One mother at a time

This is the text of a sermon I gave at First Congregational Church of Akron on May 3, just before the Standing Women event.

Sarah Vradenburg of Akron

MOTHER: A VERB

Good morning. Thanks to Jay, and to all of you, for letting me follow the dictates of my heart. I wish I could say that the talk I’m going to give you today was the one I envisioned in March, but it’s not. It’s more, and it’s been evolving, even since this morning.
In a real sense, my appearance today picks up from the time I spoke here after our family was displaced by a fire at Christmas in 1995. I spoke from this pulpit in January, barely three weeks after I had left a candle burning in our home and changed our lives forever. Then, too, I was called to speak. Some of you were here for that; many more were not. I’ll recap briefly.
Among other things, I introduced what I call my Change of Heart Campaign. I remember talking about my belief that everything we see was at one time a figment of someone’s imagination, and that that we need to understand that thoughts become things.
We are sitting in a world we created. I spoke then of how the world’s problems are the accumulation of individual thoughts and actions, and that we can only hope to change problems by changing our own behavior, also one thought, one action at a time. It seems small, but if enough of us change our hearts, if enough individuals make a choice that serves love, serves freedom, serves life, then these problems can be – will be -- solved. Not tomorrow, perhaps, but improvement is inevitable. Still, change will only come one heart at a time.
So what does then have to do with today? In March, several of us from FCC joined with a larger group of women from all over the area for something called the Women’s Interfaith Spiritual Healing circle. Ann Duff is one of the larger group’s members. These are women of great strength, experience and compassion. Women of different nationalities, physical gifts and age came together to explore a book titled ``Urgent Message from Mother: Gather the Women, Save the World’’ by Jean Shinoda Bolen.
At one point I was asked to read from the book the proclamation marking the first Mother’s Day in 1870. That was only five years after the Civil War. I don’t think I had ever seen or heard those words before; all I really know is that as I read them I felt them. They shook my shoulders, saying: ``Pay attention!! This is important!’’ After I was done, the next words I uttered out loud were, ``Wouldn’t it be something to read that from the FCC pulpit on Mother’s Day?’’ Some ideas just won’t let go.
I want to share that first Mother’s Day message now:
Arise, then, women of this day! Arise all women who have hearts, whether our baptism be that of water or of tears!
Say firmly: ``We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies. Our husbands shall 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 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 our dishonor nor violence indicate possession. As men have often forsaken the plow 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 then solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each bearing after their own time the sacred impress, not of Ceasar, but of God.
In the name of womanhood and of humanity, I earnestly ask that a general congress of women without limit of nationality may be appointed and held at some place 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.
Julia Ward Howe, Boston, 1870

That is one angry mother.
Shinoda Bolen deliberately uses that revolutionary, incendiary declaration to open her book and to point out that the signs of a world out of balance were clear 137 years ago when Howe first penned those words. Yes, the country was growing and changing, becoming strong among nations. But there was a cost. It had just emerged from a horrific war against itself. The dawning industrial age was already playing havoc on the environment, on the people. Howe wanted people not only to be aware of but to address these issues before the problems became, well, matters of life and death. Like a decade earlier, when young men were fed to the cannons, she also was issuing a call to arms. Yes, a call to arms, but clearly she was talking about arms that embrace, not arms that kill. She spent the rest of her life working for peace.
Think about it: If violence really solved problems, there would not be a problem left in the world. Howe, and Shinoda Bolen and, today, I am saying there must be a better way. And mothers must lead the way.
In her book, Shinoda Bolen’s central thesis is that the balance of power is out of whack, with women – although, for today’s purposes, I will substitute the word mother – all but shut out of the process that moves the global gears. She believes that we can attribute the current state of the world to this lack of balance: wars, global warming, poverty, disease, unequal distribution of resources -- I have not even scratched the surface of the critical issues we face. When I spoke 12 years ago, I offered a similar laundry list. It has only grown. I suppose the good news in that is that there is no shortage of opportunities to become involved, to hop on the side of the global teeter-totter that tips in favor of the future.
Indeed, things are already tipping, but not in our favor. By now most people understand that our planet is at a crossroads. The climate is changing, although we have yet to understand just how it will affect us. For all we know we could become the new Florida, but is that such a good thing if our benefit comes at the cost of knowing that Florida may become the new Sahara Desert? Our health-care system is strained, unable to adequately serve many people without also bankrupting them. As always in such cases, increasing numbers of children are left behind. Our national and personal debt are at record levels, making us as a nation and as individuals unable to respond to real needs because we are busy just trying to pay the monthly minimum.
What can bring us – as people and as a planet -- back from the brink? I have no crystal ball, but I have some ideas. Actually, many ideas I shared here 12 years ago, but it begins with regaining the mother’s voice in worldly affairs, regaining a sense balance weighted by the impulse to nurture and to build. Working together, such impulses build great societies where people and ideas thrive. And when ideas thrive, everyone who comes in contact with them is uplifted. We have been schooled in the importance of the individual, and nothing can replace the energy of an engaged individual. But leaving things solely to individual impulses is like having a canoeist paddling only on one side. The canoe can’t do anything but go in circles. Change will come only when changed hearts come together.
Now, half of you – the guys – may be sitting back thinking you’re off the hook. You’re not mothers, you say, couldn’t pass the physical. Well, times require broader thinking. Just as not all women are mothers, I suggest that not all mothers are women. That opens the concept of mothering beyond biology to the idea that mothering is active support of what enables the human species to grow and prosper. In that sense, can any of us afford not to be mothers?
What is the archetype for fierce, protect-at-all-costs love? The mother bear, protecting her cubs, although you can substitute any of the myriad of species and you’ll still find that protectiveness, that willingness to do anything needed to ensure the survival of a child and, by extension, the entire group.
Take those rare cases of maternal abuse out of the mental mix for a moment and ask yourself: Can you imagine any mother allowing her child to starve? To die of a preventable disease? Would any mother intentionally leave her child naked? Can you think of a mother who would deliberately allow her child to remain ignorant if she knew knowledge held the key to success?
These aren’t trick questions. Of course no mother we know would allow such things. So why do we? Why do we endure the knowledge that entire peoples face starvation because food cannot get from Point A, where it is grown, to Point Z, where it is needed? So why do we allow millions to live in conditions that would have to be improved to be called squalor? Why do we allow schools to continue to struggle? These are all big issues, with many others tugging at us for our attention. It is easy to become overwhelmed. That is usually the point at which we stop, allowing our sense of inadequacy to rob us of our God-given impulse to make things better. To be mothers.
I’ll let you in on a little secret: There is not a mother alive who has not been overwhelmed by the circumstances of her life, feeling inadequate to meet the challenges of caring for her family. But those mothers don’t have the luxury of simply collapsing before the size of the obstacle. Instead, we tackle what we can, one job at a time.
There are many things that we as individuals and as a church can do to begin to mother the world back into balance. In this congregation we have Mason School as a way to nurture young souls and minds, we can do more. We have the Food Cupboard to nourish impoverished bodies; we can do more. Are there other things we can do? Certainly, although I could not begin to offer suggestions. Right here, right now.
However, there is one small thing we can do today. At 1 p.m. will be a gathering of women in Akron at the statue of Chief Rotaynah – the big wooden Indian in front of Resnik school on West Market St. I invite everyone here to join us on West Market St. at 1. It will only take 5 minutes. It is part of the Standing Women project, women standing to save the world. Remember Julia Ward Howe’s call to gather mothers for peace? We honor her and we honor that call in this gathering.
There certainly is reason to wonder how a bunch of women standing on West Market Street could possibly make a difference. If we were the only ones, perhaps it wouldn’t. But this group in Akron is going to be joined by similar groups in 75 countries. Six hundred ninety three organizations and 3,443 different events will all have women – and today I expand that invitation to include all you mothers, men or women – standing to save the world. Actually, there are far more; the numbers were changing as I was checked the Standing Woman Web site this morning.
What a powerful statement we can make, one woman, one mother, at a time. This is what we will be standing for:
``We will be standing for the world's children and grandchildren, and for the seven generations beyond them. We dream of a world where all of our children have safe drinking water, clean air to breathe, and enough food to eat. A world where they have access to a basic education to develop their minds and healthcare to nurture their growing bodies. A world where they have a warm, safe, and loving place to call home. A world where they don't live in fear of violence--in their home, in their neighborhood, in their school, or in their world. This is the world of which we dream. This is the cause for which we stand.’’
And then what should we do? That is up to each of us. But by way of example, we could be like Muhammad Yunus who won the Nobel Peace Prize for his creation of the Grameen Bank and the concept of microloans, tiny amounts of money loaned to women to start small businesses. Its founding principles are twofold: that attacking poverty is essential to peace, and that private enterprise is essential to attacking poverty. He is a mother.
Or we could be like Sally Goodrich, who lost her son in 9/11. Instead of also losing herself in her grief and her memories, she decided to use her son’s memory to raise money for and to build a school in Afghanistan for about 500 girls. I heard her during an interview recently. She said that only after she began helping those girls was she able to fully tap into her son’s memory and the joy his life had given others.
Perhaps the surest link to the Standing Women is the Association of the Mothers of the Plaza de Mayo, Argentine mothers who had lost at least one, if not many, family members to the harsh military regime in the 1970s. Having been rebuffed by government and religious leaders alike, they took to the streets to protest the disappearance of their family members. At first only 14 women showed up, and nine of those who marched that first Thursday morning later also ``disappeared.’’ The remaining five showed up the following Thursday and kept marching. They, and those courageous enough to join them, eventually became the conscience of Argentina and later, the world. Mothers, all.
Being a mother is far from easy, but those qualities that endear our mothers to us – love, guidance, fierce protectiveness, great courage -- are needed by the human family, now, before it is too late. I could not presume to tell you what you should do. Clearly, there are things that can be done. You must consult your own heart, and take its guidance, one step, one small job at a time. And then encourage others to follow their hearts and join, one mother at a time, in this grand task of saving our human family.
Not everyone has what it takes to be a mother. But for those who do, this is your day. Make the most of it.