myself. When I am lying to myself (as I have been known to do, usually about something important–otherwise why bother?), I am not available for friendship." And so it is with the One from Whom no secrets are hid. "Also, I am uneven. I am inconstant. Yet I have begun to grow as a friend. I am less inconstant than I once was." Friendship with God, like any other, is enriched by the simple act of showing up, and sometimes acting together. 

       I think Winner makes her case for trying on different images of God. "The Bible's inclusion of so many figures for God is both an invitation and a caution. The invitation is to discovery: discovery of who God is, and what our friendship with God might become. The caution is against assuming that any one image of God, whatever truth it hold, adequately describes God." Maybe we'll be able to take a break from trying to describe the Infinite Holy, and break through to experiencing It. 

Email edition May 1 2020