Episode 113: Revisiting the Mother Tree — A Conversation with Kathryn Knight Sonntag
In her book, The Mother Tree: Discovering the Love and Wisdom of Our Divine Mother, author Kathryn Knight Sonntag wrote, “Further exploration of the Mother is part of the unfolding Restoration in our hearts.” Today many women are feeling led to explore the divine feminine more deeply, or for the first time, in an effort to erase the separation that has existed between Latter-day Saints and our Heavenly Mother. In Episode 113, Kathryn shares insights and ideas gleaned from her personal research and experiences. It’s a conversation about creating wholeness and healing the mother wound in our theology.
Notes & Quotes:
The Mother Tree, ALSSI podcast, with Kathryn Knight Sonntag, Ep. 30, 11/10/2020
The Mother Tree: Discovering the Love and Wisdom of Our Divine Mother, by Kathryn Knight Sonntag
The Making of Biblical Womanhood: How the Subjugation of Women Became Gospel Truth, by Beth Allison Barr
“I believe asking questions and exploring possibilities are indispensable ways to show love and reverence for revealed truth.” —Kathryn Knight Sonntag
“If you, as an individual woman, are not ready to acknowledge the wounds you have because of the identity that the outside world has given you vs what you carry truly, innately inside yourself, you’re not going to be in a place where you can speak out, or where you can support other women who are speaking out.” —KNS (ALSSI, Ep. 30)
“My experiences and study led me to see that we have a Mother wound in our theology. This theological phenomenon is a collective wound that has affected our ability to perceive the need for the Mother as individuals……Just as unexamined pain–be it feelings of unworthiness, abandonment, or anger–can keep us from a clear perspective on what is happening inside and outside of us, our unacknowledged wound caused by separation from our spiritual Mother likewise obscures our vision of ourselves and the divine.” —KNS (The Mother Tree, p.13)
“Keeping women silent, keeping women separate, keeping women degraded is a very real tool of the adversary to continue to rule on this earth. There’s no happenstance to the way things are and the way women have been siloed from having a larger voice. [… ] Seeing women pedestalized and silenced is THE sign, in my mind, that Babylon reigns.” —KNS (ALSSI, Ep. 30)
“Instead of being a point of pride for Christians, shouldn’t the historical continuity of a practice that has caused women to fare much worse than men for thousands of years cause concern? Shouldn’t Christians, who are called to be different from the world, treat women differently? What if patriarchy isn’t divinely ordained but is a result of human sin?” —Beth Allison Barr