Hail Mary

Today is Mother’s Day where I live. My mother has been with us for a week. She is 84 years old and we are blessed that she can still come and visit. So many others grieve the loss of their mother or the loss of a loving relationship with her. My relationship with my mother is a blessing in my life. We have had our ups and downs, but into my 65th year, all that is left is love and gentleness and gratitude. Life has not been easy for my mother, and that today she loves easily and freely, is such a grace. My prayer is that when her time comes, when my time comes, we will each surrender into the arms of Our Mother and feel the greatest hold there is.

Mine is a motherless mother. Her own mother died when she was a toddler. Her custodial grandmother was anything but motherly. A mother herself at 17, my mother has proven that we can learn, we can heal, we can love despite our deepest and darkest wounds. I think of my mother’s resilience. How she kept her four children fed and clothed. How she leaned into life when so many others would have been on their knees. She is so proud of all her children. Marvels regularly at what we have achieved and accomplished. We are her legacy. We are her future. One of her greatest spoken treasures is how we love one another. I pray we have many more years together and as time marches on, for both of us, for all of us, we treasure each year, each day, each moment we still have.

Mothering has to be the most heroic act of creation. Self sacrifice in the service of life continuing. I know there are many who cannot or chose not to be mothers. The layers and reasons for this are not my business here. Today I speak to and for those who are mothers. I acknowledge your self sacrifice, your willingness to give your body and your soul to the future. Sometimes it takes decades for your offspring to acknowledge and appreciate this offering, but today, to my mothers, those who bore me and continue to bear me, I say thank you. Life says thank you. There is so much nihilism in the western world these days. So much narcissism, so much individualism. There is even a hatred of humanity. As if we are a scourge on nature. This will eventually be our undoing. May it be tempered with the example of selflessness that is mothering. Our mothers are human beings who surrendered to the powerful forces of creation. With all that is given them, give themselves to hope, to tomorrow, to the future. To life itself. Because of them, we can try harder, reach farther, come closer. Because of our mothers, life continues. Spring comes.

I have been praying the rosary daily. As my beloved Aunt reminds me, once Catholic, always Catholic. I don’t know about that. What I do know is that praying the rosary daily is a meditative practice. I am surprised at how each decade of the beads, offered up in prayer, softens me. Soothes me. Orients me. Is it the prayer beads? The walk in the forest? The intentions? The focused attention? All of the above? I have journeyed in and out of the Church in my 65 years on this planet. In time, the Catholic church, for me, became too oppressive and flawed to bear. Like all institutions, it is human, all too human. Although the wine was real, intoxicating, and brimmed with mystery, the bread was lacking in substance. White wafer thinness. So, I stepped away. I found myself in other churches where the bread was real, chewy, and substantial. But, soon enough, I found that the cup was too sweet, shallow, lacking in fermented depth. I once wrote and published an article in the United Church Observer magazine, titled, Real Bread, Real Wine. I longed for a religious container that satisfied my thirst for mystery and my hunger for social justice. What I experienced instead, again and again, were institutions that are human, all too human. I don’t do well with collectives. Churches, schools, or institutes. I am trying to understand this. I am trying to reconcile this, in myself.

Recently I received a translation that explained Mary as the Theotokos, the woman who bore the life-giving God into human life. I loved this deep orthodox explanation. I was told that Mary is both the Mother of God and the human womb. She is the cup, the woman, yes, even the Church. I have been looking for the feminine divine and She was hidden in plain sight. Hidden because I could not see. Something of this explanation landed deep in my longing. Simply stated, Mary said yes to incarnation. She said yes to being the container to make manifestation possible. She surrendered and fulfilled herself. Identity that gathers and surrenders. This is an exquisite paradox.

Isn’t this the basic structure of reality? Stay with me if you dare. Ideas, concepts, even the archetypes need a form to be perceived. Logos needs a container to exist. The human, the human perspective, however flawed, IS necessary for creation. Nature, even Mother Nature is there to be loved, not worshipped. In the example of Mary, we encounter the divine human, and the human divine. What if we fallen children of Eve are aimless, lost in a vale of tears, until we are consecrated. What if Mary is the highest form offered up to our imaginations? What if mothering is what best approximates this. Original sin is perhaps best understood as “missing the mark” rather than as flawed or less than. With Mary’s willingness as our orientation, our example, our little identity shifts toward a higher purpose. This is not religious so much as it is philosophical, psychological, logical, and even scientific. Consider this: Mary is matter, our Mother. Without an identity, a purpose, a logos, nothing is created. There is no future. All created things have a perceived logos. They have an identity that unites diversity. Cells become a body. People become a Church. A school. An institution. In the beginning was the word and the word was made flesh. The parts of any thing must surrender to the whole and the whole must both gather from the lower toward the higher and back again. From chaos into creation. From unity into multiplicity. For example, each of the words I write have an identity, a meaning, a denotation. Yet, when each word surrenders itself to a sentence, each sentence to a paragraph, each paragraph to an idea, something new is created. Be it a blog, or a child, or a world, sacrifice is at the centre of reality itself. This is both a mystery and a mandate. Identity must both gather and surrender. If it only gathers, or only fragments, it is idolatry. We have far too much of that. The womb that surrenders and gathers is Mary. This is Theotokos.

So, on this Mother’s Day, I honour human mothers. Mine. Yours. Ours. I honour human institutions and pray for their glorification. I strive to participate in both the diversity that excludes and the unity that includes. There is no centre without the fringe. There is no fringe without the centre. With the inhale that gathers the world into my lungs, and the exhale that scatters me into the world, with each breath I am given, I seek to venerate Mary as spirit in matter and the matter in spirit. The fruit of her womb. The fruits of our lives. Seeded. Sown. Bread and wine. Body and blood. Through the intersession of Mary, I seek to behold the mystery of Creation itself. Behold it as good. Very good.

Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee; blessed art thou among women and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus. Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death. Amen.