Today has been filled with holy moments. Shared struggles with folks; faith journey narratives through the good, bad and ugly; 9 year old joy and laughter and singing; dog and cat love; helping a new friend out; learning of the death of a father; dissecting church buildings with colleagues; spiritual brother conversations, paying bills and planning cash flow, and wrestling with the breadth of God's love. And procrastinating.
Holy, tough conversations with Brook this week. It's a process, not an event. But it seems some of the air has cleared...so grateful for the walking through...together.
Mother's Day coming up. Giving thanks in deep ways for my mother. For her modeling unconditional love which chastens and corrects and picks up and walks beside and holds and reminds and whispers and hugs. Giving thanks for being a mom, something I wasn't sure I was cut out for (some days still not), but can't imagine life without her. She said she's glad that her birthday and Mother's Day are in the same week...and so am I.
I'm wrestling with the main thing...not only for this Sunday, but for vision and direction. If we exist to introduce or reintroduce God's amazing love to folks who don't know it or who have forgotten it, where are we living out that purpose? Can we talk about it with others? Do we extend that love in ways that make love stand out, and not ourselves?
The blog posts and articles about Christians and torture, and Christians and war illuminate the Mother's Day declaration by Julia Ward Howe. Abolition, women's suffrage, and world peace. Aren't those issues alive and well and living in the 21st century?
Mother's Day Proclamation
Arise, then, women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts,
Whether our baptism be of water or of tears!Say firmly:
"We will not have great questions decided 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 bosom of the 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 congress of women without limit of nationality
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And at 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.
