Mother's Day of Peace

I'm not big on Mother's Day. It's a day that has too many obligations, seems contrived and fake. I like the idea of Mother's Day, but the way it's celebrated - buy the card, flowers and a present, and of course one must go visit one's mother if one lives within a reasonable distance - bothers me. It ought to be enough to honor one's Mother any day, any way.

A woman I know who feels similarly sent me the following email, and I really enjoyed it:

...a few years ago I learned about the origin of Mother's Day and found that it was indeed a concept I could fully endorse. It had nothing to do with gifts, cards, timely phone calls, or breakfast in bed. Julia Ward Howe, of "Battle Hymn of the Republic" fame, owns another great accomplishment. After closely experiencing some of the worst effects of the Civil War, working with families and orphans on both sides of the conflict, and feeling appalled at the death and destruction, she determined that promoting peace and peaceful resolutions was one of the two most important issues in the world (the other being equality).

She called for women to come together across national lines, to recognize what we hold in common above what divides us, commit to finding peaceful resolutions to conflicts, and to oppose war in all forms. She issued a declaration, hoping to gather women together in a congress of action.

She failed in her attempt to get formal recognition for her Mother's Day of Peace, but another woman, Anna Jarvis, picked up the cause. Upon the death of her activist mother, Anna Jarvis vowed to continue the work her mother had begun, which was similar in objective to Julia Ward Howe's work. She worked to found a memorial day for women, and the first such Mother's Day was celebrated in West Virginia in 1907. It spread eventually to 45 states, and in 1914 President Woodrow Wilson officially declared the first national Mother’s Day.

Recalling Julia Ward Howe's declaration now, in light of current events worldwide and particularly here at home, gives me a personal and solid reason to embrace Mother's Day. I do not wish for gifts and cards; I am fortunate to know that my children love me and do not need a special day set aside to coerce them into telling me so. What I can celebrate is a day where women decide to put their differences aside and come together for a greater common good, the promotion of peace and peaceful resolution.

It is okay to celebrate as you always have, to celebrate mothers everywhere in your own personal ways. But this Mother's Day, I encourage all mothers - all women! - everywhere to also take a moment to send their energy, thoughts, meditations and prayers out to the world, so that we may remember that what we have in common is far greater than our differences, and so that the world may know peace.

Julia Ward Howe's Declaration reads:

Arise then... women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!

Say firmly:
"We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy, and patience.
We, the women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country,
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."

From the voice of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with our own.
It says: "Disarm! Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."

Blood does not wipe out dishonor, Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil at the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.

Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace...
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar, but of God --

In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general counsel of women without limit of nationality,
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.

Here's to a Mother's Day of Peace.