A Prayer for Mother’s Day.
Given at Middle Collegiate Church on Sunday, May 12th 2024.
Spirit of the living God, fall fresh on us.
Melt us, mold us, fill us.
Mother’s Day is rife with Hallmarkilazation – far from her revolutionary, working class, nonviolent movement roots.
As the Church, we have an opportunity to reclaim the spirit of this day
and recognize that we live in a world that so desperately needs to be mothered.
Not in a stifling white middle-class mom with 2.5 kids kinda way, but in a
come along side,
grieve,
see,
hold,
build,
push,
fight,
sing,
feed,
birth possibility,
nurture,
cry
kind of way.
We claim that saying happy Mother’s Day is some kind of exhausting cognitive dissonance when we live in a country
- with disparaging and racist maternal mortality rates (Black women die 3x more often in childbirth than white women)
- in the only developed country without paid family leave
- in a country where far too many Black, Brown, Indigenous, and poor mothers are in cages that we call jail because the Prison Industrial Complex flourishes on white supremacy and capitalism
- and where Trans and Queer people face unjust barriers to mothering.
Happy is hard, but we mother still.
Today, we pause to honor and mourn slain mothers in Gaza.
Of the over 10,000 killed in Gaza since October 7th, we estimate 6,000 were women, of which we know many were mothers or mothers-to-be. We remember their beauty, their strength, and resilience, and we commit to working toward lasting peace and justice in their honor. In the same breath, we hold all the motherless children left behind close in our hearts. 37 children lose a mother every day in Gaza.
We think of mothers killed on October 7th in Israel and mothers who received calls that their children were missing and are missing still. We think of Palestinian mothers holding the ash of killed children and wonder how they go on. We think of mothers in Sudan and Congo trying to create beauty and survival in their communities in the midst of ethnic cleansing and starvation.
We see and honor mothers
crossing borders
placing band-aids
buying goldfish
serving on the PTA
sending graduation invitations
calling senior centers for aging parents
carrying an unequal emotional load.
Yes, we live in a world that needs to be mothered.
Spirit of the living God fall FRESH on us.
As we long to conceive.
As we wait to adopt.
As we want to be mother-less in a world that prioritizes childbearing.
As we grieve a mother lost. A child lost.
As we mourn a relationship with a mother we never knew, never wanted, never worked.
Spirit of the living God, fall fresh on us.
As we wade through abuse
Broken promises
Unwanted or forced motherhood
The sting of seeing ANY child suffer as we claim WITH God, that ALL children, are OUR children.
May the neverending love of a God that nurtures, a God that walks alongside, a God that carries, heals, feeds, MOTHERS, buoy US in our collective call to birth liberation, freedom, justice, and more love, always more love.
Asé and Amen.
