Mother's Day Reflection

Following is a reflection I gave on the occasion of Mother's Day, May 9, 2010 at St. Anthony Catholic Church, Anchorage, Alaska

In honor of mothers and Mother’s Day, I would like to share the words of another mother, first heard when I was my oldest daughter, Jasmine’s age. It’s interesting how things change. My mother probably had me read this in newspaper:
When the Good Lord was creating mothers, He was into his sixth day of “overtime” when an angel appeared and said, “You’re doing a lot of fiddling around on this one.”
And the Lord said, “Have you read the specs on this order?
She has to be completely washable, but not plastic; Have 180 movable parts... all replaceable; Run on black coffee and leftovers; Have a lap that disappears when she stands up; A kiss that can cure anything from a broken leg to a disappointed love affair; And six pairs of hands.”
The angel shook her head slowly and said, “Six pairs of hands... no way.”
“It’s not the hands that are causing me problems,” said the Lord. “It’s the three pairs of eyes that mothers have to have.”
“That’s on the standard model?” asked the angel.
The Lord nodded. “One pair that sees through closed doors when she asks, ’What are you kids doing in there?’ when she already knows. Another here in the back of her head that sees what she shouldn’t but what she has to know, and of course the ones here in front that can look at a child when he goofs up and reflect, ’I understand and I love you’ without so much as uttering a word.”
“Lord,” said the angel, touching His sleeve gently, “come to bed. Tomorrow...”
“I can’t,” said the Lord, “I’m so close to creating something so close to myself. Already I have one who heals herself when she is sick... can feed a family of six on one pound of hamburger... and can get a nine-year-old to stand under a shower.”
The angel circled the model of The Mother very slowly. “It’s too soft,” she sighed.
“But tough” said the Lord excitedly. “You cannot imagine what this Mother can do or endure.”
“Can it think?”
“Not only think, but it can reason and compromise,” said the Creator.
Finally, the angel bent over and ran her finger across the cheek. “There’s a leak,” she pronounced. “I told you you were trying to push too much into this model. You can’t ignore the stress factor.”
The Lord moved in for a closer look and gently lifted the drop of moisture to his finger where it glistened and sparkled in the light.
“It’s not a leak,” said the Lord. “It’s a tear.”
“A tear?” asked the angel. “What’s it for?”
“It’s for joy, sadness, disappointment, compassion pain, loneliness, and pride.”
“You are a genius,” said the angel.
The Lord looked somber. “I didn’t put it there,” He said.
This was written by the late, great humorist, Erma Bombeck, still mothering us. She was also a devout Catholic.

My son, Jesse choked up a bit when he read an earlier draft of this reflection. His email critique was a full page. I should expect this from a son who inherited his mother’s writing talent and his father’s sense of humor.

He reminded me that the amazing blessing that is motherhood is a gift from him and his siblings, not yet mentioned: Jacques my oldest son; Aron, my youngest son; and Jordan, my youngest daughter. I won’t live this down if I don’t mention them. And they are all my favorites. He also reminded me of the challenge of entering into a world made new through cooperation with the One who created it—a sometimes unnerving, even annoying challenge.

Those we mother, make us mothers. This experience of mothering, in its broadest sense, is not limited, however, to those who have given birth, or even those who have raised children. The attributes of mothers are those of God. He gives them to each of us. Mothering is as much a spirit as it is a vocation, and each of us is called to mother another. As both a daughter and a mother of the church, I must continue to birth it into being, as we must all do.

Paul, in the first reading, is mothering the Church into being, watering the seeds Christ planted, tending young Christians. He is midwife and mother; thinking and reasoning and compromising; to deliver truth to the world, our sacred charge as well. Mothering is how creation begins—spirit brooding over water. It is what brings Jesus to us, to be birthed into our world. Mary’s “yes” enables our salvation to take on flesh, to live as one of us, to be, for Mary, that tear of joy, sadness, disappointment, compassion, pain, loneliness and pride. It is our “yes” to Jesus that allows Him to be birthed and borne again and again into a world that sorely needs Him.

As we all know, and mothers in particular, birth is often attended with much pain, not because of some curse of Eve, but because something must give way to allow new life to come forward. It is interesting that the word “tear” and “tear” are so similar. The pain, I believe is God’s way of getting our attention. Tears are our way, it seems, of getting God’s attention. Love hurts.

In today’s gospel, Jesus says, “Whoever loves me will keep my word, and my father will love him, and we will come to him and make our dwelling with him.” It is quite obvious that a pregnant woman’s body is a “dwelling” for her unborn child—so too are our bodies the dwelling for the Holy Spirit. Jesus speaks of the promised Advocate in his farewell at the Last Supper--a farewell much like the ones mothers and family members and friends we give to our graduates, who we honor today as we send them out into the big, scary world. We wish to do as Jesus does, send an Advocate, in our name, to remind our children of all we have told them.

In a very concrete sense we do that, not just in keeping ties with our children through letters or electronic means. Our bond with Christ through the Holy Spirit is as real, material even, as our spiritual and biological connection to our offspring, to each other, and all creation.

As a one time childbirth educator I have helped women and families to prepare baby’s birth; and I have been privileged and humbled to be a labor assistant at the birth of a mother, in its most fundamental sense. In my study of pregnancy and birth, one of the most fascinating things I have learned is about a phenomenon called microchimerism.
A chimera reminds me of the extraordinary beings in John’s book of Revelation—a composite of other beings. Remember the ones with the wings on their feet, four faces on their heads, to see in all directions.

Microchimerism is the fact of biology; that a woman’s body contains fetal cells—actually very small amounts of her child’s stem cells, long after its birth. We too possess the cells of our mothers, and quite possibly those of our grandparents and siblings born before us. Such cells may be implicated in causing, but perhaps, more importantly in healing and preventing disease. It is the Communion of Saints on a biological level.

Dr. J. Lee Nelson, a neurosurgeon and researcher studying this phenomenon referred to these cells as “seeds sprinkled through the body that ultimately take root and become part of the landscape.” It sounds a lot like what Jesus said, “we will come to him and make our dwelling with him.” God takes root in, us coloring and changing our inner landscape, and hopefully our outward living as well.

What all of this suggests is our connectedness to each other and to Christ—a bond celebrated and again made new and real in Eucharist. We see in God’s plan of creation a continuity which ties us to one another and to God. This is Paul’s trust, and ours, to do what is right, to build a legacy of faith. This is the essence of motherhood, of mothering.

Mother Teresa said, “Every mother is like Moses, she prepares a world she will not see.” What we do now has huge implications for the future. It is our vocation to prepare well that world we will not see well, but also to prepare a world we hope to see, a world we believe we will see—the fullness of the kingdom of God.

This is what my mother did for me, in bringing me to church, in teaching and nurturing my faith, as did a long, long line of ancestors—mothers and others—before her. This is what I hopefully do for my children, and they will do for theirs.

It is a cycle yes, but one that spirals forward toward that kingdom; an ever evolving spiral that binds us in relationship, much like the double helix of DNA—simple, elegant. It is life, written in our hearts and in our cells. As my son Jesse said, “We pass on the story of our never ending quest to find more of ourselves in faith”—much as we pass on our genes. In her article on microchimerism in Scientific American, Dr. Nelson quoted poet Walt Whitman who wrote in “Song of Myself,” “I contain multitudes.” What better explanation could there be of the Body of Christ?

A line from a song by contemporary band, Switchfoot says: “The world begins with newborn skin.” And so it is, “In the beginning was the Word…and the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us. So too does that flesh dwell in the body of Mary our Mother. In a very literal sense, Mary is the tabernacle of God. So too, are we.