The Fierce Origin of Mother’s Day: A Lost Story
May 11th, 2008 by DR. CLARISSA PINKOLA ESTÉS, TMV Columnist
Mother’s Day, as we know it today, is a more or less genteel day of hopefully kind words and sweet sentiments depending on whether one’s family more resembles the Simpsons, the Partridges or a holy family of schmoos.
But long ago, Mother’s Day in the US burst forth drenched in blood, and buried in bones and graves. It was anything but genteel.
This fiercely special day was set aside in 1870 to make a cry heard round the world from mothers who were demanding that war never be born again.
This special day was called by women who had lost their sons in a war wherein battle fields were like lakes of red from all the fallen. The women had lost their children, and sometimes, for a time, their minds as well– but not their great hearts.
Sometimes people say the title “mother” can only be applied to a woman who has given physical birth. I’d say ‘a blessed mother’ is any woman who reveres life in her own special ways, who cars for life, and who strives to give birth to new life each day in heart and mind and voice.
Here is the gutsy, Mother’s Day Proclamation of 1870. It was written by Julia Ward Howe. Would that her voice were still on earth today. Would that her call would still come to life.
Arise then women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will 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, the 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 voice of a 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 plough 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 solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace.Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of GodIn the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality,
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenientAnd 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.
_______
CODA
The drawing is called, ‘Outbreak,’ is by one of the pre-eminent draughtswoman of the last century –Kathe Kollwitz. She lost one of her two sons to war in WWI, and her grandson died in WWII. Like Goya, she is a fierce witness about man’s inhumanity to humankind. Her body of work against war is profound. See here, click on the red titles at the bottom. Perhaps try, first, “The Mothers, 1921″
This entry was posted on Sunday, May 11th, 2008 at 2:10 am and is filed under Mother, Family, Death, Moral Values, Arms, Women, U.S. Civil War, Social Commentary, Holidays, World War I, Mass Murder, War. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
