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Record W7128105471

Knowing God through the Practice of Mothering

2025· article· en· W7128105471 on OpenAlexaboutno aff
Elizabeth Millar

Bibliographic record

VenueMacSphere (McMaster University) · 2025
Typearticle
Languageen
FieldSocial Sciences
TopicTheological Perspectives and Practices
Canadian institutionsnot available
Fundersnot available
KeywordsStorytellingNarrativeInterviewSpiritual practiceVulnerability (computing)Narrative inquiryEmbodied cognitionQualitative research
DOInot available

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

As a form of spiritual autobiography, sacred storytelling is the framework of deepening awareness and understanding of our own personal narratives within the story of God. This project explores how sacred storytelling helps women articulate their understanding of God within the embodied spiritual practice of mothering. As a researcher and practical theologian, I seek to contribute further understanding of the theology within maternal narratives and sacred storytelling, particularly as it relates to mothering as a spiritual vocation. This research project consists of interviewing ten women about their experience of mothering, focusing on what they know about God through the practice of mothering. The purpose of this research project is to foster an awareness of God and self within the spiritual practice of mothering and to promote sacred storytelling as a means of theological discovery. My research question is “What do women know about God through the practice of mothering?” followed by “How does sacred storytelling help women articulate their experience of God in the vocation of mothering?” This practical theological qualitative study explores the theology within women’s maternal narratives, as evidenced through sacred storytelling. Semi-structured interviews, accompanied with a photo elicitation method, are conducted with ten English-speaking Christian Canadian v women who are mothers. Participants are encouraged to tell their own experienced stories of God within the practice of mothering. Poetic analysis is used to analyze the interview transcripts and four major themes emerge: Presence of God, Divine Participation with God, Vulnerability of God, and the Unconditional Love of God. The majority of participants articulate their resonance with the natal Christ as part of their mothering experience and all participants speak of the birth of their children as a spiritually significant experience. I propose that the theology within these maternal narratives, alongside a philosophy of birth and a natal Christology, can strategically shape the mission of the church through a reorientation of God to the center, an embodiment of compassion, and the willingness to suffer.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.003
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.004
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Qualitative · Consensus signal: Qualitative
GenreCandidate signal: Empirical · Consensus signal: Empirical
Teacher disagreement score0.022
Threshold uncertainty score0.043

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0030.004
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0000.000
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0000.000
Bibliometrics0.0010.000
Science and technology studies0.0070.022
Scholarly communication0.0040.003
Open science0.0010.005
Research integrity0.0010.002
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0030.000

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.022
GPT teacher head0.287
Teacher spread0.265 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designQualitative
Domainnot available
GenreEmpirical

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations0
Published2025
Admission routes1
Has abstractyes

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