Sermon     “Mothers and Others” The Rev. Rali Weaver

First Church and Parish in Dedham

May 9, 2010

When I was 6 or 7 someone on the PTA at Valley Forge Elementary School (where I attended) decided that we should have a “Be Kind To Others Week”. The school made posters and bumper stickers and we had assemblies that encouraged us to be nicer to each other and to recognize that we are all a part of the same human family.

What I remember most about that week however were the bumper stickers. My parents would have never put one on the car so when I brought mine home my mother stuck it to the refrigerator. It stayed on our refrigerator for decades, a bright orange sticker with block letters that screamed the mandate “BE KIND TO OTHERS”. When my family moved to New York that Refrigerator moved with us, and so did the sticker it was relegated to the garage to hold excess groceries. Over time I noticed that someone had slipped an M into the space before others and the sign newly read “Be Kind to MOthers”.

Be kind to Mothers and Others.

Being a generally obsequious child whenever I was sent to the garage for any reason that bright orange sign would give me pause.

Be kind to Mothers and Others.

It is such a simple phrase.

And it seems quite simple to do.

It became a meditation- be kind to mothers be kind to others.

Most of us are by nature kind to our mothers and a large percentage of mothers are kind to us. But like all percentages this is not always true and that is why reminders such as be kind to others and mothers are necessary. This is why schools spend time teaching children how to be kind.

Henry Ward Beecher writes, "What the mother sings to the cradle goes all the way down to the coffin." I was struck by the everlastingness of the impact those close to us in childhood have on us as implied by the quote you see at the top of order of service.

It is true isn’t it? Whether the words were instructive “Be Kind” or constricting “Be quiet” whether they encouraged us “You Can Do it” or discouraged us “You can do better than that” the little phrases, the songs that were sang over our cradle and crib and throughout our childhood we carry with us every day of our lives.

Those who receive negative messages in their childhood often spend their lifetimes struggling to overcome them. Those who receive loving positive messages often spend their lives trying to hold onto them. Whatever the words and messages negative or positive they help to shape or lives for good or ill. And this is the reason Mother’s Day is important.

Whether we celebrate a living present mother today, or remember as I do one who has passed or curse our mother for her ill treatment or consider a mother we never met, this day, Mother’s Day recognizes a bond we share with the one who bore us that cannot be easily broken nor altered nor taken away.

Although not always in May, Mother’s Day of some sort is currently recognized in places from Africa to the United Kingdom. In Ancient Greece the yearly festival to Cybele the mother of all gods took place in March. As early as 268 BCE the Roman’s are noted as offering gifts to and prayers to mothers in celebration of Juno the goddess of childbirth. And Mothering Sunday was set aside within the liturgical calendar throughout Europe as the fourth Sunday of Lent to honor the Virgin Mother Mary and the “Mother” church.

Anna Jarvis of Grafton, West Virginia founded the U.S. version of Mother’s Day on May 10, 1908. She was the daughter of Anne Marie Reeves Jarvis who had organized “Mother’s Day work camps” during the Civil war in order to improve sanitation and control the outbreak of typhoid in both Union and Confederate encampments. Anne Marie Reeves Jarvis was also responsible for organizing a Mother’s Friendship Day in order to reconcile Families divided by the Civil war.

These days of reconciliation and health improvement were of course extensions of what Mothers in the early 1900’s considered their scope and responsibility.

Two years after her death in honor and remembrance of her mother’s nurturing presence to both her siblings and to the larger community of humankind Anna Jarvis held a memorial for her dear and departed mother. On the following year she embarked on a campaign to make Mother’s Day a national holiday. It wasn’t until May 9^th, 1914 that then President Woodrow Wilson issued the first proclamation making Mother’s Day a National Holiday.

It’s too bad Anna Jarvis never had the warning my own mother used to give me: “be careful what you ask for because you might get it”. By the 1920’s Anna had become disheartened by its commercialization of Mother’s Day and spent the rest of her life and her family inheritance campaigning against it and as a result she and her sister died in poverty.

I share with you this story today because it represents two things about true nurturing and mothering in our lives.

First Anna Jarvis and her mother represent a type of mothering that extends beyond the confines of the family unit and is concerned not only with mothering but othering. This is the Mother’s Day that I hope we celebrate at least in part today the one that acknowledges all of the caring and nurturing presences in our lives and recognizes that generous loving presence can come from many sources and have many names.

The second element of mothering and othering I hope we rejoice in today is activism. More than the acknowledgement that it takes a village to raise a child I hope we acknowledge that although we all came from different wombs we are in fact a part of the same human family. Our lives are interconnected in ways that can hardly be articulated and may never be repaid and because of this truth we are in fact responsible for each other, for each others health and wellbeing.

Be kind to mothers and others.

It is that simple and that complicated.

It is what the mothers of the world have been teaching for generations.

May it be so.