"OUGHTA BE A WOMAN - MOTHER'S DAY"

 "OUGHTA BE A WOMAN’ - MOTHER'S DAY

            Mother’s Day rolls around again this Sunday, and as with most things in American culture, it is complex.  Its roots are to be found in white women’s responses to the carnage of the Civil War.   After the Civil War there were several attempts to start a Mother’s Day to honor the fallen sons and fathers of the War and to work so that war would be abolished.  In 1868 Anna Reeves Jarvis started a committee in her native West Virginia to push for an annual Mother’s Friendship Day – it didn’t get very far.  Another more famous woman sought to start a Mother’s Day tradition in 1870.  That year Julia Ward Howe, author of “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” wrote a Mother’s Day Proclamation, calling on the women of the North and the South (and indeed the entire world) to unite for peace.  This is part of that proclamation:

            “Arise, then, women of this day!  Arise, all women who have breasts,

            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 to 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.”

            This proclamation represents quite a journey from Howe, who wrote these words for the Union Army:  “Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!  He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored.  He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:  His truth is marching on.”  That shift in Howe will be a story for another day!   

            Mother’s Day did not catch on in that era.  It would be left to Anna Reeves Jarvis’ daughter Anna Jarvis to take up the case for Mother’s Day in the early 1900’s.  Like Mother’s Day itself, she had a very complicated relationship with her mother – look it up to find out more!  She felt that she had not done enough to honor her mother, so she worked for a Mother’s Day to honor her mother and all mothers, a Mother’s Day devoid of the earlier anti-war emphasis.  It worked – in 1910, the governor of West Virginia issued the first governmental Mother’s Day proclamation, and in 1914 President Woodrow Wilson declared it to be a national day of observance (he would lead us into World War I three years later).   Ever since then, Mother’s Day has been powerful and complex.  It quickly became commercialized, and indeed Anna Jarvis sued many companies over their moves to sell products with Mother’s Day.  She obviously lost that battle.

            As I have written before, I don’t have a great problem with Mother’s Day because I was raised by women - my single mother Mary Stroupe and my great-great aunt Bernice Higgins, whom I called “Gran.”  Because of this experience, I’ve come to see Mother’s Day as an opportunity to thank those people, especially the women who have raised us – mommas, grandmas, aunts, teachers, coaches, youth leaders, ministers, and others.  Not all of us are mothers, but we’ve all had mothers and other women who have raised us, and we’re asked to give thanks for them.   We’re asked to give thanks to those who have helped us to find our true north:  we are loved and lovely, even when we feel unloved and unlovely.  Thanks also to the great woman in my life, Caroline Leach, who has taught me this in so many ways.

            I was gratified when I came to Oakhurst to find that people in the African-American tradition had this same approach.  In some Anglo churches, the celebration of Mother’s Day seems sentimental and trite, but in the African-American tradition, it is powerful because it reminds us that we are not motherless children, but also because it reminds us of the cost of that motherly loving.  It reminds us also that we all - women and men -need to share motherly love with one another, whether we have biological children or not.  In honor of Mother’s Day, I want to close with a song by Sweet Honey in the Rock, written by Bernice Johnson Reagon, based on a poem by June Jordan:

                        “Oughta Be A Woman”

Washing the floors to send you to college, staying at home so you can feel safe,

What do you think is the soul of her knowledge,

What do you think that makes her feel safe

Biting her lips and lowering her eyes, to make sure there’s food on the table,

What do you think would be her surprise, if the world was as willing as she’s able

Hugging herself in an old kitchen chair, she listens to your hurt and your rage,

What do you think she knows of despair, what is the aching of age

The fathers, the children, the brothers turn to her – everybody white turns to her

What about her turning around alone in the everyday light

There oughta be a woman can break down, sit down, sit down

Like everybody else call it quits on Mondays, blues on Tuesday, sleep until Sunday

Down, sit down, break down, sit down

A way outa no way is flesh outa flesh, courage that cries out at night

A way outa no way is flesh outa flesh, bravery kept out of sight

A way outa no way is too much to ask,

Too much of a task for any one woman