Dear Brave Souls: SOME WAYS TO SEE MOTHER’S DAY
In the United States, it is Mother’s Day. It is a time that began long ago to recognize women who are mothers.
Over time, it is clear to me that the designated day is to remember those ‘mothers’ who have walked with…
mothers who walked with their own and others’ children, family members, parents, village and tribal members, creature children, elders, dedication to preserving lives as in protecting the young from being conscripted for war, to protecting the food supply, to watching over and protecting the water, the air, the land, the life giving elements of our Planet Earth.
Mother’s day is celebrated across the world, often in March which is the beginning of springtime in certain parts of the world, and in May, which is also the beginning of springtime in another part of the world.
I had to laugh a little bit when I was researching and saw the claim that Mother’s day designation ‘is not related to the many celebrations of mothers and motherhood that have occurred throughout the world over thousands of years, such as the Greek cult to Cybele…’
Er, well, ok, if you say so. And/but the celebration of The Great Mother in her many forms in ancient times and celebrations of human mothers –and Holy Mother– have coincided at the beginning of Spring since time out of mind.
I’d offer to you two ideas just from my own ponderings.
1. I find that Mother’s day and Father’s day and Child day and all other designated days tribally and citywide and nationwide and worldwide, occur because they erupt from the collective unconscious…
[conceptually] which is that aspect of deep psyche in everyone, that no matter how hard someone/ anyone/ hierarchies/ governments try to repress, suppress certain ideas, [like Great Mother, Wise Old Man, Child of Love, Animal Forces of Nature, Eternal Couple, Kore who chooses not to marry, Keeper of the Fire, and thousands and thousands more archetypal mysteries and elements that live in us all, often just under consciousness… these may have been handed down from ancient times in ‘the collective’ mind to which we all appear to inherit]
–the people who have been stripped of, or told to ‘forget’ the most poignant and life-giving elements of the collective unconscious– eventually will dream the great archetypes back to the surface again, and they will be returned in new and fresh forms to us, to our happiness and in order to be a part of our pursuing not just ego appetites which at some point may dry a person to bitterness, but a life of meaning of ever new cycles of Springtime, fresh and beautiful, to the Soul.
I would say, whether mandated by any group or proclamation, Mother’s day is that. Whether one celebrates Sacred Mother and/or heroic, funny, strangely yet unknown, yet hard working mothers who are in their own cycles of life/death/life. That the desire to be with ‘the mother’ in one way that is peaceful and kindly, erupts because it is in us to pursue such. Bloodline and proximity, and even being on earth, are not the defining factors.
The defining factor is love, noticing that a woman has mothered, whether for a few days of days as in mothers who have not yet been able to bring a child through all nine months, to those who nurture others born onto this earth regardless of the overculture’s often wrong definitions of who is family or not, and those mothers have done so for short times or for long and long.
There is no perfect mother, but love reaches to the parts of mother that have made effort. Love tries to find, not fault, but the best in others. Hence, one can recognize many many persons on any day designated to elders, including all persons who have given nurturance, given a lot for a bit or since forever, or a bit only.
I would add if there is for whatever reason, no mother in one’s life for whatever reason, and without going into it all here, there are reasons why some are in fact motherless…. you have my full permission to be close to nurturance in whatever ways you find sweet and good: nature, holiness, teachers, creatures, and I’d add men to that too. What is holy mother comes in many forms.
2. I’ve suggest to you here before, and I’d gently remind for this day too. Many human mothers are now elders. They have lived long and long. Their parents are gone from earth. And as your mother might praise you, there is no one to praise her who knows her all her life long since a baby.
No one to remember to her, her sweet precious ways as a child. No one to remember to her, the family stories before her own children were born. And especially, no voice of her own mother and father to speak praise of various parts of her life.
I’d mentioned to you before that after my mother died many years ago, my elderly father Joszef came to live with us so we could watch over him. My completely old country tribal headsman father, was steeped in the ways of his literally 17th century tribal group and its strict ideas about women and men and children and work and worship and right conduct and more…
Thus, I took close to me, as did my younger family members, my dear, opinionated, brutal, alcoholic, beloved, hard working, funny, precious father…
It was then that I began praising my father for the many things I knew about his long life [and he would correct me if I got any of the tiny details wrong, lol– so I could learn even more about his life as ser humano, a true human being] –things that he had done, things he involved himself in, things that were so brave or sweet or poignant —
And I saw my dear bent-over, frail father, flash back to fullest life each time… and I realized, he had no one left to witness his life, no one to ‘remember himself back to himself’, no one to praise him.
That his mother so frail and old herself when he found her wandering in the refugee rubble piles after the so deadly murdering war and was able through great effort to bring her to the USA,
his mother who was terrified to ride in a car once she came to live with us, for she had only ridden all her life in a wagon driving horses…that she had died soon after. That between nazis and red army and the utter mayhem of ethnic cleansing, his father had not survived the killing war. That his thirteen brothers and sisters were now all gone. That he alone survived.
I began by praising him for being relentless in trying to find any and all extended family members and village neighbors who might have survived the war. I praised dad for the fact that even though he couldnt speak English well, he never gave up searching through any and all channels, many heartbreaking dead ends
—bringing news of no, he died, no, she is dead, no, that family is all gone, no one survived, no the bodies have not been found but they have perished. And some few still living souls, [and the Red Cross which is also a search organization, was called St. Red Cross in our household]
–he found and brought across an entire storm ocean, and into our little home in the rural backwoods. I was 5 years old when the first poor soul arrived all broken and scarred. More were found. Parts and pieces of once whole families.
So now, many years later, I recalled to dad how he had sat at the blue plastic kitchen table and listened and listened to our relatives –‘his people’ … weep and weep.
My dad who hadnt had much patience with ’emotions.’ Had listened to the so hurt and wounded, like a tender, tender mother. I praised him for that too. He said he’d thought nobody but him remembered. I told him, ‘Dad, how could I ever forget? It was you in your true heart and soul, your light so bright.’
I could go on, for the story is long and long. But just to say this: If your parents and relatives and neighbors who you might know, are elderly, see about what you might authentically remember about their best moments. Be their witness. Stand in the place of their now gone parents who may or may not have ever praised them. You can do this now. It truly is like raining on parched earth where the seeds are still alive under the earth and will blossom forward.
Nothing else. Not elaborate. Just recognizing a soul has lived and continues to live… like a beautiful flowering plant that also needs from time to time, gentle watering.
Blessed Mother’s day to you all, in whatever your ways of nurturing, people, water, air, land, creatures. I love you for that. I love that you care and that you act on your caring.
This comes with love,
dr.e
the image is a nepali mandala. I used it here, to hold that we continue to pray helps and succor and yes, praise, for all those in the aftermath of the devastating earthquake there, and to remind two things;
one, that there is much mothering and fathering going on in every place in need on our earth… much may fall apart, or stop, or pause, but the mothering and fathering goes on even in duress. This is the miracle of the true self within human beings awake to it all.
The other meaning I hope to convey to you is that it is my prayer that by our works and our understandings as we grow older, that we can say we have come closer and closer to having a mandala view of life, of being nurturant and receiving nurturing, also, which is a form of grace too.