You don’t need me to tell you that Mother’s Day is complicated for many. A two-second pause to contemplate the people in your life for whom the holiday might be painful would yield evidence enough that the day (and the church-backed events that it often brings) can be tricky. Instead, maybe we can ask why is that so?

My hunch is that the labyrinth of emotions accompanying this holiday has to do with the elevation and highlighting of a very specific relationship. And relationships are layered, sometimes strained, always unique. They are formed between people, and no two people are alike. A day to “celebrate mothers” feels not altogether different from declaring a day to “celebrate health.” Can you imagine? The pain that would come from those whose bodies have received diagnoses? From those who have learned from their faith communities to not trust their physical selves? From those trapped inside of addiction, or those raging against the institutions that compromise our wellness, or those who have been traumatized by diet culture? Health is complicated because it has to do with a relationship between a person and their body. “Celebrating health” would be an oversimplification of such a complex human experience.

So too with mothers.

Here’s a Mother’s Day litany that is also simplified for such vastly different connections and experiences that surround us. But, I hope it makes a little more room for a few more people.

 *****************************************************************

Needed: A candle and lighter, something to represent bread and wine for communion (a cracker and juice, toast and milk, etc), and a little cup of dirt (plus a seed, if available). If reading with people, one voice will read all unbolded sections while the group joins in for the bolded sections.

“If ever there is a tomorrow when we’re not together, there is something you must always remember. You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think. But the most important thing is, even if we are apart, I will always be with you.” –Winnie the Pooh

ONE: Right now, we push aside all the feelings we “should” have and people we “should” be, and we open wide our doors to what is

ALL: Welcome, old grief; 

Welcome, new reality; 

Welcome, fear; 

Welcome, worry; 

Welcome, exactly who we are right now

ONE: As we light this candle, we declare this space for remembering and honoring the children and parents we miss during Mother’s (and/or Father’s) day(s)

ALL: Be with us, saints; 

Be with us, Spirit

Song: Let It Be

ONE: For children who had to say goodbye to parents when they should have had so much more time

ALL: We hold you now: (name any names aloud)

ONE: For children who have watched the minds and bodies of parents deteriorate, no longer able to recognize or remember

ALL: We hold you now:

ONE: For children whose parents were unable to offer their presence or resources, children who ached to know a different kind of paternal or maternal love

ALL: We hold you now:

ONE: For children who have lost parents to suicide, disease, estrangement

ALL: We hold you now:

ONE: For children who wrestle with the complexities of their birth parents, adoptive parents, and foster parents

ALL: We hold you now:

ONE: For children who are navigating the milestones of life without their mothers or fathers there to call for recipes and family histories and old stories that have faded with years

ALL: We hold you now:

ONE: For LGBTQIA+ children who do not have homes to which they can return

ALL: We hold you now:

ONE: For children who were abused in a multitude of ways:

ALL: We hold you now:

ONE: For children who dread the holidays because of their voids

ALL: We hold you now:

Scripture: Matthew 5:1-12

ONE: For parents who birthed babies straight into the arms of God

ALL: We hold you now:

ONE: For parents who have lost young children to disasters that make this life seem too unfair for the human heart

ALL: We hold you now:

ONE: For parents who have raised their grandchildren or other relatives because of a lost life or reality

ALL: We hold you now:

ONE: For parents who have lost children to suicide, disease, estrangement

ALL: We hold you now: 

ONE: For parents whose children were unable to offer their presence or connection, parents who ached to know a different kind of familial love

ALL: We hold you now:

ONE: For parents who have received a gutting diagnosis

ALL: We hold you now:

ONE: For parents who are raising children, and working jobs, and running households by themselves

ALL: We hold you now:

ONE: For birth parents who wrestle with the complexities of hard decisions and limited resources

ALL: We hold you now:

ONE: For adoptive and foster parents who wrestle with the complexities of hard questions, identity narratives, and ethics

ALL: We hold you now:

ONE: For migrant and refugee parents who are risking everything (even separation) for a better life for their children

ALL: We hold you now:

“If I had lost a leg—I would tell them—instead of a boy, no one would ever ask me if I was ‘over’ it. They would ask me how I was doing learning to walk without my leg. I was learning to walk and to breathe and to live without Wade. And what I was learning is that it was never going to be the life I had before.” –Elizabeth Edwards

ONE: To those who are not biological parents, but who step in to mother and father so many around them

ALL: We honor you now:

ONE: To those who chose not to be parents in a culture that so often pressures otherwise

ALL: We honor you now:

ONE: To those who would choose to be parents, or parents again, but who grieve the loss of a dream

ALL: We honor you now:

ONE: To those who have redefined family to go past lines of biology, nationality, and economics

ALL: We honor you now:

ONE: To those who did the best they could with what they had when they had it

ALL: We honor you now:

ONE: To those versions of ourselves that we never turned into, and the versions of ourselves that we did

ALL: We honor you now:

ONE: To the voices we wish we could hear say “Happy Mother’s and Father’s Day”

ALL: We honor you now:

ONE: To the ears to which we wish we could say “Happy Mother’s and Father’s Day”

ALL: We honor you now:

Scripture: John 1:5

“Sorry, but you don’t really get a choice—you keep waking up and you keep breathing and your heart keeps on beating. And because your blood hasn’t stopped moving through your body, your stomach gets hungry, and then your mouth eats. This is how it goes. Your sad little heart becomes a force of nature. Despite the depth of its wounds, it just keeps going and then the rest of your body has to follow. You eat. You sleep. You sit, and stand, and walk. You smile. Eventually, you laugh. It’s like your heart knows that if it keeps going, so will you. And your heart hasn’t forgotten how good it is to be in the world, so it pushes on, propelling you along to the fridge, the shower, a family dinner, coffee with a friend. In doing these things, your spirit catches up with what your heart already knows; it’s pretty good to be alive. I guess what I’m getting at is that if you too are mired in the early days of unimaginable loss, the only thing to do is follow your heart. Then listen to your body. And keep…going.” –Jamie Wright 

Song: Great is Thy Faithfulness

ONE: Hear our words to those we miss

ALL: Meet us in our celebration and in our grief 

Communion

ONE: The body of Mary’s son, broken for us

The blood of God’s son, poured out for the world

ALL: Thank you Jesus for the bigger picture of resurrection

ONE: God’s family table is open to all who wish to partake, in your homes, on these screens, though separated we are one.

(Participants hold cup of soil—and a seed if possible—in their hands.)

Remind us, God, that our faith makes room for death, that our faith can hold endings, though they are excruciating and devastating.

(Participants push seeds into dirt.)

Remind us that in a backwards kingdom, end is beginning, last is first, and burial is birth…eventually.

ALL: Thank you for love that was, is, and is to come. Amen.

Go now in the peace that passes our understanding.

I am not a Catholic. In fact, I was raised in the charismatic, protestant church in Scotland. A faith tradition which taught us that, “praying to saints” (especially Mary) was idolatry. 

This morning however, just after my husband read me the news about the escalating situation of war in Israel, Gaza, and Iran, I found myself praying with, and even to, Mary the mother of Jesus. 

For some years now, beginning in a time of deep grief, God has been “turning up” for me … with me … in me … beside me … as my Mother. The tender, loving, yet incredibly fierce and creative Life Force, which birthed our universe and our existence. An Eternal Womb in which I’m always held. This has been a wonderful “widening out” in my understanding of God and has brought great healing to my deepest wounds; in a way which only incredible intimacy can. 

But, unlike many others – who are also currently discovering the Divine Feminine Presence of God – I’ve honestly never given much thought to Mary of Nazareth, the earthly mother of Jesus. 

That was, until recently, when I spent some extended time in Mexico and found myself entranced – and frankly enchanted – by the incredibly abundant images, literally everywhere (murals, graffitied walls, bumper stickers, tattoos) of Our Lady of Guadalupe. 

For those of us without much knowledge of Catholic faith traditions, Our Lady of Guadalupe is a “Marian” apparition. That is, an appearance of Mary, the mother of Jesus, who came to an indigenous man, San Juan Diego (Cuauhtlatoatzin – Talking Eagle – was his indigenous name) in Mexico, 1531. 

The story tells us that after several divine meetings between the two: San Juan and Guadalupe. Meetings which took place over a period of several days. Meetings in which she beckoned, encouraged and instructed him; Guadalupe’s image was miraculously imprinted on this ordinary man’s cloak. This miraculous “painting” is still with us today and is available to view at the Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, in modern day Mexico City.

Here’s the thing … I, as a good protestant girl, wasn’t raised to be intoxicated by the smells and bells of Catholic “superstition”.  I was taught, not to use saints as intermediaries, but to address the Divine directly and on my own behalf. In the faith tradition of my childhood, we weren’t permitted to pray to an image, nor worship idols … but, suddenly here I was, surrounded by endless, almost omnipresent, images of this Mexican-indigenous “Mary” and I found myself enamored by her. 

I snapped photos of her on every walk and at every stop sign, until my phone and Instagram account were full. I found myself sketching her over and over in my journals; researching the meanings hidden in the symbols of her dress, her pose and her face. What could this alluring … comforting … almost protecting image possibly mean!? Why did it strike me so much? How had it inspired such incredible devotion in the people of Mexico? 

As I began to allow myself to surrender to the call, I found that in drawing her … piece by piece … again and again … I was sketching out a map of God.

Much like my ancestors – the ancient Celts – with their “three leafed” Celtic knot describing the mystery of the Trinity, I discovered that the people of Mexico had also been given a symbol to aid them in their understanding of the Infinite. This map came to them through an image of Mary … a poor, brown, pregnant, unwed, teenage, praying girl.   

Of course, my firmly western, pragmatic, protestant brain could hardly handle this kind of mystery! Mary was a human girl … like me. Not God. Not the Divine one. Not even the Holy Spirit, who I had come to know, so tenderly, as Mother. I wrestled with the “either – or” of the whole situation and rubbed my eyes again and again in frustration at this new vision of oneness that God was so kindly showing me about Herself and her saints; her dearly loved ones. 

During the last couple years this oneness has sunk into my heart, where my brain couldn’t receive it. I have begun to let go and trust. Christ is the Vine and I am one of the branches. I cannot find the line where God ends and I begin, so why should I feel such a desperate need to draw that line anywhere else? 

This morning, as we listened to the news coming out of the Middle East: that war may escalate and more  mothers will be torn from their children, more husbands may lose their wives, more babies may be blown up, orphaned  and abandoned, I found the words of the Hail Mary prayer … a prayer which I learned accidentally, growing up  surrounded by Catholic neighbors in a nation which was fiercely divided by religion … I found the words of Hail Mary, tumbling through my mind and out my mouth. 

Mary, that most Middle Eastern of mamas. She who knows the terror of occupation, the constant threat of murder. She, who watched her dearest child be ripped from her life by political mob violence. 

Mary, this Mary, who still dared to call herself “blessed” in spite of it all. Mary, who trusted in the resurrection long enough to see the crucifixion through. 

I found myself praying to Mary, with Mary, through Mary and with the Holy Spirit which binds us both together as children of God … praying for the mothers who are caught in this awful war. 

“Hail Mary”   

Mary … my heart salutes you, my heart salutes your heart … and through your heart I acknowledge and  listen … to God, who is our Deepest Mother. 

“full of grace” 

Through you I see the grace that is ours 

You who said, “let it be” 

You who opened yourself wide, in deep trust 

who gave your “yes” to God

Your yes to pain, your yes to joy, your yes to life and your yes to death … even the death of your own son 

“Blessed are you among women, and blessed is the fruit of your womb, Jesus” 

This part of the prayer makes me choke with tears, 

because you are a human woman, a mother, a fruitful womb 

just like me, just like our sisters 

a woman who lived under the fierce violence of Occupation 

an Occupation which killed children and tore babies from their mothers 

You, like so many, had to flee to save your child’s life, 

to save him from a deadly force, breathing out violence against you, 

threatening to take his life – his tiny, precious life – away. 

We look at the horror unfolding in your homeland, and we wonder, “How could anyone slaughter children?” Oh Mary 

Oh dear Mother-God 

You know the fear and terror the mothers of Gaza and Israel face 

And yet still, 

still you called yourself, “Blessed”! 

You, whose very name, Miriam, means “sea of bitter tears”. 

You, whose son was murdered by mob-violence 

by an absurd system, calling itself just! 

You who knew agony as deep as the sea 

You named yourself, “Blessed”. 

You even foretold that we would call you “Blessed”. 

By doing this, you teach us 

To call ourselves 

To call all mothers … 

To call all children, fruit of our wombs 

“Blessed” 

“Holy Mary, Mother of God” 

You, who carried God in your womb 

who, like all of us, carried the Divine within you 

who, like all mothers, grew and bore, loved and raised, a child of the Creator. 

“Pray for us, now and at the hour of our death” 

Pray for us …now and in all our deaths 

our daily deaths and losses 

our minute-to-minute worsening griefs 

too deep for words 

pray for us. 

Holy Spirit pray for us … within us … around us … over us. 

Your hand is always on our eyes – to light the way 

Your hand is always on our hearts – to still the storm of panic   

Your hand is always at our backs – to catch us as we fall 

You, Spirit, Mother of all mothers, hold us, carry our wounds. 

shed our tears and grieve our deepest grief   

Pray for us Mother, 

As we pray with and for the mothers, the sisters, the daughters, in Israel and Gaza, who are all your children. They are all us

We are all them 

within your holy love 

Amen. 

Let it be. 

In closing, please allow me to share with you why I feel it is such an incredible gift for me, as someone raised protestant, to feel invited by the Spirit to meditate on the words of the “Hail Mary” prayer.  

The place in which I was raised, the west of Scotland, was incredibly divided for generations – politically,  socially and religiously – between Catholic and Protestant. As you likely know, Northern Ireland, just thirty miles across  the sea from us, experienced decades of life-wrecking violence. After generations of hatred and loss – peace,  reconciliation, understanding – these things just seemed impossible. Yet in recent decades they have miraculously arrived.  

This Easter Sunday, just a few weeks ago, my parents sent me pictures of their Easter gathering in Scotland.  Starting at the local Catholic church, members from various denominations walked together from church to church,  singing, sharing and celebrating the resurrection together.  

It’s not just that it’s easier, or more pleasant, or a better life for all, when we have peace – but to feel actively  encouraged by the Spirit to engage in and understand one another’s prayers, surely this can bring us one step closer to  seeing an answer to Jesus’ own prayer for the human race: that we might one day, be one, and find ourselves empowered  to truly love one another.  

This must be our prayer too, not just for Israel and Palestine, but for the whole world. 

Elizabeth Felicetti recently wrote in The Christian Century about how her breast cancer diagnosis, with an emphasis on breast, challenged her previous view of the Incarnation because of Jesus’ male experience. 

I, too, had a breast cancer epiphany. However, instead of challenging my theology, my experience led me to embrace more fully the mothering God found in the first testament, the Hebrew Bible.

Like so many other women, I was instructed to return to the mammography center for a biopsy. Lying face-down with my head uncomfortably turned, multiple people pulled and squeezed, pinched and poked at my breast, while I closed my eyes trying to transport myself out of my anguish. After more than an hour, the technicians finally secured a usable sample to place under the microscope. I was ushered down the hallway and into a dark room where the doctor pointed to the image of my breast on the screen. “This is the area of concern,” she said. “You can see it looks like sand; a change when compared with last year; though it is small, maybe the size of my pen.” Maybe she said something else, too, but I don’t recall. This was the beginning of being in the liminal cancer space where everything was suddenly refracted through the light of disease. My disease.

That evening as I sought respite through some mind-numbing television, everything seemed to be about cancer:  women with metastatic diagnoses, basketball players wearing pink shoes. I turned to Amazon looking for a memoir to take me into a different life. As I scanned the new releases, a common denominator felt disturbingly unavoidable: they were all, seemingly, about the big “C.” 

A few days later, a few hours before I received the call, I learned from a tear-filled colleague that her daughter had been diagnosed with breast cancer over the winter break. Returning to my campus office I felt like I already knew I would have cancer, too. The hints had been too apparent to dismiss.

It was a Wednesday, late in the afternoon, just before 5:00 pm. My husband and I were on the way to the bank to complete some paperwork. One minute I was stopped at the red light—without cancer—and  the next I was inside the bank, waiting, feeling numb, trying to make a mental note of all of the things I needed to do, especially as this was the first day of the university’s semester. Suddenly my “to do” list was infinitely longer and looming. 

A cancer diagnosis is shocking and overwhelming. But there is also the feeling of bodily betrayal, fear, and loss. Perhaps most pervasive, however, is the feeling of loneliness. No matter how much friends and family can offer, you are the only one with the illness. This burden, it turns out, is only yours to carry. 

In a flash, life becomes frenetic: calls to make appointments, receiving calls from doctors and offices who may or may not have been working in tandem, fielding offers from friends and/or family members of comfort and/or advice, filing insurance claims, negotiating with insurance companies about coverage, and worrying about how much everything will cost and insurance rates in the future. 

If ever there was a time for divine aid, having cancer ranks high.

READ: It’s Complicated: A Different Liturgy for Mother’s Day

Years ago, when teaching a course called Women and the Bible, I discovered a divine feminine image that, until then, I never knew existed. Since then, I have shared this insight here and there with students and have sought to expand my own awareness of how this knowledge might work its way through my head and heart, often with less success than I desired. More recently, however, I shared this gem with an especially bright and discerning undergraduate student in an independent study course. In our study, we read the Bible with an eye for feminine language, images, and concerns; aspects that are often ignored and dismissed. We examined El Shaddai, a name for God that most often has been translated simply as God Almighty. “Almighty” conjures up notions of strength, control, power, and most notably, if we are honest, masculinity. This is a God who will stand up to anybody and win because He has all the power! 

In contrast, however, El Shaddai can just as accurately be translated “God of many breasts.” As we sat in my campus office, he and I wondered how this image might undo our patriarchal memory and invite us into different, fully embodied expressions and experiences of the divine. A breasted God surely encouraged intimacy, sustenance, and touch. This divine Mother embraced us: body-to-body, Life-nourishing life. 

Later, when I told this former student about my diagnosis, his response transported me back to this moment in my office. “Know that you are strong and that God our Mother will bring you through,” he said. “After all, She is the Almighty One, the God of Many Breasts.” 

While I did not want this diagnosis, I decided it was the right opportunity to experiment with this mothering image from the Hebrew Bible. How might this breasted body sustain me throughout my breast cancer treatment?

Following surgery, I began radiation. Since the timing of these treatments corresponded with the rapidly expanding pandemic, like most people, I was thinking more strategically about hand-washing, creating a ritual to ensure proper hygiene. Instead of using the happy birthday song as many were doing, however, I chose to sing a feminine version of the Doxology I had learned in my New Wineskins community under the creative leadership of Rev. Dr. Jann Aldredge-Clanton. 

I knew I needed a mantra to help me endure each treatment. The minutes of lying on the table in the cold radiation chamber, hands overhead and gown half-removed, were interminable. Hearing the door lock when the technician exited left me feeling frightened and vulnerable; desperately alone.  I felt my pounding heart reverberate throughout my entire body as the radiation machine came to life. With its ominous hum as my cue, I turned to the Many Breasted One, trusting Her to sustain me. She was the one who knew me intimately, who shared Her very self with me, who held me as the rays entered my body, sometimes creating an unsavory odor. During these anxious moments, I turned to El Shaddai reciting the words I had memorized: 

Praise God from Whom All Blessings Flow

Whose Womb gave birth to all we know

Who holds us close to Her warm breast

For nurture, love, and tenderness. 

(by Elizabeth Watson Martin and Lisa Taylor)

For twenty-one days these words filled my head and sank further into my soul, cultivating trust where there had been distrust; hope where there had been despair; love where there had been guardedness.  Years of academic rigor and Christian patriarchal oppression had created within me a hardened shell. Masculine naming and explaining had all but extinguished any remaining delight, magnetism, or mystery.

But as I turned to Her, trusting she could identify with me, could recognize the tenderness of skin changing texture, of life and healing born through loss and pain, I slowly felt the hardening soften. Trust and hope, faith-full love, became possible again. 

My experience points me to both the paucity and possibility of our approach to divine images and language. The Bible, for all of its many flaws and challenges, contains far more expansiveness than we allow or embrace. My former student is now studying and preparing for ministry. This, too, gives me hope that one day our tradition will eventually expunge the idolatry of masculinity and seek in its place liberation for all. May we all come to know, as Jesus did, that our divine Mother has been waiting for us to find Her!

Dear Son,

I just walked out of your bedroom like the creepy stalker mom I am.

Being a mother is such an overwhelming phenomenon. I think about you all the time. Not always in the obsessive sneak-into-your-room-and-watch-you-sleep kind of way (sorry, kid), but because I feel the responsibility of being your primary caretaker and needing to make sure all of your needs are met. When you were a baby, I had to make sure that I fed you on time, packed enough diapers, carried a spare change of clothes, and wore the right kind of top to nurse you.

Now that you’re a toddler, I have to make sure your diaper bag is packed, lay out your clothes for the day, and ask how you behaved at school to see if there’s been a revival of your biting phase.

What is amazing to me is that, as much as I think of you, there is someone who thinks of you even more than I do. Since you’ll be raised in the church, I know you already know the Sunday school answer to that one—it’s Jesus. 

While I agonized over having a healthy pregnancy, he already knew the sweet little boy you would become because God was in the business of forming you (Ps 139:13-16).

He’s been in that business since the beginning.

You Are Made in God’s Image

The first three chapters of the Bible are as foundational as the first three chapters of any book. Although, they are more important because this book lays out the guiding purpose of our lives.

The well-trodden battlegrounds of our day—sanctity of life, gender, sexuality, race, stewardship, and authority—all begin at the very beginning of this book. Opening up Genesis, we learn that God is the author of humanity and that we are created in God’s image (Gen 1:27) and charged with the purpose of taking dominion over the earth (Gen 1:28). 

And when God looked at Adam and Eve, God didn’t just see the blond-haired, blue-eyed depictions often fantasized in Renaissance paintings, but two hosts for all of the genetic material needed to produce every tribe, tongue, nation, and people group that would populate the world. Adam and Eve held within them the promise of the nations —the promise of diversity. And it was good.

You Are Black on Purpose

It’s no accident that you are black. You were made black on purpose. 

God decided that you and your brother would be born as twenty-first century black boys to two black parents. He placed you in a lineage full of glorious complexity and gave you the task of learning how to glorify God in light of the ingredients stirred into the pot of your identity. God invites you to delve into a deeper understanding of who you are as an individual so that you can see yourself in light of who you are in the grander story that is being written.

You are black. And it is good.

You Are God’s Beloved Son

I had an ultrasound the other day and brought home pictures of your little brother. 

It truly is amazing. I was making a person. Or at least, I was the vessel for the person that God was making. God was crafting you each and every day, monitoring and guiding your explosion of cells, pouring into you the way God has poured into each and every person created since the dawn of time. God was speaking, and it was becoming so. 

God was speaking, and it was good. 

READ: It’s Complicated: A Different Liturgy for Mother’s Day

You are still a little sinner, miraculous origins notwithstanding. It’s true that I’m much more liable to make excuses for your temper tantrums in a quest to fully understand the little person you’re becoming than your daddy. “He’s just tired,” “It’s a developmental phase,” and “He doesn’t understand” are my usual standbys whereas Daddy cocks an eyebrow knowing you’re just pushing boundaries. Still, I understand that you have a sin nature all your own, inherited from your first father, Adam.

Even though your sins often look a lot like those of your mother, Jasmine.

And that sin nature will crop up throughout your life. If you’re anything like me (and you are), it will crouch at your door when it comes to conversations about race and identity. 

You will be tempted to question the wisdom of God in speaking your brown skin into existence. 

You will be tempted to disobey immediately when God calls you to hard tasks resulting from the color of your skin. 

You will wrestle with shame in the face of a world that does not understand the beauty of your Creator’s provision. 

You will wrestle with pride in the face of a church that doesn’t always thank God the way it should for your uniqueness. 

Like me, you will wonder whether God is holding out on you for making you so different from the world you live in. 

But I pray that you will come to an understanding of who you are that moves beyond your earthly heritage alone. I pray that your heavenly identity will not only supersede your earthly shell, but also give it deeper and fuller meaning as purposeful evidence of God’s grace toward you and everyone around you. 

My dear, sweet little boy, you were created in God’s image. Your purpose is bound up in that one precious phrase: imago Dei. I pray that you will grow to acknowledge your Creator in all aspects of who you are, bowing your knee in gratitude for every single manifestation of God’s providence toward you.

I wish I could watch you safely sleep every single night for the rest of your life, but I know that the One who watches over you loves you even more than I do. I hope you know that too. Look at my love and measure God’s as ten thousand times more powerful. Then you’ll have just barely scratched the surface. 

Our Creator was so kind to make you mine for this tiny window of time. I pray that you are God’s for eternity.

Love,

Mama

Adapted from Mother to Son  by Jasmine L. Holmes. Copyright (c) 2020 by Jasmine Linette Holmes. Published by InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL. www.ivpress.com

My hunch is that the labyrinth of emotions accompanying this holiday has to do with the elevation and highlighting of a very specific relationship. And relationships are layered, sometimes strained, always unique. They are formed between people, and no two people are alike. A day to “celebrate mothers” feels not altogether different from declaring a day to “celebrate health.” Can you imagine? The pain that would come from those whose bodies have received diagnoses? From those who have learned from their faith communities to not trust their physical selves? From those trapped inside of addiction, or those raging against the institutions that compromise our wellness, or those who have been traumatized by diet culture? Health is complicated because it has to do with a relationship between a person and their body. “Celebrating health” would be an oversimplification of such a complex human experience.

So too with mothers.

Here’s a Mother’s Day litany that is also simplified for such vastly different connections and experiences that surround us. But, I hope it makes a little more room for a few more people.

READ: Calling All Mothers: Let’s Make Mother’s Day Count

Needed: A candle and lighter, something to represent bread and wine for communion (a cracker and juice, toast and milk, etc), and a little cup of dirt (plus a seed, if available). If reading with people, one voice will read all unbolded sections while the group joins in for the bolded sections.

“If ever there is a tomorrow when we’re not together, there is something you must always remember. You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think. But the most important thing is, even if we are apart, I will always be with you.” –Winnie the Pooh

ONE: Right now, we push aside all the feelings we “should” have and people we “should” be, and we open wide our doors to what is

ALL: Welcome, old grief; 

Welcome, new reality; 

Welcome, fear; 

Welcome, worry; 

Welcome, exactly who we are right now

ONE: As we light this candle, we declare this space for remembering and honoring the children and parents we miss during Mother’s (and/or Father’s) day(s)

ALL: Be with us, saints; 

Be with us, Spirit

Song: Let It Be

ONE: For children who had to say goodbye to parents when they should have had so much more time

ALL: We hold you now: (name any names aloud)

ONE: For children who have watched the minds and bodies of parents deteriorate, no longer able to recognize or remember

ALL: We hold you now:

ONE: For children whose parents were unable to offer their presence or resources, children who ached to know a different kind of paternal or maternal love

ALL: We hold you now:

ONE: For children who have lost parents to suicide, disease, estrangement

ALL: We hold you now:

ONE: For children who wrestle with the complexities of their birth parents, adoptive parents, and foster parents

ALL: We hold you now:

ONE: For children who are navigating the milestones of life without their mothers or fathers there to call for recipes and family histories and old stories that have faded with years

ALL: We hold you now:

ONE: For LGBTQIA+ children who do not have homes to which they can return

ALL: We hold you now:

ONE: For children who were abused in a multitude of ways:

ALL: We hold you now:

ONE: For children who dread the holidays because of their voids

ALL: We hold you now:

Scripture: Matthew 5:1-12

ONE: For parents who birthed babies straight into the arms of God

ALL: We hold you now:

ONE: For parents who have lost young children to disasters that make this life seem too unfair for the human heart

ALL: We hold you now:

ONE: For parents who have raised their grandchildren or other relatives because of a lost life or reality

ALL: We hold you now:

ONE: For parents who have lost children to suicide, disease, estrangement

ALL: We hold you now: 

ONE: For parents whose children were unable to offer their presence or connection, parents who ached to know a different kind of familial love

ALL: We hold you now:

ONE: For parents who have received a gutting diagnosis

ALL: We hold you now:

ONE: For parents who are raising children, and working jobs, and running households by themselves

ALL: We hold you now:

ONE: For birth parents who wrestle with the complexities of hard decisions and limited resources

ALL: We hold you now:

ONE: For adoptive and foster parents who wrestle with the complexities of hard questions, identity narratives, and ethics

ALL: We hold you now:

ONE: For migrant and refugee parents who are risking everything (even separation) for a better life for their children

ALL: We hold you now:

“If I had lost a leg—I would tell them—instead of a boy, no one would ever ask me if I was ‘over’ it. They would ask me how I was doing learning to walk without my leg. I was learning to walk and to breathe and to live without Wade. And what I was learning is that it was never going to be the life I had before.” –Elizabeth Edwards

ONE: To those who are not biological parents, but who step in to mother and father so many around them

ALL: We honor you now:

ONE: To those who chose not to be parents in a culture that so often pressures otherwise

ALL: We honor you now:

ONE: To those who would choose to be parents, or parents again, but who grieve the loss of a dream

ALL: We honor you now:

ONE: To those who have redefined family to go past lines of biology, nationality, and economics

ALL: We honor you now:

ONE: To those who did the best they could with what they had when they had it

ALL: We honor you now:

ONE: To those versions of ourselves that we never turned into, and the versions of ourselves that we did

ALL: We honor you now:

ONE: To the voices we wish we could hear say “Happy Mother’s and Father’s Day”

ALL: We honor you now:

ONE: To the ears to which we wish we could say “Happy Mother’s and Father’s Day”

ALL: We honor you now:

Scripture: John 1:5

“Sorry, but you don’t really get a choice—you keep waking up and you keep breathing and your heart keeps on beating. And because your blood hasn’t stopped moving through your body, your stomach gets hungry, and then your mouth eats. This is how it goes. Your sad little heart becomes a force of nature. Despite the depth of its wounds, it just keeps going and then the rest of your body has to follow. You eat. You sleep. You sit, and stand, and walk. You smile. Eventually, you laugh. It’s like your heart knows that if it keeps going, so will you. And your heart hasn’t forgotten how good it is to be in the world, so it pushes on, propelling you along to the fridge, the shower, a family dinner, coffee with a friend. In doing these things, your spirit catches up with what your heart already knows; it’s pretty good to be alive. I guess what I’m getting at is that if you too are mired in the early days of unimaginable loss, the only thing to do is follow your heart. Then listen to your body. And keep…going.” –Jamie Wright 

Song: Great is They Faithfulness

ONE: Hear our words to those we miss

ALL: Meet us in our celebration and in our grief 

Communion

ONE: The body of Mary’s son, broken for us

The blood of God’s son, poured out for the world

ALL: Thank you Jesus for the bigger picture of resurrection

ONE: God’s family table is open to all who wish to partake, in your homes, on these screens, though separated we are one.

(Participants hold cup of soil—and a seed if possible—in their hands.)

Remind us, God, that our faith makes room for death, that our faith can hold endings, though they are excruciating and devastating.

(Participants push seeds into dirt.)

Remind us that in a backwards kingdom, end is beginning, last is first, and burial is birth…eventually.

ALL: Thank you for love that was, is, and is to come. Amen.

Go now in the peace that passes our understanding.

There, I’ve said it.

A day when we spend more than $14 billion in this country trying to tell moms we are grateful for them. A day when, as a mom, you’re set up with all these expectations that your family will come through for you, finally say the words of thanks and praise you’ve been secretly longing to hear since the moment you popped the little ones out of your vagina (through indescribable pain and massive amounts of blood, I might add), a day when they will finally make you feel appreciated enough. Along with giving you a card or flowers or “You’re a special mom” cubic zirconia anklet too, of course. (Just to be clear, I prefer the “I’m expensive but in a totally hip and understated way” looking stuff…in case anyone in my family is reading this.)

Then there’s the Mother Day Facebook envy situation. Where it looks like everyone is having a better Mother’s Day than you are. Where every Facebook post you read makes it sound like other kids love their mothers more. I’m not saying this has happened to me, exactly. I’m just saying…

And, if you happen to be a woman who wants to be a mom, and who hasn’t been able to conceive or adopt, or perhaps someone whose mother wasn’t quite up to par, as in the type who pushed you down the stairs when she got mad at you…well let’s just say, crazy-making… of epic proportions.

Before Mother’s Day got stuck in this mind-effing machinery, however, it was something all together different. In its roots it is a feminist, political and radical religious holiday. A day when mothers banded together to say, essentially, “We’ve had enough of this crap.”

For example, in 1870, one of the original founders of Mother’s Day, Julia Ward Howe, a suffragist and abolitionist and poet wrote this Mother’s Day Proclamation.

Arise, then, women of this day! Arise all women who have hearts, 
 whether our baptism be that of water or of fears!

Say firmly: “We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall not come to us, reeking 
with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be 
taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach 
them of charity, mercy and patience…From the voice of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with our own. It says: ‘Disarm! Disarm! 
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.’ 
Blood does not wipe our dishonor, nor violence indicate possession.” 

I can think of a lot of stuff I’ve had enough of.

Black men and women and children being “accidently” killed by police.

The fact that every 21 hours there is another rape on a college campus.

The ugliness that Donald Trump is spewing out on a regular basis, and how he is, as Jim Wallis has said “…appealing to the worst instincts of white people.”

The fear and violence that has forced 60 million people from their homes, has kept so many refugees from finding a safe place to go and a welcome when they get there.

The absurdity that in a country where some of us spend $4 every day on a cup of coffee, 1 in 5 children don’t know where their next meal is coming from.

I could go on. I’m sure you could too.

So maybe we should.

This Mother’s Day, let’s use it as an opportunity to be a sharp stick in the eye of this country. Occupy Mother’s Day and say enough is enough. Use our blogs and pulpits and family dinners and Facebook posts this Sunday to do our own #Mommyfestos, to yell like the love-crazed mothers some of us are, that it’s time to stop this insanity. And clean up the messes we’re making.

Let’s each issue our own #Mommyfesto.

Of course, doing this doesn’t necessarily mean we don’t want the cards and candy and flowers and beautiful tributes written to us on Facebook. Or that we have to give them up.

It just means, that’s not all we want.

What do you say? Are you with me?

What I’ve learned has surprised me.

Mcuzi and her husband, Maxwell, welcomed several of us (visitors from the U.S.) to visit under the shade tree outside their small brick-built home. Like a few other moms I know, at home in Durham, North Carolina, Mcuzi was married in 1983. She and Maxwell, have seven children between the ages of three and twenty. Like everyone else in their village, they are farmers.

While we chatted, two of their young daughters, flopping across Mcuzi’s lap, the way bored children around the globe seem to do when their parents are talking to adults, bonked their little heads together. Like every mother I know, Mcuzi rubbed the tops of their heads as if to take the sting away. Like every child I know, the girls were visibly comforted by it.

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On this week that American mothers will be treated to crayon-drawn cards and pancakes-in-bed, Mcuzi’s face is filled with concern as she describes the difficulties facing parents in Malawi. What I find most compelling, what challenges the popular western myth of “poor, starving chronically-broken Africa” with which I’m familiar, is that–in Mcuzi’s village–it has not always been this way.

When Mcuzi was a child, the rains which nourished the maize fields came, like clockwork, every October. In fact, for decades local farmers could put seed into dry ground on October fifteenth, certain that the rains would come, water their fields and yield a rich harvest of maize. Vegetables and banana trees grew alongside the fish-filled river which flowed through the village.

Over the last several decades, though, villagers have experienced a change in the weather patterns. Over time, the rains began coming later and later, shortening the planting season. Droughts followed. Year after year, weather which was once predictable became no longer so. In fact, today, the riverbed that was once so plentiful, is simply a roadway of dry sand. When the rains come, it may flow for three or four days. Cruelly, it spills over its banks, flooding homes and taking lives. Then it is dry again. There are no fish. No vegetables. No bananas.

While the west continues to disagree on the veracity of climate change, the citizens and government officials of Malawi no longer have this luxury. In fact, they compare the magnitude of the growing crisis in their country to HIV-AIDS. Together, communities are actively working together to mitigate the impact of the new unpredictable climate. Mcuzi’s village has received training from the government on conservation planting. The villagers have worked together to build a damn to keep the occasional river from flooding their homes. They’ve contributed their own money to plant walls of trees to contain the river in its banks. They’ve even changed the crops they grow.

Mcuzi explains, “We used to grow maize. Now we grow millet.”

Her husband, Maxwell, grabs a handful of millet and drops it into the hand of my colleague. He passes the millet to me. The grain feels like holding a handful of bee-bee shells or pebbles. The local food made with millet is called nsima.

Instinctively, I do that thing that people of privilege do. I rationalize. “My cocoa-puff-loving-kids wouldn’t touch this stuff!” I thought, “but I’m sure these hungry children are so grateful to have food”.

In fact, Mcuzi explains, they desperately miss the maize they once enjoyed.

She continues, “As a mother, it is difficult. The children don’t like it. I have to convince them it’s food.”

The blunt announcement is heartwrenching.

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And it’s not even the case that there is enough bad-tasting food. Many days Mcuzi and Maxwell must choose between working their own fields–in the hopes of a later yield–and finding day-labor in fields belonging to others so that they can earn enough to buy one day’s food to feed their children’s hungry bellies. And still, there are days with no food at all.

When asked what message we might pass on to those we know, Maxwell doesn’t hesitate. “Tell them that, indeed, the climate has changed. And because of that crop production has decreased. Those affected most are the children.”

It’s a story I can’t not tell.

This Mother’s Day, please join me in holding Mcuzi and her family, who were created by God for life that really is life, in your hearts. Honor this mother, who represents millions more, by receiving her story. Roll it around in your mouth like millet. Feel its bite. Hold it in your heart and invite the Spirit to show you how you might respond to a changing climate, on the planet God has given us, which is already impacting the most vulnerable.

If you want to learn more about climate change, visit: EEN, YECA or Tearfund.

—
Margot Starbuck is a speaker, volunteer and author of The Girl in the Orange Dress: Searching for a Father Who Does Not Fail and Small Things With Great Love: Adventures in Loving Your Neighbor. Her most recent book, Permission Granted: And Other Thoughts on Living Graciously Among Sinners and Saints released in March 2013.

Photos courtesy of the author.

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