God be with the Mother

This well known reading of the foretelling of the birth of Jesus is an important part of our faith story. There is a word missing however. The word Mother is missing. Because this is really what God, through the Angel Gabriel is asking of this young woman, who is a girl really. God is announcing that she will be a mother, the mother of the Son of the Most High. That can’t be good. For her.

I’d like to share the prayer I’ve been using in meditation these past weeks of Advent. It is a focus on mother.

Let’s pray together.

God be with the mother. As she carried her child, may she carry her soul. As her child was born, may she give birth and life and form to her own higher truth. As she nourished and protected her child, may she nourish and protect her inner life and her independence. For her soul shall be her most painful birth, her most difficult child, and the dearest sister to her other children.

Amen.

As I prayed with these words for these past four weeks, I dropped deeper into their meaning.

May she carry her soul.

Awakening - we know that we are part of something larger than our own individual needs and wants and larger than the physical world we inhabit.

May she give birth and life and form to her own higher truth.

Awareness - how do we live in a way that is congruent with our professed values and morals.

In the past few years we have been made aware of the fractures in our social structures that allow exploitation of each other based on gender, colour and age.

The Covid pandemic has exposed the way we value the essential workers who support the very institutions and services we all rely on everyday. Front line workers like nurses, care aids, child care workers and many others. They are often underpaid and overworked.

The very real crisis of climate change.

May she nourish and protect her inner life and her independence.

Accountability - what do we feed our minds and our spirit? What we read, view and hear will influence our emotions and our behaviour. To contribute to the vibration of peace we must stay out of the fight.

For her soul will be her most painful birth, her most difficult child….

Discernment -The ego, or the persona, that part of us that we construct to interact with the world in a way that keeps us safe and accepted, does not give way easily. And it requires constant conscious awareness to keep in check.

…the dearest sister to her other children.

Love. Our most valuable contribution to our fellow humans is our emotional/spiritual growth.

This is what Mary is consenting to do when she says “Here am I, the servant of the Lord; let it be with me according to your word.”

God be with the mother.

We know women in particular have been among the most affected in this pandemic. I would like to honour all mothers in this year of the Corona Virus, 2020. I’ll pause after each remembrance to give us a chance to bring to mind a mother we know or ourselves as mothers.

To the mothers working on the front lines in the hospitals and public health programs who are afraid to come home to their children in case they bring infection.

To the mothers afraid to send their children to school; and to the mothers who are teaching in those schools. … driving a bus, making deliveries, working at more than one part time job at low wages to keep her family fed and housed. … working from home with young children vying for their attention as they have yet another zoom meeting.

To the new mothers who birthed their child since March and miss the gathering of family to help and to adore the new family member.

God be with the mother.

To the indigenous mother struggling to keep her family together in a system that seems without mercy.

To the mother of children who are sick, whether young or adult, and the rules of isolation that keep them apart. … with jobs that carry a lot of public responsibility and are away from their children for long stretches of time. … of those afflicted by addiction; as she lives in fear of her child taking a poisoned dose of drugs and her helplessness to find the help her daughter or son needs right now.

To the mother mourning the death of her child to the opioid crisis.

To the mother who is enduring domestic violence with no place of safety or refuge.

To the mother who is alone and afraid as she spends the last of her life in a care facility and who desperately wants to see her children.

God be with the mother.

In our Advent series this year, we are decorating the Jesse tree with ornaments that tell the story of God in the Hebrew Bible to connect us to a history that is thousands of years old.

The genealogy that is important to establish Jesus as the Messiah names only 2 mothers in those 14 generations. One is Rahab the mother of Boaz, and Ruth, the wife of Boaz and the mother of Obed, who is the father of Jesse, who is the father of David, and so on.

That Ruth got named into that lineage is a story of incredible loss, survival, ingenuity, teamwork with her mother in law Naomi, and self empowerment in a world governed by strict rules made by men for the benefit of men. Motherhood secured her place in that world. I recommend The Book of Ruth in scripture as a great read.

The decoration I have chosen is much older than our Judaeo Christian story.

She’s called The Willendorf and she was a gift from a dear friend. She is a soft felted wool version of a sculpture excavated near a village in Austria in 1908. Initially dated to 10,000 BCE, subsequent dating suggests she was crafted between 30,000-25,000 BCE making her one of the world’s oldest known works of art. Her name comes from the village of Willendorf where she was found.

She has had a few names, Woman of Willendorf, Venus of Willendorf and The Great Mother. Historians, archaeologists, and other experts in the field today still aren't certain about what she portrays, her purpose, or her origins, making this sculpture one of the most mysterious in the world.

But notice her body. Her femininity is exaggerated and her posture is bent forward, suggesting to some experts that she is pregnant. She is incontestably female and it has been speculated that her full form was a symbol of status, that in those palaeolithic times she had plenty to eat.

She reminds us that ‘the mother’ has been a central figure in human faith traditions since our beginning.

Let us pray.

Amen.

Gadon, Elinor W., The Once and Future Goddess; A Sweeping Visual Chronicle of the Sacred Female and Her Reemergence in the Cultural Mythology of our Time, 1989

Leunig, Michael, When I Talk To You: A Cartoonist Talks to God, 2006.