Mothers, Dear Champions of Life

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Photo by Bruno Nascimento on Unsplash

This is a repost from the past.  I've so many comments over the years that it bears another read.  Blessings to all mothers this week and all who "mother" in one form or another.

I get invited into some of the most raw and intimate moments of people’s lives.  I’m a pastor; my work is soul work.  The work sometimes breaks my heart.  Other times it breaks it open, expands it, makes it soar with wings I doubt I’d have found in any other way.  The work, frankly, is saving me from losing hope when there are so many reasons losing hope seems like the right thing to do.    

Several years ago, I walked with a mother whose courage, frankly, pressed my face to the ground in awe—an awe-full sense that there is something at work in this woman’s life, and in this world, that is way, way, way beyond us both.    

It’s not the first time I’ve beheld a mother who’s found what seems to me to be superhuman courage.  Despite her doubts, her weakness, her tears, her prayers that there could be some other way to move forward, this mother clawed her way toward a way to love the fruit of her womb, her very flesh and blood, when loving her child demanded that all her hopes and dreams must die for the sake of letting her child go.  It felt to her that a part of her was dying.  But she did it anyway.  And I was awed.

Courage is one of the many things that marks motherhood.  Not all mothers, of course.  Some mothers walk away from the courage demanded of them, the fierce love needed by those they’ve brought into the world—those who need their protection, their advocacy, their fight for their children’s lives, those who need someone to champion the flourishing of life that is the divine right of us all.  Some moms can’t, for a number of reasons, do all this. I won’t judge them.  Motherhood’s tough work.  Rewarding, yes, but let’s not lose sight of the real human courage that all mothers must find deep within themselves at various times over the course of their lives.  

So, while there are a few mothers who are, well, rats and scoundrels, the rest are trying, one way or another, to muster whatever courage they can to do what life needs from them.  And when you consider what wasn’t passed on to so many of them by their role models, and when you add the trauma and lack of support and pain so many of them live with, we ought to bow before them all in awe.  I realize that this might be really hard for some who’ve been so terribly neglected and hurt by those whose wombs bore them.  But regardless, today, I’m struck by the different degrees of courage all mothers—despite their hangups—have had to muster.  And I’m in awe. 

So, 

on this Mother’s Day, 

I’ll bend my knee

and bow my head 

in reverence 

before the mothers

of the earth.  

All of them.  

The good ones 

and the bad ones.  

Those who love children 

who are easy to love,

and those who weep over 

those who aren’t.  

Those who’ve given birth 

to their own flesh and blood, 

and those who mother 

the children of another.  

The mothers who’ve 

had to bury the child 

who ought to have buried them;

those whose children 

gather round them 

this Mother’s Day in praise,

and those whose children don’t;

those who rise 

to the courage demanded of them,

and those who won’t.  

Mothers, all, 

agents of life,

each and every one of you,

no matter what you’ve done

or haven’t done—

I revere you.

Mothers, yes, 

especially you mothers,

who’ve broken open 

the hardened places 

in your hearts, 

you who’ve dug deep, 

through pain

and confusion

and blinding longing,

and found the courage 

and selflessness

and fierce loyalty 

love requires—

despite your doubts 

and fears, 

your weaknesses 

and tears,

and done what you thought 

was too hard for you to do,

what you feared would undo you . . .

I salute and praise you,

Dear Champions of Life.

Easter: Awakening to the Power of Human Resilience

A brief Easter meditation drawn from 1 Corinthians 15.50-58, John 20.1, and An Easter Acclamation: Cosmic and Evolutionary. My sermon on Sunday, April 21, 2019, preached at Davis Community Church. Find the audio of the sermon here.

Photo by Gabriel Jimenez on Unsplash

Last summer, my wife, Patty, and walked past the Notre-Dame Cathedral. The line looked excruciatingly long. And so, we passed by and crossed the Pont des Coeurs bridge and explored the Left Bank and the Latin Quarter instead.

This last Monday, I watched, along with hundreds of thousands of Parisians and millions around the world, as Notre Dame, astonishingly, collapsed in flames. Though I’d never been inside it, the grand cathedral was nevertheless inside of me. Notre Dame is the spiritual heart not only of Paris, but in many ways, the consciousness of the Western world—religious and non-religious.

Since the fourth century, a place of worship has occupied the site—the current structure, since the mid-twelfth century. Notre-Dame is an architectural masterpiece, a symbol of artistic genius and ardent spiritual devotion. It’s stood as the cultural and spiritual center of Western life for 850 years—withstanding plague, war, environmental disaster, revolutionary iconoclasm, and even Hitler’s destructive hatred for any glory that wasn’t German.

One journalist wrote as she watched Notre Dame burn: “To those of us who live in Paris, Notre-Dame is a familiar landscape, as solid as a mountain. Durable as time. How could it burn so fast?

Ann Hidalgo, mayor of Paris, watched the flames from her office window, and confessed to what so many felt: “absolutely powerless”.

The historian, Jean-Francois Colosimo said the scene evoked images of the end of the world. The fire, he said, seemed to communicate “the extreme fragility of our situation.”

To feel horror at Notre-Dame’s collapse is human, and yet it’s also an experience of privilege. Today, over two hundred people were killed in terrorist attacks on churches Sri Lanka and high-end hotels catering to Westerners. I do feel myself chastened that I’m more affected by the collapse of a building than by the deaths of hundreds. I’m not proud of that. Such attacks are too commonplace today. I for one am almost numb to them. The collapse of Notre-Dame, caused likely by a technological malfunction or oversight rather than by act of human hatred and violence, strikes deeply, I think, because it is a sign of the times.

There are things, dear to us all, once as solid as a mountain, that are collapsing.

There are experiences coming at us that make us feel powerless.

There are images swirling in our heads that make us feel terribly vulnerable.

Alongside the story of our times, comes another story of collapse, powerlessness, and vulnerability—

—the story of Jesus, the strong and courageous healer of the sick and dying, who in the end becomes so terribly fragile and vulnerable…

—Jesus, revolutionary and reformer in whom the ordinary people placed their hope for a better world, who in the end becomes apparently powerless against the Empire…

—Jesus, God’s advocate of the poor, excluded, and forgotten, who in the end is crucified, dead, and buried…

It feels as if Saint Paul in today’s reading was either wrong or terribly naive—“Death does have the victory; death does sting.”

It must have felt that way to the followers of Jesus on that first Easter long ago.

Mary Magdalene went to the tomb that first Easter morning feeling like it was the end of the world—that her dreams for a better life were always just that, dreams; that shame would tell her always that she was a fool for having dared to believe she was more than what others made her out to be; that people she loved would only die, or leave, or betray her in the end; that she was powerless and vulnerable against the forces of the tyranny, greed, and violence of a male-dominated, power-hungry world.

These were the stories that stalked her soul—and for good reason. Collapse, powerlessness, and vulnerability—loss, death, betrayal, and abuse—these were things she knew all too well.

But there was another story rising around her in the darkness of that first Easter morning—one she could not yet see or trust. It was a new story rising out of of the darkness, out of the collapse, powerlessness, and vulnerability—rising up against her doubts and fears, shame and despair.

What was rising around and within her—though she could not yet see or trust it—was the counter-narrative, the alternative story around which the entire cosmos turns—the truth that it is out of collapse, out of powerlessness, out of vulnerability that new life comes. Always. This fact is as true for human life as it is for the giant sequoia that rises from the tiny seed propagated only by fire. It’s as true for your life and mine as it is for a planet born from a dying star.

This is the story of Easter—

—that life comes from death; that the future rises from our failures; that wholeness comes from our brokenness; that vulnerability and fear, shame and doubt are not weakness. No, this is the strong stuff, the humus, from which new life always comes…

—Jesus rises in the dark of night. A planet is born from a dying star. A sequoia rises from the scorched forest floor where a single cone, broken open by extreme heat, drops a seed into the humus of the earth, and there countless dead things conspire to give birth to life…

—Out of vulnerability. Out of powerlessness. Out of collapse—life rises always. Inevitably. Irrepressibly. Irresistibly. Life always rises…

On a recent trip to the border—there, to practice solidarity with those fleeing violence, poverty, and despair in the hope of a new and better life—a Central American spoke the best and simplest definition of Easter I think I’ve ever heard. It’s a common saying south of the border. And for good reason. It’s spoken against cartels, gangs, the environmental disaster of climate change on poor farmers, and against repressive governments on both sides of the border. And we in the north would do well to learn it—if we wish not merely to survive the age, but to thrive.

She spoke of the key to human resilience, the ground from which unstoppable courage, even revolution can rise.

With the quiet determination of a soul that knows what Easter knows, this young woman of irrepressible courage said: “They tried to bury us; they didn’t know we were seeds.”

We are all seeds and in us is a force of life that cannot, indeed, will not be conquered—ever.

So, don’t run from the struggle of life.

When you fall—and you will—get back up.

When you’re afraid and falter, keep going.

You are seeds, all of you.

We are seeds, all of us—together. You notice that she didn’t say, “They tried to bury me.” She said, “They tried to bury us; they didn’t know we were seeds.” We rise together, in relationship, in community…never alone…but together—filled with the irrepressible power of love that alway seeks life, each of us an audacious seed that can’t help but press up from the earth—buried, yes, but in Christ, indomitable, revolutionary, and free!n