BY JANE RZEPKA, SENIOR MINISTER, CHURCH OF THE LARGER FELLOWSHIP
Mother’s Day. Now that’s a tricky one, at least for a minister—or at least for this minister.
I don’t want to exclude those of you who aren’t mothers. I don’t want to open wounds for you who are mourning for your mothers or your children, or for whom the relationship with your mother or your children is painful. And so many people are adopted, or have adopted, or have placed babies for adoption, adding layers of complexity. We are single parents, we are gay, we are incarcerated, we are step-parents, non-custodial parents, women hoping to get pregnant, potential parents hoping for children. We live in a society that moved beyond the ordinary Mother’s Day platitudes long ago.
And so, over the years, my Mother’s Day messages have highlighted a wide range of nurturers: the great religious educator Sophia Lyon Fahs, experts who favor various parenting techniques, women ministers of the Midwest, dads, pioneer women moving West in covered wagons, the struggles of people who would like to become parents but cannot. Yet during the course of my ministry, parishioners have offered me a steady stream of articles, books, and Web sites about, well, mothering. Mothers. For Mother’s Day.
I think I’ve finally heard the message that a lot of people would like to hear a little something about mothers on Mother’s Day. The kind of thing where if you have a mother around, you could share it with her—your mom who is sitting there in a nice dress in the restaurant, wearing the corsage you’ve given her. Something on the sentimental side. So what if she’s a corporate executive, NASCAR driver, union boss, or crossing guard. So what if the short-term memory loss is getting the best of her, or motherhood wasn’t really her strong suite, or she claims not to want the attention. So what if you’re busy and broke and she’s as annoying as ever. So what. That’s what you seem to be telling me.
What does your mother want to hear? Let’s see. Let’s set the stage. She was born into a particular time and circumstance. She made some choices among a few or a great many. At some point, you showed up, and she probably loved you the best way she could. She put it all together into a life. As cultural anthropologist Mary Catherine Bateson puts it, she “composed her life.”
In a stable society, composing a life is somewhat like throwing a pot or building a house in a traditional form: the materials are known, the hands move skillfully in tasks familiar from thousands of performances, the fit of the completed whole in the common life is understood.... The traditional craftsperson does not face the task of solving every problem for the first time....
Today, the materials and skills from which a [woman’s] life is composed are no longer clear. It is no longer possible to follow the paths of previous generations.... Our lives not only take new directions; they are subject to repeated redirection.... Many of the most basic concepts we use to construct a sense of self or the design of a life have changed their meanings: Work. Home.
Love. Commitment.
For many years I have been interested in the arts of improvisation, which involve recombining partly familiar materials in new ways, often in ways especially sensitive to context, interaction, and response. Jazz, for example, exemplifies activity that is at once individual and communal, both repetitive and innovative, each participant sometimes providing background support and sometimes flying free.... The compositions we create in these times of change are filled with interlocking messages of our commitments and decisions. Each one is a message of possibility.
So what does your mother want to hear? She’s your mother, of course, and I don’t know her, but she did compose her life, a life at some point with you in it. She had a job or she didn’t, she learned to make chicken stock or porch steps or limericks—or maybe odes. She found a loving partner, or she did for awhile, or she didn’t. She faced some set-backs. She always enjoyed tulips or TV or rowing a boat. Friends were important, or church, or solitude, when she could get it. Maybe all through your growing up years she liked to sing. Whatever the elements, she put them all together into a life, and of course if she’s together with you in the restaurant, she’s still putting them together. Are there ways you are proud of her? I think she’d like to hear it.
Not only did your mother compose a life, chances are good that she composed a life that included you. She didn’t always call the shots perfectly, but statistics tell me she was probably a pretty good mom—good maybe with the soccer coaching and the Spanish verbs and hugs and the silly stories when you were very young, good with birthday parties, or good, now that you look back, with 7th grade heartbreak. She was the best mom when it came to...whatever. I think she’d like to hear it.
And of course there’s the love, a force of nature yet an intricate composition. I know—moms can’t always do this right. Sometimes we just don’t have it in us, or it manifests in quirky or destructive ways. But most moms, it seems to me, love their kids. Indeed, most kids love their moms. So often it works out great. What does your mother want to hear? That you love her.
Church of the Larger Fellowship (CLF), 25 Beacon Street, Boston, MA 02108-2823, U.S.
or
Phone: 617-948-6166; or for international callers, use 00-1-617-948-6166
Fax: 617-523-4123, or for international faxes, use 00-1-617-523-4123
