QUOTES ABOUT OUR HEAVENLY MOTHER; Mormon Influence

"QUOTES ABOUT OUR HEAVENLY MOTHER


“In the heav’ns are parents single?
No, the thought makes reason stare;
Truth is reason—truth eternal
Tells me I’ve a mother there.
When I leave this frail existence—
When I lay this mortal by
Father, mother, may I meet you
In your royal courts on high?”

-Eliza R. Snow, Eliza R. Snow: The Complete Poetry, ed. Jill Mulvay Derr and Karen Lynn Davidson

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“All men and women are in the similitude of the universal Father and Mother and are literally the sons and daughters of Diety.”

–  “The Origin and Destiny of Man,” Improvement Era 12 (November 1909): 78.

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“All human beings–male and female–are created in the image of God. Each is a beloved spirit son or daughter of heavenly parents, and, as such, each had a divine nature and destiny. Gender is an essential characteristic of individual premortal, mortal, and eternal identity and purpose.”

– The Family: A Proclamation to the World

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“Logic and reason would certainly suggest that if we have a Father in Heaven, we have a Mother in Heaven. That doctrine rests well with me… The fact that we do not pray to our Mother in Heaven in no way belittles or denigrates her… None of us can add to or diminish the glory of her of whom we have no revealed knowledge.”

– Gordon B. Hinckley, “Daughters of God,” Ensign 31 (November 1991): 100.

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We are the offspring of God. He is our Father, and we have a Mother in the other life as well.

(Teachings of Lorenzo Snow, 191)

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Now, the sealing for eternity gives to you eternal leadership. The man will have the authority of the priesthood, and if he keeps his life in order he will become a god. Now, that’s hard to understand, isn’t it? But that’s the way it is. You see, we have a Father in Heaven and we have a mother in heaven. And so we have a spiritual father and mother as we have a material father and mother on the earth. The Lord created this earth for us and made it a beautiful place to live. He promised us that if we would live the right way we could come back to him and be like him.

(The Teachings of Spencer W. Kimball, p.52)

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“An interesting sidelight is given to this time through a possible glimpse of the thought-kernel which grew into such fragrant bloom in the full-voiced poem of Sister Snow. It was told by Aunt Zina D. Young  to the writer as to many others during her life. Father Huntington lost his wife under the most trying circumstances. Her children were left desolate. One day, when her daughter Zina was speaking with the Prophet Joseph Smith concerning the loss of her mother and her intense grief, she asked the question:

“`Will I know my mother as my mother when I get over on the Other Side?’

“`Certainly you will,’ was the instant reply of the Prophet. `More than that, you will meet and become acquainted with your eternal Mother, the wife of your Father in Heaven.’

“`And have I then a Mother in Heaven?’ exclaimed the astonished girl.

“`You assuredly have. How could a Father claim His title unless there were also a Mother to share that parenthood?’

“It was about this time that Sister Snow learned the same glorious truth from the same inspired lips, and at once she was moved to express her own great joy and gratitude in the moving words of the hymn, `O my Father.'”

- Joseph Smith, secondhand account (Susa Young Gates, History of the Young Ladies’ Mutual Improvement Association of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints from November 1869 to June 1910 (Salt Lake City: General Board of the Y.L.M.I.A., 1911), p. 16, footnote)

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The belief of Latter-Day Saints that we are children of a Mother in Heaven as well as our Father in Heaven, Christ being our Elder Brother, deepens mortal understanding of divine oneness, fullness, perfect unity. Though no extant recorded sermon of Joseph Smith discusses the nature of a heavenly mother, Zina D. H. Young, for one, witnessed that the Prophet personally had taught her the doctrine as she mourned the death of her own mother. Certainly the concept comes as a logical extension of his teaching that godhood is eternal parenthood, “a fulness and a continuation of the seeds forever and ever.” Significantly, however, Eliza R. Snow’s Nauvoo poem known and sung for 150 years as “O My Father” is the earliest recorded expression of Latter-Day Saint belief in a heavenly mother.

–Derr, Cannon, & Beecher. (1992). Women of Covenant: The Story of Relief Society. Deseret Book Company. Salt Lake City, UT.

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Finally, remember: When we return to our real home, it will be with the “mutual approbation” of those who reign in the “royal courts on high.” There we will find beauty such as mortal “eye hath not seen”; we will hear sounds of surpassing music which mortal “ear hath not heard.” Could such a regal homecoming be possible without the anticipatory arrangements of a Heavenly Mother?

–Elder Neal A. Maxwell

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All men and women are in the similitude of the universal Father and Mother, and are literally sons and daughters of Deity.

–President Joseph F. Smith, John R. Winder, Anthon H. Lund (Mormon Doctrine); Also in the text “The Origin of Man”

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Brigham Young said that God “created man, as we create our children; for there is no other process of creation in heaven, on the earth, in the earth, or under the earth, or in all the eternities, that is, that were, or that ever will be”—an indirect reference to the necessity of a mother for the process of creation.

–President Brigham Young

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Now, it is not said in so many words in the Scriptures, that we have a Mother in heaven as well as a Father. It is left for us to infer this from what we see and know of all living things in the earth including man. The male and female principle is united and both necessary to the accomplishment of the object of their being, and if this be not the case with our Father in heaven after whose image we are created, then it is an anomaly in nature. But to our minds the idea of a Father suggests that of a Mother.

— Erastus Snow

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Implicit in the Christian verity that all men are the spirit children of an Eternal Father is the usually unspoken truth that they are also the offspring of an Eternal Mother. An exalted and glorified Man of Holiness (Moses 6:57) could not be a Father unless a Woman of like glory, perfection, and holiness was associated with him as a Mother. The begetting of children makes a man a father and a woman a mother whether we are dealing with man in his mortal or immortal state….

[God] is our Eternal Father; we have also an Eternal Mother. There is no such thing as a father without a mother, nor can there be children without parents. We were born as the spirit children of Celestial Parents long before the foundations of this world were laid.

–Elder Bruce R. McConkie (Mormon Doctrine, p.516-517)

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And Hugh B. Brown, of the First Presidency, noted in 1961 that “some have questioned our concept of a mother in heaven, but no home, no church, no heaven would be complete without a mother there.

–Elder Hugh B. Brown

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“The fact that there is no reference to a Mother in Heaven either in the Bible, Book of Mormon or Doctrine and Covenants, is not sufficient proof that no such thing as a mother did exist there.”

–President Joseph Fielding Smith

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An article in the Deseret News noted that the truthfulness of the doctrine of a mother in heaven would eventually be accepted by the world—that “it is a truth from which, when fully realized, the perfect ‘emancipation’ and ennobling of woman will result.” She stands side by side with the Heavenly Father “in all her glory, a glory like unto his … a companion, the Mother of his children.” She is “a glorified, exalted, ennobled Mother.”

–Quoting Elder Melvin J. Ballard,  Journal History, 8 May 1921, 1-3

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Joseph Fielding Smith, much like Elizabeth Cady Stanton, quoted Genesis 1:26—”Let us make man in our image after our likeness” (his italics)—and suggests, “Is it not feasible to believe that female spirits were created in the image of a ‘Mother in Heaven’?”

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“When we sing that doctrinal hymn … ‘O My Father,’ we get a sense of the ultimate in maternal modesty, of the restrained, queenly elegance of our Heavenly Mother, and knowing how profoundly our mortal mothers have shaped us here, do we suppose her influence on us as individuals to be less?”

–President Spencer W. Kimball (Ensign, May 1978, p. 6.)

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“What,” says one, “do you mean we should understand that Deity consists of man and woman?” Most certainly I do. If I believe anything that God has ever said about himself . . . I must believe that deity consists of man and woman . . . there can be no God except he is composed of the man and woman united, and there is not in all the eternities that exist, or ever will be a God in any other way.”

(Erastus Snow, Journal of Discourses, 19:269–70, March 3, 1878.)

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“The Church is bold enough to go so far as to declare that man has an Eternal Mother in the Heavens as well as an Eternal Father, and in the same sense ‘we look upon woman as a being, essential in every particular to the carrying out of God’s purposes in respect to mankind.’”

–James E. Talmage, Deseret News, 28 Apr. 1902

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“Sisters, I testify that when you stand in front of your heavenly parents in those royal courts on high and you look into Her eyes and behold Her countenance, any question you ever had about the role of women in the kingdom will evaporate into the rich celestial air, because at that moment you will see standing directly in front of you, your divine nature and destiny.”

(Glenn L. Pace, “The Divine Nature and Destiny of Women” (devotional address, Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, March 9, 2010), available at http://speeches.byu.edu )

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In a meeting for church regional representatives on 5 April 1991, Gordon B. Hinckley, first counselor in the First Presidency, responded to reports that “here and there, prayers have been offered to our Mother in Heaven.” He had searched and found “nowhere in the Standard Works an account where Jesus prayed other than to His Father in Heaven … I have looked in vain for any instance … [of] ‘a prayer to our Mother in Heaven.’” He said he “consider[s] it inappropriate for anyone in the Church to pray to our Mother in Heaven” and instructed regional representatives to “counsel priesthood leaders to be on the alert for the use of this expression and to make correction where necessary. Such correction can be handled in a discreet and inoffensive way. But it should be firm and without equivocation.”

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In 1910 Apostle Rudger Clawson pointed out that men as well as women and children crave a mother in heaven to worship and “yearn to adore her.” He said, “It doesn’t take from our worship of the Eternal Father, to adore our Eternal mother, any more than it diminishes the love we bear our earthly fathers, to include our earthly mother in our affection”

–(Rudger Clawson, unsigned article, “Our Mother in Heaven,” Latter-day Saints’Millennial Star 72 [29 Sept. 1910]: 619-20).

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Kathryn H. Shirts who spoke of a Primary class, “in which someone asked the teacher, “If we have a Mother in Heaven, how come we never hear about her?” The teacher’s reply was that God was protecting her name from the kinds of slander that human beings direct toward the names of the Father and the Son.” Shirts continued: “It was a clever reply, and, at the time, we all thought it was quite satisfying. None of us realized then that this answer described a lady not quite up to taking care of herself in a tough world, an image drawn purely from certain human conventions and not from divine reality.”

(Kathryn H. Shirts, “Women in the Image of the Son: Being Female and Being Like Christ,” in Women Steadfast in Christ: Talks Selected from the 1991 Women’s Conference Co-sponsored by Brigham Young University and the Relief Society, ed. Dawn Hall Anderson and Marie Cornwall (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 1992), 95.)

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“One day the Prophet Joseph asked him [Coltrin] and Sidney Rigdon to accompany him into the woods to pray. When they had reached a secluded spot Joseph laid down on his back and stretched out his arms. He told the brethren to lie one on each arm, and then shut their eyes. After they had prayed he told them to open their eyes. They did so and saw a brilliant light surrounding a pedestal which seemed to rest on the earth. They closed their eyes and again prayed. They then saw, on opening them, the Father seated upon a throne; [6] they prayed again and on looking saw the Mother also; after praying and looking the fourth time they saw the Savior added to the group.”

–Abraham H. Cannon Journal, 25 Aug. 1880, LDS archives

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Eugene England, in answer to the question “What is a good basis for imagining eternal marriage, then?”: The plain scriptures, I believe. In the first place, modern scriptures and revelations suggest quite plainly that we would more accurately and profitably read the scriptural references to “God” as meaning God the eternal partnership of Heavenly Father and Heavenly Mother. They have a more perfect unity even than that of God and Christ and the Holy Ghost, and so the word God implies both of them, at least as much as it denotes the three beings in the classical Christian trinity called “God.” Such a more correct identification of “God” might help us better comprehend the direct role our Heavenly Mother played in our creation and salvation. When we read in Genesis that God said, “Let us create man in our image,” it makes most sense to read it as God the Father and God the Mother speaking as One. When we read in John that God sent His only begotten Son to save us, it would be better to understand, as it certainly makes more sense, that our Heavenly Parents sent Their only begotten Son. This process is truer to the evidence—and to our real needs as men and women—than looking for a female God between the lines in the scriptures or in apocryphal works or mythologies, as many feminist theologians are doing. It might help us better imagine our futures as husbands and wives, equally yoked in what Shakespeare called “the marriage of true minds”—and to work toward that future now. Second, modern revelation tells us that when God put “man” on the earth, “in the image of mine Only Begotten created I him; male and female created I them.” (Moses 2:27.) Clearly men and women were both created in the “image” of Christ. That would seem to mean we are created in the image of the Heavenly Parents who together make up the “God” whom Christ came to reveal, that is, the perfect eternal partnership He came to teach us how to achieve and to show us in His life and character what we would be like when we achieved it.

–Eugene England, BYU Women’s Conference

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A beautiful poem we appreciate:

Another Prayer

Why are you silent, Mother? How can I
Become a goddess when the patterns here
Are those of gods? I struggle, and I try
To mold my womanself to something near
Their goodness. I need you, who gave me birth
In your own image, to reveal your ways:
A rich example of thy daughters’ worth;
Pillar of Womanhood to guide our days;
Fire of power and grace to guide my night
When I am lost.
My brothers question me,
And wonder why I seek this added light.
No one can answer all my pain but Thee,
Ordain me to my womanhood, and share
The light that Queens and Priestesses must bear.

–Lisa Bolin Hawkins, “Another Prayer,” Exponent II 6 (Winter 1980): 16



BORN OF HEAVENLY PARENTS
Man, as a spirit, was begotten and born of heavenly parents, and reared to maturity in the eternal mansions of the Father, prior to coming upon the earth in a temporal body to undergo an experience in mortality…. Man is the child of God, formed in the divine image and endowed with divine attributes, and even as the infant son of an earthly father and mother is capable in due time of becoming a man, so the undeveloped offspring of celestial parentage is capable, by experience through ages and eons, of evolving into a God.

- First Presidency (Joseph F. Smith, John R. Winder, Anthon H. Lund; Messages of the First Presidency, 4:205)

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God is our father. He loves us. He and our mother in heaven value us beyond any measure. They gave our eternal intelligences spirit form, just as our earthly mothers and fathers have given us mortal bodies. Each of us is unique—one of a kind, made of the eternal intelligence that gives us claim upon eternal life.

- Spencer W. Kimball (My Beloved Sisters, p.25)

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Now, the fact that you and I are here in mortal bodies is evidence that we were among those who were in that great concourse of organized intelligences; we knew God, our Father. He was our Heavenly Father; we were sired by Him. We had a Heavenly Mother—can you think of having a father without a mother? That great hymn “O My Father” puts it correctly when Eliza R. Snow wrote, “In the heav’ns are parents single? No, the thought makes reason stare! Truth is reason; truth eternal tells me I’ve a mother there.” Born of a Heavenly Mother, sired by a Heavenly Father, we knew Him, we were in His house, and we knew His illustrious Son, who was to come here and redeem mankind as a part of the plan of salvation.

- Harold B. Lee (The Teachings of Harold B. Lee, p.22)

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We have a Father and a Mother in heaven, in whose image we were created, male and female. We were begotten and born in the spirit before we were begotten and born in the flesh; and we must be begotten and born again, in the similitude of those earlier begettings and births, or we cannot regain the presence of our eternal Father and Mother.

- Orson F. Whitney (Saturday Night Thoughts, p.258–259)

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I know that God lives.… I believe he is the Father of my spirit and the Father of your spirit. I believe we were born to him and to our mother in heaven. I do not know the process, but I do know how we are born to our fathers and mothers in this earth and that is the way I think about it.… I believe I was born to him as a spirit child in the spirit world before I was born here, and what I say about myself-and you will pardon the personal reference-I feel about every other human soul that lives in the earth. I believe we all lived with him before we came here.

– Marion G. Romney (Conference Report, April 1948, p.76-77)



WOMEN ARE CREATED IN THE IMAGE OF HEAVENLY MOTHER
All men and women are in the similitude of the universal Father and Mother, and are literally the sons and daughters of Deity.

- First Presidency (Joseph F. Smith, John R. Winder, Anthon H. Lund; Messages of the First Presidency, 4:203)

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God made man in his own image and certainly he made woman in the image of his wife-partner. You [women] are daughters of God. You are precious. You are made in the image of our heavenly Mother.

- Spencer W. Kimball (The Teachings of Spencer W. Kimball, p.25)

WOMEN CAN BECOME LIKE OUR HEAVENLY MOTHER
You sisters, I suppose, have read that poem which my sister composed years ago, and which is sung quite frequently now in our meetings. It tells us that we not only have a Father in “that high and glorious place,” but that we have a Mother too; and you will become as great as your Mother, if you are faithful.

- Lorenzo Snow (Teachings of Lorenzo Snow, p.7)



WOMEN RECEIVED TRAITS FROM HEAVENLY MOTHER
Women are endowed with special traits and attributes that come trailing down through eternity from a divine mother. Young women have special God-given feelings about charity, love, and obedience. Coarseness and vulgarity are contrary to their natures. They have a modifying, softening influence on young men. Young women were not foreordained to do what priesthood holders do. Theirs is a sacred, God-given role, and the traits they received from heavenly mother are equally as important as those given to the young men.

- Vaughn J. Featherstone (Ensign, November 1987, p.27)"

Source
http://www.nearingkolob.com/quotes-heavenly-mother/