May 8

Dear Friends,

Though it is Hallmark calling us in to action this week (gotta get just the right Mother’s Day card this year to honor Mom), it was one of our Unitarian ancestors who began the practice of calling mothers into action in the midst of the Civil War. Julia Ward Howe made a “Mother’s Day Proclamation” (it’s #573 in the gray hymnal), and there was nothing static or celebratory about what she was calling mothers to do. Her language is gendered, stereotyped in many ways, but what she expects is clear. She calls for the end of war. She calls for women “To bewail and commemorate the dead.” She calls mothers to “take counsel with each other as the means whereby the great human family can live in peace.” Julia Ward Howe calls for women, for mothers, to be peace-makers.

Of course, it is not in this day and age only men who war and create violence, only women who oppose violence and call for peace. The tendencies toward division and hatred leading to violence are with us still. And so are the calls to cease war, to cease hatred, to cease violence. Let us be a people on that side of strife, proclaiming “[No people] shall be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy, and patience.”

On May 12, the day we stop to honor mothers, and in the words of Rev. Victoria Weinstein, “On this day that honors Mothers, let us honor all mothers, men and women [and all people] alike, who from somewhere in their being have freely and wholeheartedly given life, and sustenance, and vision to us….”

May you feel the righteous call to resist hatred and violence, may you feel the love that shares freely the blessed mystery of life and vision, as you remember, today and every day, you are loved, you are worthy, you are welcome, and you are needed. May you feel it so.

Looking forward to seeing you soon, even in church, Rev. Rita