What is the song referencing to in Oh my father do we have a mother?

[aprorianalysis]

Having heard the song "Oh my father" sung in primary, sacrament meetings and Sunday school old services.  What when we think even if it is philosophical, does God the Mother exist outside this thinking honorifically or in reality?

 

 

[rpn]

In reality.   We don't know a great deal about her, but she exists.   https://www.lds.org/topics/mother-in-heaven?lang=eng

When Eliza R. Snow (one of Joseph Smith's plural wives, and a prominent women in the community too) wrote the hymn, some of the men went to JS and asked him to correct and/or rebuke her for the words.   He said she was correct.   And frankly, the doctrine of eternal families and eternal progression so we can become like Heavenly Father doesn't make any sense, if you don't believe in Her too.   (What we don't know is whether all mortals have the SAME Heavenly Mother of their spirits.)

[The Nehor]

10 hours ago, aprorianalysis said:

Having heard the song "Oh my father" sung in primary, sacrament meetings and Sunday school old services.  What when we think even if it is philosophical, does God the Mother exist outside this thinking honorifically or in reality?

 

 

Reality.

[aprorianalysis]

So I suggest that Mother god, or god the mother is our other divine parentage for us to recognize, and this fact has been dormant in our civilization and spiritual decadence for a long time no real education concerning her exist except in this church hymn. 

[Robert F. Smith]

15 hours ago, aprorianalysis said:

Having heard the song "Oh my father" sung in primary, sacrament meetings and Sunday school old services.  What when we think even if it is philosophical, does God the Mother exist outside this thinking honorifically or in reality?

Some scholars read the song differently, suggesting that Eliza is referring to her own deceased Earthly mother who had gone to the Celestial Glory, and not to God the Mother.  However, that doesn't seem to hold water since her mother died the year after she had already written the poem.

Edited November 30, 2016 by Robert F. Smith

[The Nehor]

1 hour ago, aprorianalysis said:

So I suggest that Mother god, or god the mother is our other divine parentage for us to recognize, and this fact has been dormant in our civilization and spiritual decadence for a long time no real education concerning her exist except in this church hymn. 

 

What civilization? What spiritual decadence?

[JAHS]

It's reality, although more inspired common sense type of thinking and latter-day revelation, rather than by direct scriptural evidence. Some have even been of the opinion that she is the Holy Ghost; but since God the Father is an exalted being of flesh and bone it makes sense that she would be the same kind of being. 

[Robert F. Smith]

On 11/29/2016 at 6:24 AM, rpn said:

In reality.   We don't know a great deal about her, but she exists.   https://www.lds.org/topics/mother-in-heaven?lang=eng

When Eliza R. Snow (one of Joseph Smith's plural wives, and a prominent women in the community too) wrote the hymn, some of the men went to JS and asked him to correct and/or rebuke her for the words.   He said she was correct.   And frankly, the doctrine of eternal families and eternal progression so we can become like Heavenly Father doesn't make any sense, if you don't believe in Her too.   (What we don't know is whether all mortals have the SAME Heavenly Mother of their spirits.)

Eliza wrote that poem after the death of Joseph, so that no one went to ask him about it.

[rpn]

I stand corrected (should have gone back to verify the anecdote that was lodged in my head before I wrote).  I'd delete my post if it were possible.  

See the following "Eliza R. Snow The Significance of "Oh My Father""

BYU Studies 36, no. 1 (1996-97) 

http://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3104&context=byusq

https://archive.org/details/ElizaRSnowSignificanceOfOhMyFather

 

Quote

How did Zion s Poetess learn of the existence of Mother in 
Heaven? Speaking at the October 1893 general conference, Presi- 
dent Wilford Woodruff declared: 

With regard v> our position before wc came here, I wUt sxy lliU; we 

dwelt with the Father and with the Son. as expressed in the hymn, 
'O my I-utiier,' that has been suny here. That h\ nin is a rev elation, 
ihougli it was given unto us by a woman — Sister Snow. There are a 
great many sisters who have the spirit of revelation. There is no rea- 
son why they should not be inspired as well as men,^ 

Joseph E Smith, however, emphasized the importance of 
acknowledging Joseph Smitti as the source of the doctrine, A coim* 
selor in the First Presidency at the time when he spoke at a stake 
conference in Franklin, Idaho, he said: 



Significance ofOMy Father" to Eliza R. Snow 



99 



Our Heavenly Father has never yet to my knowledge revealed to this 
Church any great principle through a woman. Now, sisters, do not 
cast me off nor deny the faith, b«:ause I tell you that God has never 

tevealed any great and cssetitial trulti for the guidance of the Latter- 
day Saints through any woman. "Oh! but," says one, "what about 
Eliza Snow*s beautiful h^mn. "O mv Father. Thou that dwellest,' etc? 
Did not the Lord reveal through her that great and glorious principle 
that wc have a mother as well as a father in heaven?" No. God 

revealed that piind^le to Joseph Sxnith; Joseph Smith revealed it to 
Eliza Snow Smith, his wife; and Eliza Snow was inspired, being a 
poet, to put it into tctsc." 

Siisa YoLing Ciatts. \\ ho grew up in her father Brigham Young's 
household with "ALint " Eliza. obser\ etl in 1911 that 'no one thought 
to ask Sister Snow in life to recount the incidents connected with 
the [hymn's] composition" and then provided "a possible glimpse 
of the thoughtJcemel which grew into such fragrant bloom in the 
full-voiced poem of Sister Snow."^^ Susa indicated that she and 
others had heard Zina D. H. Young recount the Prophet's comfort- 
ing words to Zina after her mother, Zina Baker Huntington, died 
July 8, 1839: 

"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 assurcdl) hav e. How could a Failicr claim His titic unless tlicre 

were also a Mother to share that parenthood?"" 

About the same time, Gates assumed, Eliza "learned the same glo- 
rious 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.*"*^ Susa could not have grown up near 
Aunt EJiza without knowing of her love for Joseph and his expan- 
sive understanding. 

In 1916, David McKay, patriarch and father of a later prophet, 
shared with a Relief Society sister in Scotland memories of a long 
conversation with Eliza R. Snow he had when he was asked to take 
her by buggy from Huntsville to Eden, Utah. He had decided he 



I 



100 



BYU studies 



"wanted in&xmiation on some things that was not clear to my 
mind." "Did the Lotd teveal that doctrine of motheriiood in heaven 
to you?" he asked Hiza. He remembered her sa> iiig, "No indeed." 
Rather, the Prophet had taught the Relief Socierjr sisters "many 
things that transpired in our Spirit home. ... I got my inspiration 
from the Prophets teachings [and] all that I was requited to do was 
to use my Poetical gift and give that Eternal principal in Poetry."" 

A 1988 stud) by Charles R. Harrell clearly shows that pub- 
lished mention of the concept of Mother in Heaven occurred in 
Nau\ oo as earlv as December 1844. when the Seventies Hall was 
dedicated and a W. W. Phelps hymn was sung. It contained the fol- 
lowing couplet: 

Come to me: here's the mvst n" that man hath not seen: 
Here s our Father in heaven, and Mother, the Queen;'* 

Further, Harrell observes: 

With the basic preexisteni tumily organization being delineated near 

the end of 1844, the idea of humankiiul oilginatifig as 

of twaventjr pafcnts became a sut^ect of great interest throi^out 

1845. E!iz:i R. Snow 's 'O My Father.' written in Oct{)ber 184t. is sig- 
nificant oiil} ill tliai it so eloquently captures tlie essence of this 
already developed thought." 

Wilford Woodruffs declaration that Eliza Snow's hymn "is a 
revelation" is not inconsistent with the idea that she discussed 
with Joseph Smith and others the concept of heavenly parents. 
President Woodruffs statement, like the poem itself, suggests 
that Eliza received her own personal confirmation of the doc- 
trine by revelation. The poem is powerfully personal, written in 
the first person to reflect the poet's own spiritual search and wit- 
ness. By itself, an intellectual grasp of the doctrines could not have 
transformed Eliza's sense of displacement, loneliness, and grief 
into the testimony of divine design, association, and joy that per- 
vades "O My Father." The hymn represents Eliza's epiphany; like 
the magnificats of Hannah and Mary, it fuses knowledge of God 
and intense personal rejoicing. 

In a sense, the writing of "O My Father" initiated Eliza R. 
Snow s leadership of nineteenth-century Latter-day Saint \\ omen. 
As she and other Saints prepared to evacuate Nauvoo in the fall of 



Significance of "O My Father" to JEliza R. Snow 



101 



1845, she was forced to come to terms with her own identity as 
never beibre. Her relationships with the men in her life, of primary 
importance to most nineteenth-centxiry women, had unalterably 
changed. The daughter of Oliver Snow^ had become the secret 
plural wife of Joseph Smith, but with husband and father dead, 
who was she? She had been attached to several different Nauvoo 
households and was about to be displaced again during the Saints* 
removal fsom. the dty. Whatever importance she ***^ed to being 
Zion's Poetess, that role could not fully identify her. How was she 
to locate herself amidst displacement and chaise? When Eliza 
soutfiiUy articulated her personal connectedness to Father and 
Mother in Heaven, her attachment to the eternal household where 
she had resided and would yet dwell, she defined the polestar by 
which she would orient herself for the rest of her life. 

The poem's original title, "My Father in Heaven," suggests the 
poet's conceptual move fix)m "my £ather*s femily" to "my Father in 
Heaven's £unily." But dwelling in the "royal court on high" are both 
Father and Mother, a &ct Eliza emphasizes in the final stanza by 
repeating the plurals "you" and "your," a contrast to the singular 
"thou" and "thy" in the first stanza. 

Recognizing "a mother ihere allowed Eliza to understand 
Joseph Smith's famous King Follett Discourse as an affirmation that 
women as well as men could achieve exaltation, godhood. "Ciod 
Himself, the Father of us all, once dwelled on an earth the same as 
Jesus Christ himself did in the flesh." the Prophet Joseph explained 
on April ^. 1844, admonishing Saints 'to learn how to be Ciods 
yourseh es , , . by going from a small degree to another, from grace 
to grace, from exaltation to exaltation, until you are able to sit in 
glory as doth those who sit enthroned in everlasting power."'" The 
concept made it possible for Eliza to identify with a holy woman 
thus exalted, a female fer beyond herself, her own mother, or the 
classical heroines whose names had served as Eliza's pseudonyms 
when she was a young poet. Certainly it allowed her to project her 
own marriage to Joseph into eternity, where husband and wife, as 
revelation to Joseph promised, might ultimately "be gods" whose 
"glory shall be a fulness and a continuation of the seeds forever 
and ever" (D&C 132:19, 20). 

 

Edited December 1, 2016 by rpn

[Calm]

Sam, if you got banned for awhile (I don't remember seeing anything that would make it permanent), then the last thing you want to do is start a new alias as that will get you banned permanently in any variation.  Just be patient and wait out your suspension is my advice.

[aprorianalysis]

Hello, and greetings to those that contemplate the suggestion that we have a heavenly parent beside the God of eternality who is a female.

One can only speculate that God the mother is a very high ubiquitous deity.  She is magnificent and presumably all over the universes of universes.

Concentrated down into the holy spirit, that which is given to us as a gift.  So if that part of the mother is in us, gives us our consciousness and perhaps is the creative spark of experiences that we deem human, we should be thankful indeed.  Secondly, I deduce that if she is experiential she is the god of eminence and the individual god of experience. That would leave the God of our fathers, the Universal father, God the Almighty as the god of existential creation the god of paradise.  Outside of time and space.  Is that logical?  Great deal of philosophical leaven to chew on.  Sir Thomas Aquinas anyone?