Jackson Community Church

Summit, Spirit, Sky: connect to Creator, community and creation!

Jackson Community Church

Summit, Spirit, Sky: connect to Creator, community and creation!

Mother’s Day Musings: Sun, May 11th

Mother’s Day isn’t always straight-forward. Many people struggle with their relationship with their mother, others never had that relationship in the first place. Others were abandoned, others were abused. Some women were never able to have children, others know the pain of losing a son or daughter. This isn’t the easiest of days for many. — Matthew Hyde

Songs about and for Mothers:
Songs by, about, and for Women:

On Motherhood of All Kinds

We are born of love. Love is our mother. – Rumi

She came home running / back to the mothering blackness … — Maya Angelou

Motherhood has powerfully reinforced for me the significance of the fact that when God was most vulnerable – in the womb, nursing at the breast, as a child, at death – God was wholly entrusted to the care of women. I find that frighteningly profound. — Rachel Held Evans

“Mother Earth and all beings of which she is composed” have inherent rights and … “every human being is responsible for respecting and living in harmony with Mother Earth — full document: https://ecojurisprudence.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/International_Universal-Declaration-of-the-Rights-of-Mother-Earth_224.pdf

Prayer for those getting through mother’s day 
— Maren Tirabassi

Spirit of gentleness,
wrap all your holy loving
non-binary compassion 
around all of those 
just hoping to get through a holiday 
that washes them in tears –
because their mothers are dead
or their children are dead,
because they wanted children
but did not have them,
or their children don’t want them
right now in their lives,
or their parents don’t love
a gender identity so dearly chosen,
because their childhood family
or their present one
is marked by abuse,
because there is great distance
of miles or minds
of border wall or prison wall
between them
and someone they love,
because of a miscarriage,
a failed search for a biological parent,
a lonely foster care bedroom,
a desperate attempt
to be a perfect stepparent
or no attempt made at all, 
or just because this holiday
holds up a magnifying glass
to the heart.

Mother’s Day at Doña Rodríguez

— Sandra Maria Esteves (for Aya)
We never met, but I knew her.
By that ray of life that passed into her son,
…
I never knew her, yet she reached out,
as sister, woman, teacher,
as mother, a gentle wind,
touching me. Becoming mine.

On this Mother’s Day, I celebrate and give thanks for my own mother … and all the mothers who have been able to provide this tremendous gift. And I offer prayers for those women who, owing to the gaps and fissures in their own landscape, have left pain and emptiness in the space where a mother should have been. For those who choose to enter into the empty, motherless places—the “othermothers” who come in the form of teachers, grandmothers, aunts, sisters, neighbors, friends—bless you and thank you for your mothering hearts. For all the mothers—mothers by blood, mothers by heart—a blessing to you on this Mother’s Day. — Jan Richardson

The Bad Mother (excerpt) — Susan Griffin 

The bad mother wakes from dreams
of imperfection trying to be perfection.
All night she’s engineered a train
too heavy with supplies
to the interior. She fails.

The child she loves
has taken on bad habits … You don’t
fool me, she wants to say…

This lamb who’s gone –
this infant she is
pinioned to – does not listen …

The Words Under the Words (excerpt)— Naomi Shihab Nye

My grandmother’s hands … followed me,
I woke from the long fever to find them
covering my head like cool prayers…

Mother’s Day Musings: Sun, May 11th
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