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Mother’s day is complicated
It’s complicated because each of us has a completely different experience of being mothered, or not being mothered, of being a mother ourselves, or not mothering by chance or choice. It’s complicated by loss and grief and hardship.
And its complicated this week by the leaked supreme court decision that would take away the choice from people with uteruses about whether and how to experience pregnancy and birth.
But despite all that complexity I want to start by centering mothers, because mothering is hard and often invisible work. And to do that I’m going to get nitty gritty about this- because mothering almost never looks like it does on the Hallmark cards, a fuzzy pink image of a smiling woman receiving flowers. I’m going to say the word “uterus” more times today than you’ve ever heard in church before, because at this moment in our history we cannot afford to overlook or make invisible or minimize the role people with uteruses have in sustaining life on our planet. Our culture encourages us not to talk about such things in public, about the muscles and nerves and blood vessels and hormones of gestating new life. Once a person becomes pregnant their body begins to change, and never changes back.
And if you are able to carry the baby to term and deliver it, the changes are profound. I’ve been in the pulpit for 20 years since I gave birth to Nick, and even standing pregnant in the pulpit I never mentioned any of it, because, you know TMI. But perhaps it’s because we don’t talk about such things that roomfuls of male lawmakers believe they are wiser than I am about gestation and birth. Maybe if decisions choosing to carry and birth a child are now public decisions, maybe the realities of our private experiences need to be public as well.
My generation of mothers was taught that you should not tell such stories from the pulpit, in fact people don’t want to really see you mothering, or know that you are mothering, because parenting is a hobby you do in your free time, and should not be visible or in any way reduce your productivity at work. And we as faith leaders have colluded with this, because we let these messy embodied parts of parenthood be invisible, we don’t name them as holy sacred mysteries, Even our sacred scriptures say things like “she brought forth a son” [Luke 2:7]
The days when I can deliver a vaguely sweet and nostalgic mothers day service are gone, I think. If we are going to talk about motherhood, honor motherhood then it’s time to get real.
Survival of our species depends on many people with uteruses giving birth to the next generation. To carry new life in their own bodies, to go through the profound physical and emotional challenges of pregnancy. As a gestational parent, I want to share with you that moment in the 3rd trimester when you realize there is no easy path ahead. In the best case scenario, after hours or days of pain and work and probably medical intervention, you will greet your new child. But is no guarantee- Not every mother makes it. Not every child makes it. The risks to your own body and to the child are real. So I want to just extend a prayerful space to every person who carried a child, and never got to meet that child. They are mothers too and I stand in solidarity with everyone who ever lost a child to a miscarriage or a still birth, to parents who have lost children at any age.
And though I count myself lucky to have come through a long, complicated labor that ended in medical intervention, it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done- even though it was my choice which I entered into with the support of a partner and good medical care and the means to care for the child we now know as Nick. Every person with a uterus deserves the right to make that choice.
Then I want to center those people who care for infants and small children, sometimes the same person who gave birth to those children, sometimes not. Tremendous gratitude to those who lost sleep night after night waking to the cry of a hungry or wet or colicky child. Gratitude to all those who have cared for an infant or high needs child alone, had to chose on a given day whether to nap or shower or pay the bills because there was never time to do more than one.
Recently I was watching the show “Life & Beth” and our heroine was holding celebration of life for her mother, a mother with real problems, whose life choices caused harm her children, damage they were still living with. One daughter offered "She wanted to be a really good Mom, and sometimes she was" The other offered, "Our Mom... she made our meals and put our band-aids on, and picked us up from practice." As I heard those words I felt the reality of that, no matter how troubled our relationship to our parents - wow, that’s a lot of work! A lot of mostly invisible work, that often is thankless.
Consider that for everyone sitting here today, we made it to adulthood because someone fed us, clothed us, cared for us in times of illness and injury. Maybe that was a parent, maybe that was a sibling. Maybe you had to parent yourself in some hard years. I invite you to call to mind the person or persons who day after day made sure you were fed, made sure you survived.
Perhaps that was the same person who nurtured your spirit, who taught you how to love and be loved, who taught you to celebrate and cultivate your unique gifts. Or maybe the person who made sure you were fed didn’t get you, didn’t see you, and it was other people who taught you to love and be loved, who nurtured you. Call to mind that person or persons as well.
Parents were never meant to do this alone, since the beginning of our species we worked together in communities to raise our descendants. What one person could be good at everything a child needs their whole life? What I hear young parents say today, when we say “I don’t know how you do it” is “I’m not doing it, it’s not working, Help!”
When I think of Mother’s day I don’t think of fancy meals at restaurants, I remember with great vividness cancelling a mother’s day reservation and instead scrubbing up puke because I was the only one in the family well enough to do it. I bet every parent has a story like that- fitting in a way, it gets to the core of something important and invisible about parenting.
So when I say “more than flowers” today let that phrase remind us that more than the most beautiful gift of flowers on Mother’s day if we are really going to honor Mothers, we make sure that people with uteruses have a say in whether and when and how to birth new life.
More than flowers, caregivers need to be seen and supported in the critically important work of shaping the lives of a human child. Parenting is not just a hobby some people choose. Each of us knows the power that being parented well or badly, generously or neglectfully, with sufficient resources or struggling to get by has on our lives and our communities.
Today, we stand with all people with uteruses, that they may be free discern with their own innate wisdom whether or not to become parents. So today we center those gestational parents who carry, birth, new human life, and the caregivers who and raise the next generations, please notice and honor and support them today and every day. . Support them not only with gestures of beauty and poetry and flowers, but by honoring their wisdom to discern what they need, and giving them the support they so urgently need.
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