maggi dawn has written a really good piece exploring inclusive and expansive language in liturgy (link broken). being inclusive of course sounds a great idea (and is) but maggi suggests that the practice of it can lead at times to other issues and even other exclusions. she suggests expansive language might be a better way to explore…

Rather than make our capacity for naming God smaller, then, perhaps it would be better to explore the breadth of the ways God has been named; to reflect on the refusal to articulate any name for God as a way of acknowledging holiness and mystery. We might rediscover, from the scriptures, and from two thousand years of Christian theology, some of the many names of God: helper, Lord, servant and friend; compassionate father, a mother who breastfeeds her children and who knits for them, a tigress, a mother hen, a shepherd, a rock and a tower, a shield and a defence, a landowner, a housekeeper, a baker of bread, a mighty ruler and a powerless infant, the light that lightens the world, and the darkness that is above all light; the God who is both love and wisdom, and at the same time the God whose name, however close we try to get to it, will always elude us.

we had a grace service a couple of years back where we explored some similar ideas – follow the links to see some of the prayers we produced taking this approach.