Listen:
OPENING WORDS: "The Lord's Prayer" (adapted)
Our Mother who art in heaven and also on earth, hallowed be thy name and myriad forms. Thy kingdom come and already is. Thy will be done and become our will on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day, bless us with night; our daily bread teach us to share. And forgive us our trespasses, our failures of nerve, as we forgive those who trespass against us and they forgive us. And lead us not nor let us coerce into temptation - let us go and prevail. But deliver us from evil and our narrow good. For thine is the kingdom of beggars and the power of all people and the glory of earth, forever and ever, now, right now. Amen.
-- Carole Fontaine
MEDITATION WORDS: "Earth Mother, Star Mother"
Earth mother, star mother, you who are called by a thousand names, may all remember we are cells in your body and dance together. You are the grain and the loaf that sustains us each day, and as you are patient with our struggles to learn so shall we be patient with ourselves and each other. We are radiant light and sacred dark - the balance. You are the embrace that heartens and the freedom beyond fear. Within you we are born, we grow, live, and die. You bring us around the circle to rebirth. With us you dance, forever.
-- Starhawk
SERMON: "Women I Have Known and Loved"
Today, on Mother's Day, we do, indeed, celebrate mothers by expressing our gratitude and wish for your empowerment.
We also celebrate those of you who are grandmothers and great-grandmothers as well as you, the surrogate maternal figures. Ah! The ways of accomplishing this latter status are varied, but are very real and very heart-centered, indeed!
But let us be even more inclusive today by proclaiming this day one to honor all women and girls everywhere - those who are born female or choose to be so.
In accomplishing this, I have selected stories of women I personally have known to share with you today, because each represents an archetypal image - a standard for various human endeavors. Truly, each symbolizes certain qualities, not just for me but for all of us, as we attempt definition of what it means to be of value and significance, not just as a female, but as a human being.
So, the women I choose to honor today are The Healer, The Nurturer, The Counselor, The Activist, The Artist, The Teacher, and the Love Goddess.
You will discover that interwoven in some of their stories are aspects of the maternal - at least in their connection with me.
But again, let me hope that you will see a similarity in these women to women you have known and loved.
I shall tell their story and then honor each with a poem.
THE HEALER
The healer comes in a tiny body born in England more than 70 years ago. She is called Mary - Sister Mary, since she is a member of a Catholic order. She has a wonderful laugh. A caring nature. And a hook for an arm. No one seems to know why she has only one "regular" arm but after you get to know her you don't notice this fact very much. She works as a chaplain with infants, children, and their loved ones at UCLA medical center. She has been doing this for countless years. Although Catholic, she professes Quaker leanings and confesses to me that she prefers the simplistic non-rituals to the Roman trappings. She is fascinated by my Unitarian-Quaker perspective. We become great buddies. She belies any preconceptions I have of what a nun is supposed to be. This sister is no stay on your knees in the convent sister. She puts her heart and soul as well as her tender-tough-mindfulness on the line day in and day out. She holds dying and deceased children in her arms and prays for their souls. She holds the hands of the scared little ones and listens intently to what the children have to say. In this, she respects their humanity. She scolds parents for being alarmists or pests but can also comfort them with her assurance in her God's mercies. She has eased the suffering of movie stars and Beverly Hills high rollers, as well as that of the barrio dwellers and the gang bangers. She has seen it all: battered children thrown off balconies by drugged-out mothers; children torn apart by freeway accidents or drive-by shootings; children suffering from brain tumors and defective hearts. She has been with them as they have pulled through or breathed their last. Sister Mary teaches us all about courage under the fire of pain and turmoil.
TO SISTER MARY
A proper English lady
for the Lord,
of course, for THE Lord.
Married but to him
not to the Pope.
She does the non-ritualized bidding
of her real "lord and master."
She waits and listens for what she must do.
Ah! The simple profundity of it all:
To show love through touch and charitable act.
A Galilean thing to do.
She moves with grace and valor
through the world of the wee little ones
As they struggle for life.
It takes a receptive presence to imbibe so much pain
Year after year.
But hers is a heart made stronger
Because of sorrow and fear.
It is the heart of a saint called Mary.
THE NURTURER
The nurturer is Gaia herself, the earth goddess unadorned, vibrant in her simplicity. She is in the guise of Ruth. And she is my mother's age. She is country and contemplates the universe from her rocking chair as the sun sets over the Appalachian hills and the Methodist church chimes bid the summer day farewell with the old hymns. It is the church where my great grandparents donated the stained glass windows. I am entering puberty and wait with Ruth for the stars to come out. "You are in my journal," she tells me. The thought thrills me, even though I am not quite sure what a journal is. "You are imaginative," she tells me. "You could be anything you want. You could be a great writer." I tell Ruth of my pain although I am not sure of the depth of it. "Your mother has her problems," she tells me. "It is hard," I respond. Ruth is my stability. We speak of possibilities, of her dreams - and mine. Of travel. Adventure. Of the great books we will someday write. She is my inspiration. "You play the piano well," she affirms. "I love it. It helps me," I say. I want to please this woman. I want her to take me in her arms and soothe my fears. "And God?" she asks, knowing of my predilection for things spiritual. We continue to gaze at the sky and watch the stars and planets appear. They appear slowly at first then there are millions of them. We watch and wait and before we know it see a falling star. I feel eternity in my bones - far beyond my Methodist roots. Together we are transported into deep space and dance with the Milky Way, the winds of heaven swirling all around us. And far down on earth, curling its way through the valley of the night, the steam locomotive blows its whistle in accompaniment to the dance.
TO RUTH
Recorded Methodist hymns
A bit scratchy
Bid the eve adieu from bell tower;
The mountains turn dark purple
Before the last amen.
We rock in tandem
A bit off the spiritual beat -
This poetess of the village and I.
She speaks of my unimaginings,
Inspiring me to deeper places.
Next door to the universe I knew
She creates her own and shows me
What is and what might be;
Fresh baked bread mingles with the roses.
Together we wait for the shooting star.
THE COUNSELOR
I am the minister, professionally trained. I help people. I listen to their tribulations. I attempt to inspire hope. I am a counselor, who himself is forever in need of counseling. What can I say but: I am human. Then she comes into my life: Patricia. A decade older than I, but light years beyond my comprehension of the things of the psyche (which is only another name for "soul"). She is a trained therapist, but not just someone who is taught through books and clients. Hers is an intuitive knowledge - deep and resonant, thorough to the core. A sixth-sense erudition. She reads me more than "like a book." She reads me. She really READS me. Then, her son dies. Twenty-seven years old and he dies. It makes the news on National Public Radio. He is killed with his guide when they attempt to climb the Himalayas. The bodies are lost. Patricia asks me to officiate at the memorial service. She trusts me to say the appropriate thing. The appropriate thing is to re-tell the story of her beloved son's life as she tells it to me. In her telling, she reveals herself. She weaves the web between mother and son. It is seamless, yet apart. Connected, but unencumbered. She feels him within her, even more strongly now than when she carried him in her womb. Even though she has been the champion of his freedom in discovering himself - to the point of succumbing to a Nepalese avalanche. "He did what he needed to do," she says. "He always has been free. Only his form is different now. Can't you feel his presence?" Patricia knows that Elliot is with her. Hundreds attend the memorial service. Each is given a tiny evergreen to plant in his memory. Patricia knows this is the right symbol of resurrection. She speaks of hope in the midst of loss.
TO PATRICIA
The goddess Psyche sits at the edge of a stream
Contemplating the reflection of the snow-capped mountain
The stream IS the mountainous snow in another form,
The mountain is the stream,
The goddess is but part of this all in all.
She sits, communicating with past memories, blending them
Into the continuity of time;
The sun and moon merge,
Psyche moves through sorrow to acceptance,
Then wonder,
Then peace.
She becomes her own seed, blossoming into flower.
She is woman, she is man;
She is youth and age;
Life and death...
And life.
She is her own resurrected
Self.
THE ACTIVIST
When she was a child she could run with the best of them. There was no indication of the rare, progressive disease which would - by the time she died at the age of 40 - cause her to be nearly completely immobile; cause her inability to breathe without a respirator; cause her to slur her words; cause her face to be severely distorted. Although Linda's wheelchair allowed her to get around, she had to have someone push it. And yet, neither her mind nor spirit was ever "immobile" or "challenged." She had a keen intellect. Her Master's Degree - written at her computer keyboard by holding an implement in her mouth - showed how wrong her detractors were. Her subject championed civil rights for persons living with physical challenges. "I feel accepted by Unitarians; other churches were judgmental," she told me, laboring to articulate the words while the respirator attached to her wheelchair breathed for her. Linda became a regular attendee on Sunday mornings. She organized a service where other physically challenged people talked of their lives - of how some people perceive them, of how they think of themselves. "We just want to be thought of as human beings," was the dominant theme of the day. Linda was the quintessential activist and probably would have been, no matter her physical condition. She won many awards for her fervent endeavors and became nationally prominent. She took me into her world and modeled what it means to rise to the challenge; to persevere against great odds; to rail against injustice. Ironically, she was killed in a car accident, shortly after her 40th birthday. That she lived to be 40 was a miracle. That she lived so magnificently an activist's life was even more miraculous.
TO LINDA
Your alter ego breathes in measured rhythm
Attached to your less-than-winged steed.
Together, your respirator, your chair on wheels and you
(All 87 pounds of you if that much)
Weigh over a thousand pounds.
But you are not your encumbrance,
You are your fierceness flashing at those who don't comprehend
That you are a person
Not an object to be pitied.
That you have feelings - and a mind.
Your fire is ignited
By those who don't comprehend -
That we all are the same
Even when
Our limbs refuse to move;
Our eyes don't see;
Our ears don't hear;
Our mouths don't speak.
You are the goddess of justice
With the computer as your avenger.
Cutting a path for the rest of us;
Helping to create the laws that will serve us all.
You did not live in vain.
THE ARTIST
Your ego is writ large - perhaps, necessarily so. Too large for a so-called "personal" life - although you did dance with Hemingway and the bunch in those halcyon days of Paris during the flapper era. And you told me that Joseph Campbell - "Joe" to you - proposed marriage - or something. You were bohemian, Angela, after all! And now you are an eighty-something-year-old, full-bodied figure. But with an air about you that speaks of humid French nights strolling with a lover along the banks of the Seine. Still, uptown you were, right from the start. Rich, little southern girl, spoiled beyond the stereotype. You were taught that you were special. A New Orleanian belle of the ball. And you were - but you needed the romance of the Left Bank and that Parisian artist (what WAS his name) to show you that you could be a wonderful sculptor. You needed the distance and the time away from the debutante balls. And after all, you were totally Unitarian, descended from New England founders. So Unitarian that you have a photograph of yourself as a baby sitting on the lap of that Unitarian, President William Howard Taft (now there was a "muscular" figure). And so, you became a sculptor who loved to create the human form in larger-than-life relief. Your discipline became your life; your work became your family and friends. All else was subservient to your creative need. And when your days and nights weren't spent fashioning your clay children, you imagined them - how they could be, how they might attain perfection. You never stopped working - as seen by your prodigious production: your mammoth, classic sculptures throughout the city of New Orleans. And, how you hated old age. It was a nuisance. It meant that you had only so much time left to create.
TO ANGELA
Those who create -
Leaving something of themselves behind:
Clay fashioned into form, evocative of myth and legend;
Of human struggle and victory -
Will be remembered when they have become part of the earth themselves.
Whatever passion within -
Causing them to lead the artist's life;
Setting them apart from the rest of us;
Absorbing their individuality;
Melding them in the kiln of a refiner's fire -
Has as its source: divinity;
And speaks of sacrifice;
Beauty;
And eternity.
THE TEACHER
It is 1958 and the teacher is just five feet tall and very young. The frames of her glasses are large and dark and they contain very thick lenses. Her short, black hair has severely straightened bangs. She looks like a baby raccoon and appears quite beatable (from the perspective of a wayward, intractable student), even though she carries a long pointed stick for protection. Her classroom is the neatest room on the entire planet. Not a thing is out of place - and there are lots of things: flour and salt maps of the American Revolution, posters of famous American figures, a caged gerbil, an aquarium filled with angel fish, a plethora of climbing vines, prints of Monet's water lilies, perfectly manicured #2 pencils laid end-to-end on a perfectly ordered teacher's desk. The blackboard is smudgeless and is virginal in its cleanliness. Unsmilingly, she writes her name on the board: "Miss Law." The chalk squeaks as if to emphasize the point. "Miss Law" as in "to lay down the..." And that is exactly what this diminutive woman does - reading us the rules right at the outset: "No this, no that! Am I clear?" "Yes, ma'am! Yes, ma'am!" To re-emphasize her point, she pulls a thick, wooden paddle from one of the drawers of her desk. "I will use it if I have to!" she warns. "Yes, ma'am. Yes, ma'am!" She is Discipline incarnate, holding no truck with late assignments, lame excuses, and surly behavior. Yet, she is fair. And now, decades later, I consider her abilities and conclude that she was the best teacher I have ever had. Sometimes, surprises come in small packages - even if they have to carry a stick for protection. Sadly, she was too good a teacher and the last I ever heard of her she had become a school administrator somewhere.
TO MISS LAW
Controlled sanity stands on tiptoe to make her point:
"My way is the ONLY way!"
For now -
(She must know that we will grow up and out to the world
of chaos);
But now it is 1958 and white, male historians will speak of this time in America with fondness.
Now the only chaos for us is spitballs and pimples;
And hormones (and confusion over what to do with them!)
We recite the Gettysburg Address,
Diagram sentences,
And read Anne Frank.
Confusion lies out there - somewhere
(We know...
So does sanity)
But for now, the law prevails
And there is ONLY the law!
THE LOVE GODDESS
It is rumored that she had died - my high school sweetheart. That she had had cancer; had had operations. Everyone lost track of her. But then, she was lost even when she was with us in high school - my love goddess. The first REAL girlfriend I ever had. The prototype for all the hippies that ever were: bold, iconoclastic, anti-social, revolutionary, independent, living beyond the boundaries of acceptable behavior. And brilliant. Absolutely THAT. Judy had a photographic mind - tested at "reading" (if you can call it that) 12,000 words a minute - with nearly total recall. We saw "To Kill a Mockingbird" together - she for the second time, me for the first. To this day I don't like the movie - because Judy insisted on saying virtually every line of dialogue one sentence before the actors. She got a perfect "800" on the verbal section of the Scholastic Aptitude Tests. My mother didn't like her. Photographs of the three of us taken the night of the high school senior prom showed that. Judy never said if she liked my mother. Judy allowed me to drive her car called a "Sunbeam" - an ironic name since Judy herself was mostly a depressive personality. She allowed me to drive it to the Jefferson Memorial at night - even in the midst of winter - where we would kiss (nothing more). By logical extension (since Thomas Jefferson was nominally a Unitarian), Judy allowed me to drive her Sunbeam to the All Souls Unitarian Universalist Church in Washington, D.C. (where she and her family were members). So you can say that my love goddess was also my spiritual guide. I was seventeen years old and really didn't know anything about love back then - or Unitarianism, but a guy's got to start learning about things sometime; 1962 seemed as good a time as any.
TO JUDY
You taught me that a mentor could be a teenage girl in a pink sweater
Who refuses to do things my way;
Who is her own person;
Who is brilliant;
Outspoken;
Hates to wear prom dresses
And loves the existentialist writers
(The more depressing the better.)
You taught me that "smart" might mean
Cynical -
Not necessarily a good grade point average;
That love might mean
Something more than touch;
That friendship
Might mean more than ever seeing each other again.
That memories live on in the one who remains behind.
*****
And so, Women I Have Known and Loved:
The Healer - Sister Mary
The Nurturer - Ruth
The Counselor - Patricia
The Activist - Linda
The Artist - Angela
The Teacher - Miss Law
The Love Goddess - Judy
Each one symbolizes a type of woman, a type of human. Each has helped to shape who I am, and the women and girls in your life have assisted in creating who you are - the mothers and others.
This is called the tapestry of life.
So, Happy Mother's Day to you all!
CLOSING WORDS: from "I Am Woman" (song")
Yes, I am wise, but it's wisdom born of pain. Yes, I paid the price, but look how much I gained. If I have to I can do anything. I am strong, I am invincible, I am woman.
-- Helen Reddy
from "Song for Equal Suffrage"
By every sweet and tender tie around our heartstrings curled, in the cause of nobler motherhood is woman's flag unfurled; till every child shall know the joy and peace of mother's word, as love comes marching on! Glory, glory, hallelujah!
-- Charlotte Perkins Gilman