Caring for the Mother of Us All

Rev. Rali Weaver

First Church and Parish in Dedham

On Friday morning on the Today Show they offered the story of three mothers first Courtney Stevenson who had once thought she could never have children and has since given birth to one five year old and five now two year olds-- mothering them all with a remarkable amount of love and patience and kindness. Secondly there was Gwen Beauchamp who rescued her children from a fire and taught them to overcome all their obstacles and finally there was Lisa Couture who is raising three beautiful children, playing football with them and cooking with grace and dignity and teaching her children to never quit and never give up despite the fact that she is blind.

They were all wonderful stories of the ideal of motherly love – full of bravery and selfless kindness and generosity. The only problem with the stories was that they were part of a larger contest that the Today Show had established for 15 mothers to compete for the title America’s Favorite Mother and $250,000. And even though they ended up giving each of the competitors $10,000 and even though I think it is wonderful to hold up the ideals of motherly love (something I believe we can all strive toward) I believe there is something wrong with making motherhood into a competition. And this has gotten me thinking how a competition can be at odds with the ideal of motherly love.

Competition in and of itself is not necessarily a bad thing- it occurs naturally and is a way of settling differences. For instance animals naturally compete for water and food and mates. But sometimes the rivalry that is created is coerced and is destructive competition by seeking to benefit one individual or group over another and opposing the concept of mutual survival in a bid for “winner take all”.

In contrast the ideal of motherly love is more akin to cooperative competition and is focused on collaboration instead of “winning and loosing”. Sure most Mother’s would like the satisfaction of being crowned America’s Favorite Mom and I can’t think of anyone who couldn’t use an extra 250,000 dollars- I’m just saying that the competition that is set up in a contest like that is incongruous with the nature of motherhood. This was evidenced by the way the three women who were being interviewed on the Today Show were comforting each other as they listened to each other’s stories despite the fact that they were in a competition. And perhaps it is also evidenced in a Google search for the word motherhood where 11,700,000 links pop or a mommy’s playgroup search where 6,330,000 links show up. Motherhood is by nature a community endeavor. It’s about sharing, and mutual benefit for all.

Not having a living mother or a grandmother and not being a mother myself has started me thinking about mother nature and the nurturing energy I receive from the earth.

Recently I snuck away for a couple days to visit a friend who lives off a long dirt road on Hurricane Mountain, which sits in the Middle of the Adirondack’s. Before I left I was feeling very depleted physically and emotionally. (A good time to go visit mom) As soon as I got outside the bustle of the city and started driving down the long dirt road I felt clean again. The two days I spent outside, moving my friend’s woodpile and gathering large rocks for her rock wall, energized and liberated me in immeasurable ways. As I was preparing to leave my friend suggested that instead of meditating each morning in my room that I start getting up and going outside each morning and sticking my feet in the earth for my meditation. I have taken her advice and for over a week now I get up each morning and go outside and I put my feet in the dirt and from this experience I can tell you one thing for sure- the earth nourishes my spirit much in the same way my mother’s comforting embrace would and getting back in touch with the earth and the season is liberating.

This has started me wondering what the benefit might be if we worked to embrace the earth as the mother of us all and went to her for her blessings and gifted her with our offerings.

The ideals of mother child love, is what I think we are aiming for. I say ideals because I want to acknowledge that not all of us grew up in a perfect home with a generous loving selfless mother. In the Vishnu Purnas (a Hindu Sacred text) it is written: “The mother is the panacea for all kinds of calamities. The existence of the mother invests one with protection; the reverse deprives one of all protection.”

I want to talk about the ideals of motherhood today in relation to the earth because I think the earth has been our ideal mother, and if we measured our behavior to her the way we would treat an ideal mother I think we might effect some change.

The ideal mother is nurturing, and generous, and non-judgemental. And I would say our mother earth is like that. She nurtures us with her beauty, she gifts us with her resources, and she treats us all the same regardless of what we do or do not do.

Many of the world’s religions hold out an element of the ideal of motherly love and the concept of the earth as our universal mother as part of their fundamental beliefs.

Christianity holds up the ideal of the selfless Mother Mary who adherents go to in times of trouble for forgiveness, who gave her son to save the world.

I believe it was the Lakota People of South Dakota who coined the familiar proverb “Regard Heaven as your father, Earth as your Mother and all things as your Brothers and Sisters.”

And Greek Myths described the earth as Gaia and saw her as what was born out of chaos when love entered in.

There is even an ecological hypothesis named after Gaia the Greek Goddess. The Gaia Hypothesis proposes that living and nonliving parts of the earth are a complex interacting system that can be thought of as one single organism and that all living things have a regulatory effect on the Earth's environment.

The initial hypothesis was formulated by Dr. James Lovelock during his work at NASA in the 1960’s and served as a way to make sense of the systemic conditions that make life possible.

Since that time the Gaia Hypothesis has been tested proved true and has influenced many other physicists from Fritjof Capra to Stephen Harding who was a student of Lovelock’s. The Gaia hypothesis is a way of understanding the world as an interconnected system and has been used to formulate a wide range of other systems theories in environmental science.

James Lovelock's latest book is titled The Revenge of Gaia. And in it he argues the damage done to rainforests and the reduction in planetary biodiversity, is testing Gaia's capacity to counterbalance the negative effects of the addition of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere and this is creating global warming. Lovelock predicts that human civilization as it is now will be unable to survive the change in atmosphere and suggests that sustainable development and renewable energy has come "200 years too late". He claims that Gaia has a need to stay in balance and her self-regulation will likely prevent any extraordinary runaway effects that wipe out life itself, but that there will be a decrease in population as early as 2040 due to environmental effects such as Tsunami’s and floods, drought, and disease and famine.

These are startling and somewhat overwhelming predictions and it leaves us wondering what if anything we can do.

The way I see it the problem has come out of the way our secular culture has been cut off from our earth mother and the fact that the majority of us, living in an industrial society have lost a sense of connection to the mother earth that we are responsible for.

This is evidenced by the way some companies who do not regard the needs of the environment when making policy and do not consider the common good when making their business plans.

And has been exacerbated by destructive competition. When profit margins are the only measure of success, when never ending growth and doing away with the competition is the goal the common good of the earth is forgotten.

I know that most scientific predictions agree with Lovelock and the little things that I can do- like using less fuel by making my house more weatherproof and using fans instead of air conditioners, recycling, buying locally grown produce and drying my clothes on a clothes line- will not make a whole lot of difference in the Green House Gasses. But it is what I can offer. Perhaps like the lanyard in Billy Collin’s poem it isn’t the best offering but it is what I can put together.

It is my hope that as a community in the coming year make our mother proud by educating ourselves on the issues of Global Warming and gift our mother by finding more and more ways to reduce our carbon footprint both individually and as a parish.

I hope when a light bulb burns out we gift our mother earth by replacing old bulbs with new compact fluorescents and if we have to replace a boiler gift our mother earth by considering all the environmentally appropriate possibilities.

I hope we will offer our gifts to our mother earth with the knowledge that even if our gifts do not make us even they will make us more whole.

May it be so.