Mothering Sunday ...........
So this Sunday we celebrate Mothering Sunday, NOT Mother's Day.
Mothering Sunday is also known as Refreshment Sunday a day when we can take a short but welcome break from our Lenten Fasting, Mothering Sunday is a day for Simnel Cake, for young girls in service to be allowed home to visit their mothers and also historically for parishes to visit their Cathedral the Mother Church of the Diocese.
Mother's Day is American by history and provenance: Mom and Apple Pie!
My very first memory as a child was waking up in my cot, cold and feeling desperately unloved and wondering just how I had become separated during the night from my mothers arms.
I grabbed the bars of the cot, stood up and looked across at the bed where I had fallen asleep to see a stranger lying there next to my mother.
I was outraged, who was this person?
It was, of course, my father newly demobilised and fresh home from his service in the Royal Airforce, it was 1946 and I was 18 months old.
My father often claimed, after a whisky or two, that I had never forgiven him for usurping my place in my mothers arms.
It is often asserted that the reason that people love music, why our spirits are lifted by the sound of music, popular music, chamber music, choral music, pop music, rock music is that it reminds us of the time, those nine idyllic months spent in the womb.
We love music as children and as adults because we recall the sound of our mother's heartbeat. It reminds us of a place of comfort, a place of safety, a place of security and when we are as Shakespeare has it in Macbeth 'untimely ripped from our Mother's womb' we look back with a certain nostalgia and spend the rest of our lives looking for a place of safety.
An experiment was conducted whereby children were left alone in a room. They were observed as feeling uneasy and afraid. But, when through loudspeakers, they heard the sound of their mother's heart, they immediately settled down and smiled.
It was felt that this demonstrated how the time spent in the womb plays such an important part in both the relationship and the attachment that children feel towards their mothers.
I certainly recall that moment as a 'first' memory and recall being quite distressed even after I had been calmed and comforted and held by both my Mother and my Father.
For all of us the sound, that sound of our mother's heartbeat, heard in the womb, and not just the sound but the scents, the smells, the movements and the gestures, bring a child closer to it's mother than to any other single human relationship we have or form.
I also recall sitting with my mother, with my own son in my arms, as we looked through family photographs a week before she died. There was a sense of recalling and recovering both my childhood and my relationship with my family and somehow ensuring that my own children were bound into the strength of the relationships that had gone before them and which had saved the way for their becoming members of not just a human family but of the human family.
It was in that moment, knowing that I would not see her again in this life, that her voice, weakened as it was, and her scent reassured me.
In the Gospels there are a number of moments when Jesus is challenged, who is my mother? is a question he asks, a man leaves his family and his mother and cleaves to his wife, these are powerful, and challenging images and questions but it is on the cross as he hangs in disgrace and shame that he looks down on Mary his mother and John his favourite disciple and commends each to the the other, your mother, your son.
The tradition that grew from this has it that John cared for Mary and that they lived until Mary died in Ephesus.
Mary's face wold have been the face that Jesus saw first, hers the caress that he felt first, and it was the strength and power of that relationship that led to his looking down from the cross to to exercise the care and compassion that a son (or daughter) feels for his/her mother and I am sure that her presence at the foot of the cross brought calm and reassurance to Jesus in his final agony.
So on Mothering Sunday we remember mothers and on this particular mothering Sunday as we meet in such unprecedented times we must raise our sights from our own mother and our own family, to Mother Church as we seek to remain faithful to her calling to us and hear the rhythm of the music of the prayers and hymns we have sung.
We must also it seems recommit ourselves to caring for mother earth, we are wreaking the worst kind of vengeance on an earth that has nurtured and sustained human life but which now leaves us bereft and crying in the agonies of pestilence and famine.
As a mother cares and nurtures her children so should we as children care and nurture our planet.
As the prayer of Mary says:
Hail Mary, full of Grace
Blessed art thou amongst women
and blessed is the fruit of they womb Jesus.
Holy Mary, Mother Mother of God
Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.
The attachment between mother and child is key, it becomes a child's main reference for knowing reality, it gives a child the confidence to grow, and a point of reference as s/he begins to navigate the outside world.
Whatever the point of entry and celebration we bring to and discover on Mothering Sunday whether our celebration of our heavenly mother, or our relationship with our earthly mother, we remember the strong and maternal link that exists for us and our memory someone who brought us into this world and who loved and nurtured us, until we could take our first steps into adulthood.
Mothering Sunday is also known as Refreshment Sunday a day when we can take a short but welcome break from our Lenten Fasting, Mothering Sunday is a day for Simnel Cake, for young girls in service to be allowed home to visit their mothers and also historically for parishes to visit their Cathedral the Mother Church of the Diocese.
Mother's Day is American by history and provenance: Mom and Apple Pie!
My very first memory as a child was waking up in my cot, cold and feeling desperately unloved and wondering just how I had become separated during the night from my mothers arms.
I grabbed the bars of the cot, stood up and looked across at the bed where I had fallen asleep to see a stranger lying there next to my mother.
I was outraged, who was this person?
It was, of course, my father newly demobilised and fresh home from his service in the Royal Airforce, it was 1946 and I was 18 months old.
My father often claimed, after a whisky or two, that I had never forgiven him for usurping my place in my mothers arms.
It is often asserted that the reason that people love music, why our spirits are lifted by the sound of music, popular music, chamber music, choral music, pop music, rock music is that it reminds us of the time, those nine idyllic months spent in the womb.
We love music as children and as adults because we recall the sound of our mother's heartbeat. It reminds us of a place of comfort, a place of safety, a place of security and when we are as Shakespeare has it in Macbeth 'untimely ripped from our Mother's womb' we look back with a certain nostalgia and spend the rest of our lives looking for a place of safety.
An experiment was conducted whereby children were left alone in a room. They were observed as feeling uneasy and afraid. But, when through loudspeakers, they heard the sound of their mother's heart, they immediately settled down and smiled.
It was felt that this demonstrated how the time spent in the womb plays such an important part in both the relationship and the attachment that children feel towards their mothers.
I certainly recall that moment as a 'first' memory and recall being quite distressed even after I had been calmed and comforted and held by both my Mother and my Father.
For all of us the sound, that sound of our mother's heartbeat, heard in the womb, and not just the sound but the scents, the smells, the movements and the gestures, bring a child closer to it's mother than to any other single human relationship we have or form.
I also recall sitting with my mother, with my own son in my arms, as we looked through family photographs a week before she died. There was a sense of recalling and recovering both my childhood and my relationship with my family and somehow ensuring that my own children were bound into the strength of the relationships that had gone before them and which had saved the way for their becoming members of not just a human family but of the human family.
It was in that moment, knowing that I would not see her again in this life, that her voice, weakened as it was, and her scent reassured me.
In the Gospels there are a number of moments when Jesus is challenged, who is my mother? is a question he asks, a man leaves his family and his mother and cleaves to his wife, these are powerful, and challenging images and questions but it is on the cross as he hangs in disgrace and shame that he looks down on Mary his mother and John his favourite disciple and commends each to the the other, your mother, your son.
The tradition that grew from this has it that John cared for Mary and that they lived until Mary died in Ephesus.
Mary's face wold have been the face that Jesus saw first, hers the caress that he felt first, and it was the strength and power of that relationship that led to his looking down from the cross to to exercise the care and compassion that a son (or daughter) feels for his/her mother and I am sure that her presence at the foot of the cross brought calm and reassurance to Jesus in his final agony.
So on Mothering Sunday we remember mothers and on this particular mothering Sunday as we meet in such unprecedented times we must raise our sights from our own mother and our own family, to Mother Church as we seek to remain faithful to her calling to us and hear the rhythm of the music of the prayers and hymns we have sung.
We must also it seems recommit ourselves to caring for mother earth, we are wreaking the worst kind of vengeance on an earth that has nurtured and sustained human life but which now leaves us bereft and crying in the agonies of pestilence and famine.
As a mother cares and nurtures her children so should we as children care and nurture our planet.
As the prayer of Mary says:
Hail Mary, full of Grace
Blessed art thou amongst women
and blessed is the fruit of they womb Jesus.
Holy Mary, Mother Mother of God
Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death.
The attachment between mother and child is key, it becomes a child's main reference for knowing reality, it gives a child the confidence to grow, and a point of reference as s/he begins to navigate the outside world.
Whatever the point of entry and celebration we bring to and discover on Mothering Sunday whether our celebration of our heavenly mother, or our relationship with our earthly mother, we remember the strong and maternal link that exists for us and our memory someone who brought us into this world and who loved and nurtured us, until we could take our first steps into adulthood.
Comments
Post a Comment