There was a time in my life, when I took a big step into the unknown. I did not have the words to tell anyone about it. And I fell over and I got back up and I did that again and again until I mostly stopped falling over. Mostly.
I’m not talking metaphorically; I’m talking about my first steps. I was a late walker, about 14 months old and I guess I pulled myself up on a piece of furniture and gave it a go.
And If I made that sound like some great spiritual experience for a moment, well it was, wasn’t it.
And you did it too. And if you body works differently or you have cared for someone whose body works differently, they did it in their own different and even more courageous way.
Perhaps you have had a time in your life when you felt so alone or in so much pain that you could not take a step forward. I know I have. When those times come, I remind myself that there was a time when I did feel safe enough to take that first step.
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It is one of those profound paradoxes of parenting that young children are more independent when they are closer to their grown-ups. There are many studies that suggest that children are braver, more able to let go, more willing to take risks, more likely to get back up when they fall… when they are near their Mums. We are all somehow more us when we are seen, held, embraced by another. Even when the children do not actively turn to their Mums in these studies, it is their trust in the closeness that gives them the strength to be.
Studies of grown ups say the same thing. Connection to others is the single biggest predictor of happiness. Our communities hold us and define us. We are made to be rooted and established in love, to feel the height and breadth and depth of divine love through each other.
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And I really do understand that that is hard to hear when you feel alone. This is not a day to be glib or sentimental. Simply stating our connectedness does not make it so. So I just want to say instead, that whether this is your first time here or whether you have shown up week after week for 50 years you are part of a mother community, a place to call home even if it isn’t perfect. I hope that feels good. Thank you all for welcoming me into it. I already feel at home.
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Mothering Sunday can touch very deep places in us. I know that for some of us it brings gratitude, warmth and precious memories of the many people, all the mother’s, male and female, family and friends, who have nurtured us along the way. I hope you felt that in the poems I shared. I hope you felt that when we shared the flowers.
I know too that today stirs grief, longing, disappointment, reminds us that relationships are never simple.
Some of us mourn mothers we have loved and lost. Another type of grief exists too, a grief for that which we never had. Or perhaps you are carrying the quiet ache of children longed for or never born. Or perhaps for you being mothered was not always safe and steady and tender. I know being a mother can be the most painful thing. Or sometimes perhaps thankless, and boring, stressful… the daily grind pulling you down.
There is no easy sentiment here, or tidy assumptions. Let’s make this a day for making room – room for the truth of our lives, room for joy and sorrow to sit side by side, for is all to be held gently here, just as we are. Let’s do that together, for each other, in community. Together we bring love to the broken places.
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Perhaps you are an artist, or a musician, perhaps you cook or sew or make beautiful things. Perhaps know how to put together the perfect outfit or to make a house a home. Maybe you sit with your friends and listen or maybe you work in a way that enlivens other. Maybe you care for neighbours, a garden, your local community.
We all bring life into the world, and in that sense, we are all mothers – to each other, ourselves I hope, our sacred blue, green planet.
We are all born again and again and again until we die – and in that sense we are all children, beginning anew every day or every breath, with our stumbles and blunders, our learning afresh and starting over.
We bring into the world whenever we protect what is fragile, whenever we encourage what is growing, when we listen and feed and teach and accompany each other. Life comes into the world through all of us, a way of being and a way of loving, a way of helping something beautiful and holy come to birth in human life.
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Did you feel it in the mystics? It is radical enough to say that we held in a divine maternal embrace. It is shocking, vibrant, blazing and extraordinary to say that we give birth to the divine. We are all meant to be mothers of God. Divine motherhood is in us and is us, we are the bodies of divinity. We create the divine, call it into being, by our creativity, by our service and our love for others, we carve out a space within and between us that is a place of transcendent love.
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This is our call – it sounds lofty but really this just means doing all the things you are already doing, doing our best, seeing folks are they really are, these everyday acts of nurturing. Yesterday my and girls and Tim planted some trees in the field outside are house, that’s what I mean.
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So let us here be a place where life can grow, where we bring life into the world.
We become brave enough to step into life when we are loved, that is what mothering does. Not everyone has known it safely, so we are called to become such a place for one another. In doing so, we help divine love come to birth in the world.
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Lizzie Kingston-Harrison
Ipswich Unitarian Meeting House 