The Unitarian Fellowship of Peterborough

Music by Binnorie, a four piece band, playing folk and Celtic music

It’s no easy task to provide mothering. Even our best efforts can turn out to be harmful, even toxic. And yet, we continue to have babies and to love them as best we can. What else can we do?

Religious Exploration: An experience of nature day, on spring and fertility.

Opening Words

Story for All Ages

Reading

Message

Mothering in Difficult Times. Hummm... My thoughts for speaking on this day, on Mother’s Day, first congealed around a brief comment in Annie Leonard’s “The Story of Stuff”, which is a rather brilliant video that explains how stuff enters our lives and what becomes of it. The video’s topic is not germane to today, but if you’ve never seen it...google it... it’s worth seeing.

The comment that caught my attention was: (quote) “Do you know what is the food at the top of the food chain with the highest level of many toxic contaminants? Human breast milk. That means that we’ve reached a point where the smallest members of our societies, our babies, are getting the highest lifetime dose of toxic chemicals from breast feeding, from their mothers.” (unquote) You, who are always more informed about the world than I, probably knew all about this, but I found it alarming. How is it possible that in the most quintessential act of mothering, this most fundamental act of human nurturing...I mean, how is it right in any universe that in the process of breast-feeding, a mother is passing along toxic chemicals? Well, while there is much to explore about this, again, this is not my focus for today. (But let me assure you that the World Health Organization still recommends breast feeding, because it also provides a baby’s best defence.)

It was this comment that got me thinking about what must be one of the most difficult things about being a mother... how that often the best intentions, the most loving actions, do not bring the desired results.

Mother’s Day. I don’t consider myself an expert on mothers. I don’t have anyone for whom to buy a card or flowers today. And, I’m not a mother. I did HAVE a mother, which is also true for all of you. One of my friends recently assured me that I know a lot about mothering through adopting and living with dogs, and I suppose that’s true. We all know something about mothering, about nurturing. Still, approaching and entering a sermon on Mother’s Day is rather like walking into a mine field of daisies. Our experiences on all sides of mothers and mothering are complex and unique and located at various places along the spectrums of joy and despair, attachment and isolation, nurturance and abandonment, grief and contentment. I pray that wherever you are in this wild field, we will find some way to meet and connect this morning.

I read an article in preparation for today, an article written by a Canadian psychotherapist, who writes about how the roles in our family lives are shifting, and how ‘mothering’ can be a learnt behaviour that is not reserved for women. She writes, “The more people who learn ‘mothering’, the better it will be for our future generations.”[1] 

So, I have a proposal. In this day and age, when traditional gender roles are being questioned and abandoned, when people choose many different ways to parent, Mother’s Day should no longer be about women who mother children, nor should it be reserved for women. Let us no longer make this day about finding something sweet to say when (sometimes) we don’t feel it. Let it no longer have anything to do with a biological relationship, or a particular familial role. I propose that Mother’s Day, at least for today here in this room, be a celebration of ‘mothering’, of caring for one another, of nurturing our true selves and each other. I propose that Mother’s Day be a call to us to remember the importance of birthing things and then letting them go, a call for us to remember the impact we can have on one another and our world. 

And so I want to speak to you today not about ‘mothers’, but about ‘mothering’. 

To mother is defined as taking care of someone with tenderness, or, alternatively, to bring something about, to give rise to something. We all do this, male and female, young and old. We all do this. One of the ways we mother is to care for others, hopefully with tenderness, as we encourage one another on our paths. Another way we mother is by creating, imagining, or bringing something into being. We do not need to have or need to have had fertile wombs in order to do this. We are all mothers. True, there are special bonds that are formed between biological parent and children. But similar bonds are formed with adoptive children and parents; similar bonds are formed with special friends and with partners, similar bonds are sometimes even formed with pet projects and causes. Mothering is not only applicable in blood relationships. We are all mothers. Or, we can all choose to be mothers.   (Are you with me? If you’ve never thought of yourself as a mother, just cut me a little slack...go with it, okay? And, if I call you ‘mom’ during coffee hour, don’t be alarmed!) 

Mothering is critical energy in our world. We don’t get enough mothering. We don’t give enough mothering. Or, maybe better said, there can never be too much mothering, at least not good, well-differentiated mothering. I’m just going to presume that you accept this premise...that good mothering, loving care to one another, nurturing relationships...that these are good things, necessary things, and that we all want to contribute more mothering to the planet. 

But my sermon title is “Mothering in Difficult Times,” and I suppose I ought to get on with it. I’m not talking about any particular decade, or year. I’m not talking about a time of heightened global anxiety or economic crises. I’m talking about those difficult times, those trying moments, across all time and space, when our ability to be the mothers we want to be, our intention to be loving, is tested and battered. It’s the moment when you realize, that despite your best efforts to provide the absolutely most healthy nurturance, that your ‘milk’ might be toxic. It’s when you know that what you want to offer is unconditional love and support, and something trips you up, or sabotages your efforts. It’s when you feel that your loving is rejected, or that it falls on deaf hearts. It’s when loving is the most difficult thing you can do, and you still want to do it. 

Sometimes, when I’m rather stuck in the sermon-writing process, as I was this week, I post a question to facebook. Yesterday I asked my facebook friends to reflect on those times when it’s difficult to be a good mom. (To belabour an earlier point, even though I said my question wasn’t limited to women or to women with children, everyone who responded is in fact a biological mother. Again, I ask you to stretch your paradigm here...we are all capable of mothering.)

Those responses came from a woman whose son committed suicide, from a mom who son is suicidal, from moms of addicts and from a mom with a child with a chronic disease. A mom whose daughter scorns her responded, as did a mom who divorced her child’s father. Someone else commented on getting critiqued by ‘holier than thou’ mothers. This is mothering in difficult times. These are times that we are in the presence of monsters that won’t go away. 

Almost without exception, each of these mothers wrote about needing to let go and allow their child to be who they are.   We are all confronted with situations where it is difficult to love and then to let go.   I’m sure you can think of many times when you’ve not know how to be the best partner, friend, co-worker, neighbour. 

Perhaps most difficult is when we feel helpless....when a friend, or a situation, or a child...seems to have stepped off a dangerous precipice, when something seemingly irreconcilable and irreversible has happened. How do we hold ourselves and our charges in love in such situations? Mothering in difficult times is difficult precisely because we love, because we want to be loving, and because some challenge...be it toxic breast milk or monsters in the closet...has made the path to that love treacherous and dark. 

The first person to respond to my facebook question talked of the risk mothering requires. Julie MacKenzie, a friend from Minneapolis said, “Parenting is full of risk, burden, danger, loss and the unknown. Even if you give it your all, there is the possibility you may still fail, and face abandonment, sorrow or misunderstanding.”

Parenting is a risk. Loving is a risk. Curiously enough, this was also a theme in Rev. Leslie Takahashi Morris’ article in this month’s newsletter from the Church of the Larger Fellowship. In it she refers to Unitarian Universalist ethicist Sharon Welch’s work on a ‘feminist ethic of risk.’ I quote, “Welch, who is a UU humanist, believes that many choose not to be the change they can be in the world because they can’t be certain what the outcomes will be. Our ‘search for absolute victory’ leads to a form of despair magnified by our belief that we must act alone. Instead of this ‘ethic of control’, Welch says, we need an ‘ethic of risk,’ a commitment to act even though the true outcome of our actions may not be known in our lifetime.” (unquote)

Many of us have, I expect, known people who mother from an ‘ethic of control.’ Like me, I bet you know that this doesn’t work. Trying to be in control of the outcome...of who someone will be or the choices they make...doesn’t work. Perhaps the best mothering advice I’ve seen speaks to mothering as a spiritual path, and suggests that the main practices along this path are opening the heart, slowing down, letting go, and saying yes.[2] Keep your heart open, slow down, let go, and say yes. 

Keeping ourselves open allows us to enter into our own hearts, and paradoxically, this provides plenty of room for others we might mother. It also helps our hearts to soften and be open to the grace of the world. And in case you think this is ‘idiot compassion’, know that open hearts can still keep good boundaries and act with discipline. 

Slowing down allows us to be present to the now and to those around us. Slowing down puts us into time where everything is sacred. 

Letting go is to constantly be learning that we can’t control the outcomes, so we best enjoy the present, offering it our best intentions. 

And saying yes, even at times when we must say no, is to say ‘yes’ to that larger space where we believe in our place as mothers and lovers, and to breathe into that being.

Do you notice that all of these practices are about oneself, and not about how we might treat or support or direct someone else? Mothering, then, is something we are, not something we do. I believe that if we are able, from a place of personal integrity, to open our hearts, slow down, let go, and say yes, then we cannot help but be good mothers, in whatever circumstances.  

How does this help us in difficult times? Actually, I don’t know. I do know that when in a difficult time, a common reaction is to become more controlling, more strident, more anxious. I know this is not helpful.  

I also know that this is not work that is best done alone. Since none of us has perfected it, there is no shame in making mistakes, or in admitting that we don’t know what to do. Remember the reading Paula did earlier, from Annie LaMott? I left a section out of that reading, the part where Annie goes to her friends, and talks with her dinner partners, and prays...in order to come to a decision about Sam and paragliding. And so we come here, together, to share this spiritual path...this path of learning and growing in trust and love...this path where we accept the responsibility to love and encourage and counsel one another, even when we do that imperfectly. Even when the outcomes are unknown and uncontrollable.

In the big picture of our year’s theme, How Shall We Live, to live as mothers is to consistently choose act with an open heart, even when we can’t see or control the outcomes. To live as mothers means to choose to trust love, even though it is sometimes thoroughly untrustworthy. To live as mothers means to choose to give our own hearts comfort and space even in the face of feeling incapable of offering the same to another. To live as mothers means to forgive even when an apology has not been offered. To live as mothers means to feel the urge to protect, and at the same time, to allow life the freedom to risk. And if the times be difficult, to live as mothers means to turn to others for support and comfort.   We know that to do otherwise contributes to a hopeless system. To choose love, openly given, is the better option. 

My friend Julie completed her post with these words, “With mothering, you risk death just to embark on the journey. You are shown you must give your body as well as the rest. With the mother, nothing is spared. Lay down all your cards. Look the devil in the eye. And choose love.”

Choose love. 

You probably know that Mother’s Day was not a Hallmark invention, but rather the result of a proclamation issued in 1872 by Julia Ward Howe. Disillusioned with the Civil War and the wars that followed, she felt that mothers could be a united force against senseless killing. She believed that mothers had the ability to tap into a deep love for humanity, and took a risk in calling for peace, peace born of a mother’s spirit. She chose love. 

And some of you may remember that last year we stood here in silence after reading the Standing Women’s proclamation...a modern-day version of Julia Ward Howe’s impulse. This year, I ask you to share with me in reading these two documents together.   The words are printed in your order of service. I’ll read the italicized words of Julia Ward Howe, and ask that you read the indented text.   Please rise. 

Closing Words