Be Gentle

It is time for my annual message to people:  Be gentle with each other this weekend.

Sunday is Mother’s Day, and that day does not mean a Hallmark moment for everyone.  Allow your friends and relatives and members of your church and associations deal with this day as they need.

Certainly, there are many of you for which this will be a joyous celebration such as a Brunch or Lunch with mothers.  (I encourage lunch so you could bring your mother to church first.)

There are always some from every congregation who will not come to worship on Mother’s Day because it brings many bad memories.  There are some who will have feelings of loss.  Others who will carry feelings of inadequacy.  There will be some who will be grieving.  There will be others who haven’t a clue why Mother’s Day is a big deal.  Others will have a mixture of emotions.

Anna Jarvis is credited as the founder of Mother’s Day.  It began as a tribute to her own mother upon her death and included all mothers.  It was signed as a holiday by President Woodrow Wilson in 1914.  Although Anna Jarvis has the recognition, there was an effort to have such a recognition during the Civil War because of the suffering of so many mothers when their sons died in battle.  Julia Ward Howe was the energy behind this effort.  As the card industry emerged, Mother’s Day was a popular holiday.  It became very commercial.  When that happened, Anna Jarvis began publicly speaking against the celebration and costs of Mother’s Day.

The ancient law of the Ten Commandments tells us to “Honor our Father and our Mother”.  How we do that, how we recognize how others not related to us have been as mother or father to us, how we see our roles as Mother or Father – are all acts of faith.  Rather than placing unrealistic expectations on one another, may we recognize that the Creative Energy of God’s Own Self has spread through the ages through ordinary human beings – people like us.  And let us be thankful.

Rev. Clara