Opening Words

For our Call to Worship and Chalice Lighting, I'd like to share some words by that master of American poetry, Walt Whitman.  Like us Unitarian Universalists, Whitman had a very broad understanding of religion and of our connection to that which we may consider holy, sacred, or divine.  I'd invite you to open up to his poem, which is a prayer really, hearing it as it's intended, as a one-sided conversation between Whitman and the essence of the universe.  I invite you to join me in a space of reflection and meditation, as we hear Walt Whitman's poem "For You."  He writes:

The sum of all known reverence, I add up in you,
Whoever you are;
Those who govern are there for you,
It is not you who are there for them;

All architecture is what you do to it when you look upon it;
All music is what awakens from you,
When we are reminded by the instruments;

The sun and stars that float in the open air;
The apple shaped earth and we upon it;
The endless pride and outstretching of people;
Unspeakable joys and sorrows.

The wonder everyone sees in everyone else they see,
And the wonders that fill each minute of time forever;
It is for you,
Whoever you are,
It is no father from you,
Than your hearing and sight are from you;
It is hinted by [that which is] nearest, commonest, readiest.

We consider bibles and religions divine,
I do not say [that] they are not divine;
I say [that] they have grown out of you,
And may grow out of you still.
It is not they who give life,
It is you who give life.

Will you seek afar off?
You surely come back at last,
In things best known to you;
Finding the best, or [what is] good as the best.

Happiness, knowledge, not in another place,
But in this place;
Not in another hour,
But in this hour.

                "For You" by Walt Whitman, Reading # 659,
in the hymnal Singing the Living Tradition.

May this be our prayer:
To find, together, what is holy,
In this place, at this hour.
Come, let us worship.

Reading

I had not intended to do a reading today, but as I prepared for this service, I stumbled across the words of the first ever Mother's Day Proclamation.  It was issued in 1870, by a Unitarian woman by the name of Julia Ward Howe.  She is most famously known for having written, nine years earlier, during the Civil War, the words for The Battle Hymn of the Republic --  "Mine eyes have seen the Glory of the coming of the Lord...glory glory, Hallelujah, glory, glory, Hallelujah..."

Through this hymn, Howe poetically affirmed the Union's sense of just cause, to the point of even giving divine assurance, the message that 'God is on our side.' 

After the Civil War, and after having witnessed its carnage, she turned in 1870 to the topic of peace.  She issued the first Mother's Day Proclamation as a tribute to peace, and the role women could play in promoting it.

Her proclamation is extremely relevant to everything around us today, so I wanted to share it with you.  Here are the words penned by the Unitarian Julia Ward Howe, she writes:

Arise, then, women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts,
Whether our baptism be of water or of tears!

Say firmly:  "We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies, our husbands will 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.

We, the women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."

From the bosom of the 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 out dishonor, nor violence indicate possession.

As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil at the summons of war, let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel.

Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.  Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each bearing after his [or her] own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar, but of God.

In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women, without limit of nationality, may be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient and at the earliest period consistent with its objects, to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, the great and general interests of peace.

Mother's Day Proclamation of 1870, by Julia Ward Howe.

Sermon

Julia Ward Howe, 19^th century Unitarian, and author of one of the Civil War's anthems; having seen the ravages of war, she turned to peace, with the fervent belief that women had a role in promoting it.  According to Howe, men had "often forsaken the plow and anvil at the summons to war."  Women, she believed, could gather for other reasons, for reasons of universal brother and sisterhood.

As far as my research has uncovered, an international congress of women, as Julia Ward Howe had called for, never happened during her lifetime.  Irrespective, she worked tirelessly in promoting women's rights, believing that if women were given an equal voice in the public sphere, they would change the nature of our political discourse.

'Disarm, disarm!  The sword of murder is not the balance of justice.' 

Those are the words of a post-Civil War feminist, words that seem relevant and somehow ignored by the war we find ourselves in the midst of this Mother's Day.  I would love to believe that a year from now, as we celebrate this holiday together again, that we may be closer to Julia Ward Howe's Mother's Day dream of peace.  Yet, it seems unlikely.  Our political leaders, of both parties, have given in to the status quo, waiting for elections that are over a year and a half away to resolve our country's leadership of a war we shouldn't even be in.

Let us hold that dream of Mother's Day peace in our hearts for those who are in harm's way, for all those who will yet be killed, and for a political process that continues to ignore the will of the majority in this country.

Mother's Day has many colors.  Yellow and white, they are the colors of armistice, friendship, and global peace – ideals that our religious tradition honors today.  Our faith's unique Mother's Day connection to the promotion of peace is a heritage we can and should be proud of. 

Flowers, however, come in many colors, not just yellow and white. 

What about red and pink?  If we were to believe Hallmark, and other card manufacturers, we are encouraged to purchase gushy, syrupy, and over-the-top expressions of love and devotion.  You know those cards.  They're the ones you read at the drug store or supermarket, the ones that say something like: "Dear Mother, thank you for having carried me, with such personal inconvenience, in your womb for nine months...and even more so, for going through the excruciating pains of labor (even though you were sedated, and it was a c-section).  Not to mention what a brat I was after being born...On this Mother's Day, no words could possibly express my eternal gratitude for your great sacrifices."  We read cards along these lines and wonder, "Who's gonna buy that?!"

Our culture tells us, not very subtly, that we should buy into a mushy, idealized version of Mother's Day.  In fact, you almost feel left out if you're unable to call up such sentiments.  After all, all mothers are peace-makers, and nurturers, and role models, right?  Some are, perhaps many are.  But, equally true, many are not.

This Julia Ward Howe notion that men are war-mongerers and that women are pacifists is an extreme stereotype, one that lives on to today.  It's easy to buy into; I want to buy into it.  I would love to believe that if a woman were in the White House we would not currently be fighting a war in Iraq.  But our common human family gave us the cold warrior Margaret Thatcher, and the defender of our current predicament, Condaleeza Rice.  As with men, there is no one stereotype of femininity or motherhood that is universal.  With motherhood, as with anything else, we experience the full range of possibilities and emotions -- including the loneliness and sadness of the color blue, or the tension and anxiety of the color green.

And, of course, colors change along with the seasons of our life.  Recognizing this, we know that there is not one uniform experience of Mother's Day; there are as many experiences of it as there are people in this sanctuary.  Some of us have never had a mother; some of us have mothers who are deceased; some of us have mothers who are ill; some of us have troubled, even awful, relationships with our mothers; and there are some of us who are blessed with good, even great, relationships with our mothers.  Over a lifetime, we experience not just one, but many of these possible colors.  That entirety of human experience is what this holiday is about; that entirety of human experience is present here today.

As a minister, I'm very aware of these different and shifting experiences, which is part of the reason why the idealized version of this holiday has no appeal to me.  That overly sentimental version of Mother's Day just isn't always true.

So how do we honor this holiday, in a way that's emotionally honest and true to our experience?  I think by first acknowledging that we've each had a wide range of experiences with our mothers, or the mother-like figures in our life.  How have you experienced these women?  What have been the joys, and what have been the difficulties?  (Usually we've experienced both.)

As I've reflected on this holiday, I have been appreciating that my mother and I have a great relationship right now, but it hasn't always been that way.  Her and I have had deep struggles around our expectations of one another. 

This issue of expectations is one that I'm starting to appreciate more now that I'm a god parent.  It's not unusual to find my best friend and I thinking out loud about the day I might take his daughter to an ice hockey game, or sometime further down the line when I might host her here for the summer, in Florida, with her Uncle Manish.  Or, my pal might equally ruminate about the day he's going to introduce her to soccer, or camping, or fishing, or whatever else it might be.  Expectations arise naturally, I don't know of any magical way to turn them off. 

I do know that my god daughter might not like ice hockey -- but with Uncle Manish in her life how couldn't she like it???  I'll make the game so interesting that she'll immediately become a fan!  She'll even want me to teach her how to play ice hockey!!! 

Not only do expectations naturally arise, but then we buy into them, because the picture we create in our head is just so appealing.  I'm quite aware that I'm doing all this with my god daughter, buying into certain day-dreamy hopes, wishes, even expectations, so I can only imagine how much more powerful this experience must be for parents.

My Mom expected a straight son.  One that would have had a traditional Hindu wedding, and an Indian wife who could be a doting and doted upon daughter-in-law.  Not a terribly unusual expectation, really.  Except...that I had been asking my Mom for advice on my guy crushes since practically junior high school!  I, in turn, expected, of course, that she'd already figured out the 'gay' thing.  How could she not have???  I never talked about women the way I talked about my guy friends.  And, in any event, even if she hadn't, it didn't matter.  She loved me, so it would all work out fine.  I was convinced of this, in fact, I expected this.

So, when I came out to her at age 23, and she was devastated, both of our expectations were disappointingly crushed.  The next five Mother's Days, in fact, were strained, if not even practically non-existent.  Hallmark doesn't have an appropriate card for such realities.  Cards that might say, "I know we've disappointed one another, but I still love you, Happy Mother's Day." 

Well, relationships can be resilient, unexpectedly so, and even when you've almost given up on them.  Five years later, my Mom showed up unannounced in Washington D.C., along with my Dad.  And, to my astonishment, she invited both me and my then partner out to dinner.  This had no precedent in our lives, and my former partner and I had no idea what to expect.  We showed up for dinner and had a lovely time.  My parents were animated, even chatty, and it felt like two ordinary couples out for a nice dinner. 

At this point, I was convinced my parents had been body-snatched - these had to be their alien look-alikes.  (And I liked their alien replacements.)

Near the end of dinner, my Mom leans over and quietly says, "I bet you're wondering why everything's so different." 

"Yea," I said, secretly hoping that some bubble surrounding this normalcy wasn't about to be burst.

"You know when six months ago the family dog unexpectedly died?" she said.

(The dog had died in the middle of an otherwise routine surgery, and, as with many of us, the loss of a pet can feel just like the loss of a person, or a valued family member.)

"Well, " she continued, "I was so shocked by his unexpected death, that I began thinking about life, and realized that we never know how much time we have with our loved ones.  What time we do have is precious, and it should be quality time.  There is much I don't understand about your life, and I may never.  But, you're my son, and that's all that matters.  What matters from here is that we be a part of one another's lives the best we can."

I was floored.  My mother had taken what for her had obviously been a traumatic loss, she had deeply reflected on it, and had drawn out of it lessons that were changing her approach to life. 

Later, on the way home from that dinner, I told my partner about this side conversation.  He responded, tongue-in-cheek, saying, "Well, that dog should've died earlier!"

That night became the basis for what would be a gradual transformation of our relationship.  The mother-son relationship that had practically been 'on hold' for five years was in the midst of turning into something new.  That relationship is now the best it has ever been, to the point where my traditional Indian mother - who, I'll add, has only been on one date in her whole life -- now vets her gay son's prospective relationships.  (And, I'm now experiencing what many of my friends have for years, that when it comes to these kinds of relationships, my Mom's almost always right.)

Yes, the colors of life change.  New colors can appear unexpectedly.  And, there is also, frequently enough, the possibility of letting go of some of the older ones.  We are constantly growing, our experience of life is constantly evolving.  The way my mother let go of disappointments and dashed expectations, there are times when any one of us can, at the same time, be true to ourselves and do the same.  Such opportunities appear infrequently, but when they do, they are the stuff that rainbows are made of.

So, as we celebrate this Mother's Day, I wish you a holiday that is authentic - authentic to your life experience, to your joys and struggles.  All of that is honored today, on this holiday.  After all, our mothers are human, just like us.  They have likely made mistakes but also, very likely, done some marvelous things.  It is through the recognition of that genuine humanity that we can honor the mothers and mother-like individuals who have been in our lives: we honor them just as they are, with all their human imperfectness and beauty. 

May you each have a blessed Mother's Day.