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INTRODUCTION: Robert Fulghum, the author of the best-selling book, All I ever needed to know, I learned in kindergarten, writes in one of his later books,[2] that he resisted preaching at his Unitarian Church about Mothers Day. He felt that not observing the day was something of a personal statement of concern that such an important date had been co-opted by the floral and greeting card industries. It was also a protest against the skyrocketing costs of a dozen red roses and a simple Mothers Day card. Plus, Mothers Day seemed to avoid totally the issues that women had struggled over for centuries.

So for two years, as Mothers Day came and went, Fulghum didn’t preach on the topic of mothers. Then the year following his two years of abstinence, in late April, he received a letter from one of his members. It read:

“This Mothers Day, I’m bringing my mother to church with me. Your sermon had better be on Mothers’ Day. And it had better be good.”

Now, I’m not sure what the criteria are for a good Mothers Day sermon. But I am well aware that the calendar dictates that certain days, such as Mothers Day, require acknowledgement, regardless of how crass the commercialism around them has become. And Mothers Day has, more than anything, been a commercially successful observance for almost 100 years -- actually, since May 1914. The floral and greeting card industries depend in large part upon its observance, as well as their success in enticing us into buying flowers and cards.

But before proceeding further, let me make two historical notes about Mothers Day that have always seemed relevant to its observance. First, in 1872, Julia Ward Howe, who wrote the Battle Hymn of the Republic, was the first woman in America to attempt establishing a Mothers Day observance. She directed the first one in Boston. But what was unique about her Mothers Day was that she proposed it in protest of war. She saw Mothers Day as a peace statement for the mothers of the half million Americans who had died in the War Between the States, and the millions who were wounded and devastated economically.

The other historical note centers on Anna Jarvis, who was successful in ultimately getting the day set aside by the governor of her home state of West Virginia in 1907. It was so popular, that other governors jumped on board. Then in 1914, President Woodrow Wilson declared it a national day of observance.

But, the interesting historical item though is not so much the process of how Mothers Day came to be; rather, Ms Jarvis was so turned off by the commercialism that engulfed the observance, that she filed a court suit in 1923 to stop the whole thing – unsuccessfully, of course. Finally, in 1948, the year she died, after having spent significant amounts of money trying to undo what she had started, she told a reporter she was sorry she had ever had anything to do with creating Mothers Day in America.

Despite all of that, I must admit that I like Mothers Day. I like to buy flowers and all the sugary sentimentality that goes with it. I can still remember as a small boy picking flowery weeds or weedy flowers and taking them to my mother for Mothers Day, and her acting like they were the prettiest flowers she had ever seen.

This Mothers Day I loved sending my daughter-in-law, Tamara, who will have a miracle child this July, a bouquet of flowers and a loving note about her being a mother-to-be. And I equally loved sending a Mothers Day contribution to Panhandle Planned Parenthood in Amarillo, Texas, in honor of my daughter, who is their board president.

So maybe it’s syrupy…maybe it’s sentimentality…but in a nation at war…when we have more than 1,500 American mothers who’ve lost their daughters and sons fighting a war under false pretenses in Iraq…and when we’re responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of Iraqi families and their mothers…all for the wrong reasons…honoring mothers is not all bad. In fact, it may especially be appropriate at this time.

Yet, I must say, that as I spent the week contemplating my sermon topic, I tried to identify what if anything Mothers Day has done to elevate the status of mothers? What initiatives have we taken on Mothers Day to help the millions upon millions of single parent mothers in America without health insurance? What changes in the political landscape promise that soon there will be equal representation of women in the halls of Congress, the legislative and gubernatorial offices of the state, and women sitting on the court benches?

The truth is that I think we’ve barely begun to comprehend that Mothers Day should be a wonderful time to make a renewed push for change in the status of women. A good example of one such possibility took place just a couple of weeks ago. A 14-day campaign was launched entitled, "Love Mom, Not Wal-Mart." It was kicked off with a giant 8 feet by 8 feet card asking all Americans to sign a "Mother's Day Pledge" not to buy their Mother's Day gift at Wal-Mart this year. And to maintain the pledge year after year, until Wal-Mart ends its discrimination against its women workers.

What they mean is that not only is Wal-Mart the world’s largest single employer. It is also currently involved in a gender discrimination lawsuit covering more than 1.5 million women, which is the largest class action lawsuit in U.S. history. The complaint is that women make up 72 percent of Wal-Mart's hourly workforce, but account for only 33 percent of its department managers and only 15 percent of its store managers. In addition, female hourly workers earn on an average of 40 cents less per hour than male hourly workers, and nearly $5,000 less per year than male managers. So the fact that there is a “Love Mom, not Wal-Mart” campaign underway is progress at least on one front of infusing substance into Mothers Day, as well as pushing for the elevation of the status of women.
Now let’s take a look at the more traditional dimensions of this special day, Mothers Day 2005:

In a book written four or five years ago by physician Kyle Pruett, he notes the differences between how mothers hold their babies, as compared to fathers. He said that studies show that fathers tend to hold a baby facing forward, so that the infant sees the same thing that the father sees. Mothers, however, tend to hold the baby facing inward or over their shoulder.

This “mother position,” we might call it, with the baby facing inward, gives the baby immediate access to the mother's body and space. Also, when the child is placed over the mother’s shoulder, it gives the child a view of the world the mother has just passed through.[3]

The mother position is so much more physical than the father position. A mother’s touch, a mother’s kiss, a mother’s understanding stem from that most basic starting point of how we are held. Again, mothers hold us in a way that causes us to look at the world the way she’s just passed through.

That may be why as a child, if I wanted permission to do something that was questionable, it was always best to start with Mother. Mother understood.

One of my favorite stories was about her extra long hair. In the holiness tradition in which she was raised women never cut their hair. But Mother’s hair was unusually long, so one day she told her mother that she was going to cut it, get a spanking, and be done with it. She was tired of having so much hair.

But her mother said, “Minnie, if you cut your hair, I’ll not only spank you today, I’ll spank you every day until it grows back.” The threat worked, because she didn’t cut it until she went to the nursing home in her late 70s, where they simply could not manage so much hair.

So when asking to do something that was questionable, it was smart to start with Mother: she understood. With her, “No,” didn’t always mean “No.” When she did say “No,” there were several tried and true responses that were many times effective in changing her mind. Complaining that, “Everyone else was going,” always had possibilities. “No” might change to “Wayne, I don’t think so.” Responding back that, “I never get to have any fun,” also worked and might sometimes change her to, “Well, I don’t know.” And after trying everything, one of the oft-used last resorts was to accuse her of letting my brother or sisters do everything, but never me. “No,” then might well become, “Well, I guess so.”

That may be a slightly exaggerated reminiscence, but for certain I was blessed with caring parents, who were willing to say “Yes,” but when it mattered, one of them could also say, “No.” In fact, as a parent whose children are now either a parent or parent-to-be, I’m well aware that the difficult question for most of us as parents has been knowing when a loving “No” is the best possible thing we could say or do.

I had that confirmed when I was in graduate school at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, several years ago. I spent a year as a chaplain intern at the Timberlawn Psychiatric Institute. I felt very privileged not only to have access to their staff, but also to having the guidance of skilled and caring supervising therapists.

I still remember one of the Staff Conferences that an adolescent psychoanalyst conducted each month. The protocol was for one of the residents to make a presentation on one of the adolescent patients in the hospital. Following that, the analyst would comment on what he anticipated would happen in the session with the adolescent, which we were allowed to observe.

The conference that sticks out still in my memory was of an adolescent young man, from a very wealthy family in the Dallas community. He seemingly had all that a child could want. His loving parents had given him everything imaginable, except for one thing: They had been unable to say, “No.” The young man did not know how to control his impulses. They had been destructive to him, his family, and society.

The analyst followed the session by saying words I’ve never forgotten. They were these:

“Adolescents are going down a sometimes dark and unfamiliar tunnel. They don’t know where the walls are. So when they do something that is wrong, or push beyond the boundaries of accepted behavior, the task of parents is a difficult, but necessary one of saying to them when needed, ‘No. You can’t go there. And there are consequences if you don’t comply.’”

Now, we all know that it’s not that simple in real life, and yet it’s a fundamental principle of parenting that our children need both yeses and no’s, discipline and affirmation, from both parents. That’s also loving.

But there’s something else about a mother’s love. It has a divine dimension to it.

I mentioned earlier that Julia Howe, who tried first to get a national Mothers Day established, was also a Universalist. That word was at first a derogatory term applied by others. Universalism was clearly a heresy throughout most of the church’s history. What it taught was that ultimately, a God of love would not send anyone to burn in hell for eternity, and that eventually every one in the Universe would be saved by a loving God – hence, the term “universalism.”

Historically, most of the church bitterly persecuted anyone who believed such an “outrageous” claim. For if universalism were so, there would be no need for missionaries to convert the heathen, in fact, no need to convert anyone.

There were those anti-universalists who were eloquent in their description of the hot fiery flames of hell. Jonathan Edwards is perhaps best known for his sermon, “Sinners in the hands of an angry God,” where departed souls are depicted as dangling like a spider on a cobweb, with the horribly hot heat of hell waiting to fry them, but never quite finishing the job.

Universalism basically said, “Hogwash.” And for a while, in the 19^th century their numbers were considerable. But then guess what? Their message was co-opted, and hellfire and brimstone gradually lost its effectiveness. And even though churches had it in their creeds and professed to believe it, very few preach anymore about burning in hell forever and ever. They emphasize instead of being lost, or giving one’s life to Jesus, or making a decision for Christ. Churches of all shapes and sizes realize that in America at least, hell is not very popular and it definitely is not going to cause your church to grow. Universalism is an implicit creed of virtually every Christian Church in America. God loves everyone unconditionally. A mother’s love is a little bit like universalism. Mothers love us, regardless…just like God.

CONCLUSION

So, here are a couple of powerfully loving things to do on this Mothers Day. The first comes from physician Gerald G. Jampolsky.[4] He asks, "Have you ever given yourself the opportunity of going through just one day concentrating on totally accepting everyone and making no negative judgments?”

The reason he thinks that would be a good experiment to try is this: "Everything we think, say or do reacts on us like a boomerang. <You know what a boomerang is: When thrown by a skilled athlete, it goes out and comes right back to where it was initially thrown.>When we send out criticisms or other attack thoughts, they come back to us in some way…just like a boomerang. But equally so, when we send out only love, it comes back to us, as well."

Secondly, on this Mothers Day, I like to think of this question from poet James Freeman:

We can never love too much, or be loved too much. Love is a wondrous gift of the Universe. As it’s been said many times, we can never fully repay Mother’s love, so instead, let’s pass it on.

[1] Given on May 08, 2005, Mothers Day, at All Faiths Unitarian Congregation, meeting in the Foulds Theater at the Alliance for the Arts, 10091 McGregor Boulevard, Ft. Myers, FL, by the Rev. Dr. Wayne Robinson, minister.

[2] It was on fire when I lay down on it.

[3] Eighty percent of the time both father and mother hold the child on their left side (even when left-handed), next to their heart's side of the chest. Dr. Pruitt states that none of these carrying positions is necessarily better than the others, just different. Kyle D. Pruett, M.D., Fatherneed (New York: The Free Press, 2000), p. 29.

[4] Love Is Letting Go of Fear (New York: Bantam Books, 1970), p. 97.