Unitarian Universalist Community Church of Santa Monica

All of us know what mothering is. Even if that knowing is not on a conscious level…in our hearts, we know! Even if we can’t always articulate it, we know what mothering is…we feel it when we get it! We know when we are made to feel safe, when we are cared for and encouraged to explore the world and to develop our own meaningful memories. And we know when that’s not the case. Motherhood is serious business:  "it’s not for sissies," I read on a t-shirt recently.

Until a few years ago I was somewhat relieved knowing that it was unlikely I’d be in that position. My life had moved on without that possibility, and honestly, I didn’t feel up to the task. I didn’t feel capable. There was just so much preparation involved, so much to know.  How could anyone make sense of all the different theories and all the different variables that could affect a precious new life?

How do I childproof an apartment? Do I announce baby’s gender? When do I do that, and what impact will that have? How will I manage with so little sleep? What’s better for the child…cloth diapers or disposable (…what about the environment?) Will I know how to toilet train so baby won’t need to spend thousands of dollars on therapy when she’s all grown up? What do I do when baby gets a fever? Can I handle all the advice people are giving me? Am I smart enough…worthy enough? How did MY mother do it?

Thinking about the reality of my own life, I just didn’t see it happening for me. There just seemed too many things to know, and I was sure I wouldn’t be able to rise to the occasion.  And then, there were also thoughts about the reality of the world.  Thinking about the state of the world, there were plenty of reasons to give over to despair. There were already so many children in the world, hungry and thirsty. Times were clearly "out of joint." Humanity HAD lost it’s reason, worlds WERE crashing and dreams…were whitening into ash. How could I bring another child into that kind of world?

As it turned out, I didn’t. Not so much because I had decided definitively against it, but because my life just hadn’t moved in that direction.

Two years ago it moved, but not as I had expected! Fairly suddenly I found myself faced with aspects of Motherhood as three children were brought into my new marriage, and I became a step-mom! It’s indescribable, really, the range of emotion, the range of love and care that has grown in me and come towards me in such a short time. And I can’t help but think that this is just the tip of the iceberg! This is not the fruit of my womb, but it is such sweet fruit!

And through this experience of learning to be a step-mom, I’ve been discovering some things about mothering. The most critical, I think, is that it’s less about what you KNOW, than it is about HOW YOU LOVE. It’s less about the persistent self-doubt and questions:  do I know enough, am I ready? am I capable or worthy? than it is about something deeper, something found in the stillness of the heart. It’s about HOPE.

Howard Thurman wrote: "it is the extra breath from the exhausted lung…the one more thing to try when all else has failed, the upward reach of life when weariness closes in upon all endeavor, it’s "the incentive to carry on when times are out of joint!" It’s hope, and confidence! "The birth of the child," he writes, "is life’s most dramatic answer to death...the growing edge incarnate."  We should "look well to the growing edge!" We should look-well, becoming, each, gardeners of the spirit!

We should see, in the manner of Black Elk, the whole sacred "hoop of the world…and the shape of ALL things of the spirit…as they must live TOGETHER, like one being." All the many hoops making "one circle wide as daylight and starlight," and all the children sheltered by one mighty flowering tree!

Actually…Black Elk’s precise words were "all the children of one mother and one father"…and one could argue for the biological definition of parentage. It is a miraculous and precious gift!!! But my vision of the sacred hoop of the world is a little different! It sees us all as children and all as parents! It sees each of us as the growing edge, the answer to hopelessness and despair. It sees each of us as an answer to self-doubt, and weariness, to deep hunger and thirst, each of us as an answer to forgetfulness! We need each other in order to know, to remember who we really are!

At heart, perhaps this is what "mothering" is: offering reminders of inherent goodness, inherent value…helping each other hold the pieces of our lives, and to make sense of them!

No matter how old, where I go or where I am, I know I will always need and value those reminders, especially the ones my own mother and I share. She’s the first one I want to call when I forget, or when something wonderful or terrible happens!

But as we heard in the story shared earlier, the gift of caring and reminding can come from less expected places! In that story a small boy with a long name was able to give that gift to an older woman, a neighbor! As special as biological motherhood is, as respected and supported as it SHOULD be…there is more to it than that! There’s the ability to let ourselves be mothering! And that’s not about accumulated information or a stance on child raising theories. It’s not necessarily something that only one woman paired with one man can do. It’s not even something that only women can do, or only adults! It’s something we each can give to each other:  hope and confidence, encouragement and care!

Two years ago I worked as hospital chaplain at UCLA Medical Center right down the street and over in Westwood. I worked in several units: Intensive Care, Palliative Care, Surgical Recovery, meeting with people facing pain: the pain of their bodies, the pain of fear and of loss, even the pain of a new chance at life.  It was intense work, but to me it felt such a privilege to be present in those intimate moments of truth-telling.

The units most challenging to serve were the neo-natal and the children’s units. Not so much because of the children.  Actually, they were very willing to share the spark of life within them, however small! But because of the parents. Day after day I’d step into that place of pain, more often than not turned away because it was believed that I "couldn’t POSSIBLY know what it’s like." Because, I wasn’t a mother myself.

No.  I was not a mother. I had not labored or given birth and seen that precious new life flicker and weaken. I had not felt my body and life expand in expectation, and then have that future come to a grinding halt, in which I could barely breathe, barely ALLOW myself to breathe while that little life struggled so intensely to draw its own breath! I had NOT experienced this; I could not possibly know the intricate details of what that experience was. 

But I could know that this was about LIFE, and that Life must be met with love, despair must be met with hope, fear with confidence.  Human beings, all human beings, no matter the age, MUST be met with encouragement and care. We all need to be reminded at times of who we are beyond what’s happening to us!  And this is a gift any one of us can give to the other. It is the gift of community, of reminding each other of our place in the sacred hoop of the world.

For Unitarian Universalists, it is the place of acceptance and compassion through which we may contribute to the common goal of world community. When we look to the growing edge, we look to each other, becoming gardeners of the spirit that lives in each of us.

During that time when I faced the possible reality of not having my own child, my eyes rested on a passage in Hebrew scripture: Isaiah 54. The passage was addressed to "the barren one," advising that she should take comfort or there are many children in the world needing care. "Enlarge the place of your tent," it said, and let the curtains of your habitations be stretched out; don’t hold back, lengthen your cords and strengthen your stakes.   In other words: Open and engage your heart! Know that all the world’s children are your children, needing care! We each are children to each other and parents to each other.  We are all forever learning and teaching. Through our lives we have the precious possibility of offering each other hope and reminders of who we really are.

There’s a proverb that says: God couldn’t be in all places, and so he made mothers! With that in mind I say to all of you: enlarge the place of your tent and don’t hold back! Lengthen your cords and strengthen your stakes, and celebrate together this Mother’s Day and this precious life we share.   Blessed be – and Amen.