5/10/2020 Mother's day
Sending wishes for a happy Mother's Day, in honor of all the ways we human beings have at our fingertips to nurture and bring life.
Today I learned there was a different, earlier version of "Mothers' Day." Launched by Julia Ward Howe, it was an effort to give voice to women's commitment to peace. One quote from her "Mothers' Day Proclamation of Peace" from 1870:
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, women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country
to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.
I thought about that quote as I heard or read two others today, which offer us company as we navigate through these very difficult times.
From philosopher Martha Nussbaum, in an interview with Bill Moyers in 1989:
"Being a human means accepting promises from other people and trusting that other people will be good to you. When that is too much to bear, it is always possible to retreat into the thought, 'I’ll live for my own comfort, for my own revenge, for my own anger, and I just won’t be a member of society anymore.' That really means, 'I won’t be a human being anymore.'
"You see people doing that today where they feel that society has let them down, and they can’t ask anything of it, and they can’t put their hopes on anything outside themselves. You see them actually retreating to a life in which they think only of their own satisfaction, and maybe the satisfaction of their revenge against society. But the life that no longer trusts another human being and no longer forms ties to the political community is not a human life any longer."
And finally, from a moving conversation between Krista Tippet and musician Devendra Banhart, a quote from Pema Chodron's "When Things Fall Apart:"
“We think that by protecting ourselves from suffering, we are being kind to ourselves. The truth is, we only become more fearful, more hardened, and more alienated. We experience ourselves as being separate from the whole. This separateness becomes like a prison for us, a prison that restricts us to our personal hopes and fears, into caring only for the people nearest to us. Curiously enough, if we primarily try to shield ourselves from discomfort, we suffer.”
Curiously enough, if we primarily try to shield ourselves from discomfort, we suffer. That insight sums up, for me, the contradictory challenge of this time: the joy, fear, panic, and patience all contained in a single moment.
We are not called to be heroes, but to practice and nurture our true human superpowers (according to Banhart): patience and gratitude, hope and love.
Sent with love and gratitude, as always -
Liz
Julia Ward Howe's declaration: https://peacealliance.org/history-of-mothers-day-as-a-day-of-peace-julia-ward-howe/
Martha Nussbaum's interview with Bill Moyers: https://www.brainpickings.org/2014/03/14/martha-nussbaum-bill-moyers-world-of-ideas/?mc_cid=f1cfa17d52&mc_eid=d5bb0181a4
On Being: When Things Fall Apart