Thermostat wars - a theological perspective

The author of The Da Vinci Code is sympathetic to the concept of the "Divine Feminine", that primordial nurturing force of the universe represented by Venus and Aphrodite and Isis and maybe Mary Magdalene. Towards the end the book, the author makes the plea that our world must once again celebrate the Divine Feminine, that we must become whole and fertile and get in touch with our feminine self and repudiate the evil militarism of our patriarchal society.

If he is speaking metaphorically I can live with that. There's not a one of us who wouldn't benefit from getting away from the TV or office and commune with Mother Nature, enjoying Her splendor by strolling through forests and meadows, watching our furry little friends go hippity-hop down the Bunny Trail, stepping on venomous snakes, being attacked by blood-sucking sand flies, contracting Lyme Disease...whoa, I guess snakes and sand flies must be from the realm of the Masculine. Mother Earth would never treat us like that.

If Dan Brown really believes that there is a Divine Feminine, then all I got to say is this: I sure hope not.

Here I sit in the Ohio Valley, with its heat and humidity, and as I type this I'm wearing a scrub top, and under it, some Patagonia long underwear. I've been in one too many endoscopy rooms where the thermostat has been set down to 62 degrees by some perimenopausal nurse. After a few procedures my fingers grow numb, my core temperature drops to 92 degrees, and I listen to patient after patient compare our room to a walk-in meat locker.

It gets worse. Combine a woman going through menopause with a woman suffering from low thyroid hormone levels and a female Generation X'er who is just plain tired of listening to the old folks complain, and you have Total Primordial Chaos. One turns the thermostat down to 58. The other counters by putting their space heater on their desk and turning it on full blast. One sneaks around the flank and turns the thermostat up to 80, the other gets a minifan and plugs it in, cranking it up while papers and office documents go hurtling through the air.

No, I'm too much of an empiricist to believe in a Mother Goddess. If she really existed, our global warming would end abruptly, our temperatures would go down 5-10 degrees planet wide, we'd have glaciers in Florida and mass extinction everywhere, with only the most cold-resistant life forms surviving. I wouldn't trust Venus with a thermostat. Not until Isis sneaks around to the flank.