Our presenter for January, Katie Taylor, a communicant at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church
in North Little Rock, has selected a wonderful new book for us to read this month,
Wearing God: Clothing, Laughter, Fire, and Other Overlooked Ways of Meeting God.
As Katie writes:
In Wearing God author Lauren Winner takes us on a wise and
lyrical journey by trying on overlooked metaphors for how we meet and experience
God. Chapters on God as clothing, laughter, flame, food, wine, and a laboring woman
not only invite us to understand God in a new way, but each reveals God to be much
closer and more intimate than we imagine, opening up the opportunity for experiencing
and knowing God more deeply. If God has felt distant or absent, or if your reading of
scripture has become cold or rote, reading Wearing God can serve as the hymn that
revives you.
As Winner has written: "One of the invitations of this book—and, I think, of the Bible—
is this: you can discover things about God by looking around your ordinary, everyday
life. There is a method here, and it is Jesus's method. Jesus, after all, specialized in
asking people to steep themselves in the words of the scriptures and then to look
around their ordinary Tuesdays to see what they could see about holiness and life with
God. This is not merely entertaining wordplay to give overactive minds something
pious to do. It is the Bible's way of making us aware of God and of the world in which
we meet God."
As Amazon describes this book: “There are hundreds of metaphors for God, but the
church only uses a few familiar images: creator, judge, savior, father. In Wearing God,
Lauren Winner gathers a number of lesser-known tropes, reflecting on how they work
biblically and culturally, and reveals how they can deepen our spiritual lives.”
Lauren F. Winner, of Duke University Divinity School, writes and lectures widely
on Christian practice, the history of Christianity in America, and Jewish -Christian relations. Her
books include Girl Meets God, Mudhouse Sabbath, A Cheerful and Comfortable Faith, Still: Notes on a
Mid-Faith Crisis, and, most recently, a book on overlooked biblical tropes for God, Wearing
God. Dr. Winner is also an Episcopal priest and is vicar of St. Paul's Episcopal Church in
Louisburg, N.C.
Questions to guide your reading
Week 1 – Chapters 1 & 2
Chapter 1 (The God Who Runs After Your Friendship)
1) Lauren Winner brings up that often the way we view God informs how we view
the world around us and vice versa. As in, perceiving God as distant &
judgmental lends one to hold more judgmental views of others, while perceiving
God as loving & nurturing tends to cause one to place more value on those traits.
Do you see this kind of correlation in your own worldview? Do you think the
way a person views God is indicative of the believer’s own personality?
2) Did Winner’s metaphor of God as “neglected grandmother” have any resonance
for you or remind you of your own faith journey?
3) What do you make of the idea of having a “friendship” with God? What links do
you see between practicing friendship with God and practicing Christianity?
4) What does it mean to be a good friend to God?
Chapter 2 (A Short Note on Gender & Language for God)
1) Considering God is not restricted by the male/female dichotomy, that God’s
nature is in fact limitless and non-corporeal, why do you think it is that we have
limited our expression of God to strictly male pronouns for so long in the
Church?
2) What pronouns do you prefer to use when referring to the Almighty? Are there
any terms you prefer not to use?
3) What do you think of the footnote on the bottom of page 30 which mentions that
should one use female pronouns, one shouldn’t limit the usage of “She” to only
the unproblematic, tender, and nurturing parts of the Bible and theological
discussions?
Week 2 – Chapters 3 & 4
Chapter 3 (Clothing)
1) What did you think of Winner’s interpretation of Adam & Eve’s being given
garments of skin in Genesis? Was this the way you had always thought of it, or
was it a new perspective? It was a new way of looking at it for me.
2) How can Christ be used, like clothing, as a way of either creating community or
as a way to build barriers between people? Have you ever seen Christ used this
way?
3) Think of how you use clothing on a daily basis for protection, comfort,
communication, expression of your identity. Now think about the phrase “being
clothed in God”. What does that look like for you? Would being mindful of this
affect the way you move in your daily life?
Chapter 4 (Smell)
1) Incense is primarily mentioned Biblically as a sacrifice which does little more
than simply delight and soothe God. What other smells can you imagine God
might find pleasing?
2) What did the imagery of Christ as a cut and aromatic flower at his crucifixion
make you think or feel?
3) Paul wrote that, “We are the aroma of Christ to God among those who are being
saved and among those who are perishing…” Jesus is still emitting a scent,
embodied by us his followers. What do you imagine the scent of this body in
Christ to smell like? What does it mean to “smell like church”? (ref. pg. 78)
Week 3 – Chapters 5 & 6
Chapter 5 (Bread & Vine)
1) What kind of bread do you imagine the “Bread of Life” to be?
2) How closely is class tied to food, and how does Jesus as the “Bread of Life” serve
to break down those barriers between different groups of people?
3) Have you ever felt “drunk” on the Holy Spirit or God? Do you feel like that’s an
experience which should be actively pursued, or approached with caution?
4) Can you see the God of your understanding ever destroying or neglecting His
“vineyard”?
Chapter 6 (Laboring Woman)
1) Why do you think Christ is described (in Psalm 110:3 on pg. 137) as being born
from his Father’s womb? Why do you think the author(s) would have used this
phrasing when they possessed the knowledge that men do not bear children?
2)
3)
4)
5)
Does it disregard the feminine, or is it attempting to combine both masculine and
feminine aspects?
Do you think redemption is easy for God? Or does God labor continuously to
bring redemption in to the world?
Does picturing God as a laboring woman alter your ideas of what strength can
look like? Can God be vulnerable?
Compare God as a pain-wracked, groaning, panting woman in labor to Christ
crucified suffering, and groaning on the cross. Does one image make you feel
more uncomfortable than the other?
Do you think that the Church has too sanitized and glossed over the birth
narrative and/or Christ’s crucifixion? Rendered it too “tidy” a doctrine, as it
were?
Week 4 – Chapters 7 & 8
Chapter 7 (Laughter)
1) Have you ever heard God laugh? What do you imagine that to sound like?
2) Laughter is mentioned as being capable of being a form of protest; a means of
standing up to an oppressor to show that they don’t hold as much power as they
think they do. In what ways did Jesus’ life/ministry embody this form of
protest?
3) Do you feel there’s room for humor in religion?
Chapter 8 (Fire)
1) Can you think of any examples in Jesus’ nature or ministry which illustrated the
dual nature of fire? The ability to consume & destroy; the ability to light up the
dark & warm the cold.
2) In what way is your faith journey similar to fire?
3) How has God’s ability to use the fiery process of “refinement” manifested in
your own life?
4) What practices of self-attentiveness & self-awareness help stoke your own
flames?
Week 5 – Chapters 9 & 10
Chapter 9 (The Poverty of Expression)
1) How does attempting to speak about God & describe God’s nature make you
feel? Is it an exercise in futility? Or beneficial?
2) Have you ever really sat and thought about what the words mean in a familiar
prayer or Biblical passage? Do you ever find words jumping out at you that you
never noticed before that were suddenly filled with meaning?
3) I liked the quote on pg. 238, “In the poverty of expression, thou findst that He is
all.” Is God knowable? Or will we always be in a game of hide-and-seek with the
Divine?
Chapter 10 (A Short Note)
1) Here, Winner brings up rather difficult depictions of God found in the Bible as a
batterer, rapist, and abuser, explaining why she omitted devoting a whole
chapter to exploring these problematic verses. How do you feel about such an
omission?
2) Do you ever use other scriptures to help put more problematic verses in to
perspective?
3) How do you wrestle with troubling depictions of God?