More Than Flowers- part 2

When I say “More than flowers” I also want to look beyond reproduction into a more holistic picture of what it means to live a full and meaningful human life.. For centuries a woman’s life has been framed in terms of reproduction, as if flower and fruit were the culmination and meaning of ones life. That whole “maiden, mother, crone” thing really centers reproduction in a way that no longer represents our lives today. Currently 15% of people my age and older have no children, but we expect that number to rise given surveys about younger generations choosing not to be parents. Given the impact of humans on our planet, that seems like a wise choice for many people to make.[i]

Many years I skip the Mother’s Day sermon because I know it is a privilege to be able to choose to be a gestational parent, I know our culture normalizes the whole 2 parents 2 children thing. As a cisgender woman and birth mother to a son I have had the privilege of watching grow to adulthood, I hesitate to reinforce that culturally dominant story line.

I understood this in a new way when my son went off to college and I came home at an empty nest. I turned, as I often do, to nature to help find a symbol to be a touchstone for this next phase of my life. I found this plant life cycle diagram that supposedly shows the circle of life, but look- do you see that the parent plant actually disappears once the offspring enters the picture? Try it yourself- go search and find a diagram that doesn’t end with the creation of a seed, try to find one that doesn’t INCLUDE a seedling!

I have an amaryllis I bring out of dormancy every year, (it's the very same plant who inspired me a few years back). [slide] Some years it goes through its whole cycle and just never flowers. It grows all the way from a dormant bulb into a huge beautiful green plant that grows and thrives and looks delightfully happy and just never has a thought of a flower. Because I’m a plant geek and a softy, I keep my amaryllis friend year after year. It seems to be having a rich and full maturity and is content to be done blooming. It’s just we humans that think that every plant has to flower every year or it’s a failed plant and needs to be composted.

This metaphor is not useful parents done parenting, nor for people of all genders whose life does not include parenting. What does it mean to value the whole life cycle, not just the flower? Mature plants provide many important gifts to their ecosystem and to their plant community, whether or not they are fruiting. Mature plants provide shelter for those younger and more vulnerable. They are literally changing the atmosphere and the soil around them to be more hospitable to their species. Their roots stop erosion and hold valuable nutrients, and many participate in that mycelium network we are beginning to learn about, trading sugars and nutrients through that complex root network. Mature plants provide protection from disease and predators, and crucial support in storms. They prevent erosion, add goodness to the soil, prevent invasive weeds form taking over. And are, just …beautiful in their own unique ways.

Even in the final stages of their own lives, and beyond, they offer invaluable gifts to their communities. For example, as a tree comes to the end of their life if they are not disturbed they can become nurse logs, which can provide support for new life for as many years as they lived standing up. [ii]

The other problem with this diagram, this way of imagining the cycle of life, it that it invisibilizes people of other genders, and anyone who is not a birth parent who do all those things we have historically called mother’s work. This we actually see quite well in the plant world- plants have pistol and stamen (that is to say they make and fertilize eggs). Some plants, like Moss, change reproductive organs as the need arises. I’d love to honor that fluidity today- that we are growing in the range of support that we are able to offer the next generation as we nurture them into being.

As we know, it can feel lonely not seeing the stories and lives of people who look like you, As Gen. Jacqueline Van Ovost, one of 2 female 4 star generals in the country today said this week “You can't be what you can't see. When you look up and you don't see someone that looks like you, it's very hard to think that you could actually do that, right?”[iii] We need images of parenting and care-giving and the holistic role of a community beyond the flower, beyond the archetype of the individual cis-woman conflated with the complexity of how life really works. And we need a view of our own lives that honor our wholeness and not just the flowers we may or may not produce.

Wolves are like this too, the life of the community or pack includes only one breeding mother at a time, and all the other members of the pack have their own roles to play in their shared lives together. Wolves evolution over millions of years demonstrates the wisdom that there is plenty of important work that supports the pack that has nothing to do with reproduction. They also model how many in the pack collaborate to raise the next generation safely to adulthood.

How can we, as a faith community, honor this wholeness? The wholeness of all that it takes to gestate, bear and nurture a child, then support them into adulthood? The shorthand of the word “mother” usually understood to mean a cis-woman who does all those things by herself just can’t communicate the true complexity of our lives. This is not new, it has always been complicated, and because we rarely talk about how complicated it is, Mother’s Day has been a time, for many, when they felt left out, unseen. Sometimes that’s why we come to church, to make the simple complicated, that is to say, to hold with love and care the reality of our lives, and of others in our community whose experience is like ours, and different from ours. We honor the blossom, leaf and root. We honor birth and struggle, body and spirit. We honor the messiness of life, always changing and growing in a complicated web. All are needed for wholeness of living system that holds us all.