Unitarian Universalist Church at Washington Crossing

Nathalie and Chris we are pleased that you dedicated your daughter, and Stephanie and Jeremiah we are pleased that you dedicated your son here at the Unitarian Universalist Church at Washington Crossing today. It is exciting that we are having such a baby boom here at church. I so enjoy seeing all the babies in our sanctuary, in our nursery and in other parts of our building and in the arms of their parents.

When I was in my twenties and thirties and starting out as a father, no one ever told me that parenting would be easy. Still, never in my wildest dreams, did I ever imagine the magnitude of the feelings I would encounter as a parent. I certainly was not ready for the exciting and gratifying rollercoaster highs that came from being a parent to our three children. Nor was I ready for the lightening fast decent into the heart-rending fear and lows I have known because of being a parent.

Today is Mother’s Day and I am wise enough that I would never equate being a father with being a mother. Being pregnant, giving birth and all that goes along with it is very miraculous and holds its own unique gifts as well as costs. Yet, we recognize the fact that some men can be very good nurturers and some women can be less adept at nurturing. Clearly, being a parent or for that matter a dedicated parent figure in a child’s life is both gratifying and humbling in so many ways.

The song Because You Loved Me, sung by Kelsy Roe and Caryl Tipton is beautiful and tremendously evocative emotionally. It is easy to understand how it can be sung to mothers and to all those who are nurturing and loving in the way we would all love to experience. In reality, few people can be expected to live up to being that supportive and loving, not even every a mother.

The Sunday of Mother’s Day is not a favorite Sunday for everyone who attends worship services. Indeed some people intentionally avoid church on Mother’s Day. Moreover, to be honest, Mother’s Day can be one of the more difficult Sundays for we who are preachers. We need to take into account the women who wanted to but could never become a mother, and the women who never wanted to become a mother and either did anyway or choose not to.

In addition, there are all the many varied and complicated relationships between mothers and their children. Still, it can be a great day for the many women who wanted to become mothers and who have had relatively positive relationships with their children. It can be a great day too for children to convey their appreciation to their mother, even if they are not 100% grateful. There are plenty of children who are estranged from their parents or who were abandoned by a parent or have some long-standing resentment. The list of possibilities seems endless.

The first official Mother’s Day ceremony was held in Philadelphia on May 10, 1908. Six years later, President Woodrow Wilson signed a Congressional Resolution setting aside Mother’s Day as a national holiday to be celebrated on the second Sunday in May. An interesting sidebar is that Julia Ward Howe, an active Unitarian and the person who wrote the Battle Hymn of the Republic, also conceptualized and organized the first North American Mother’s Day with a Peace Proclamation. The year was 1870. Howe became increasingly distraught by the death and carnage of the Civil War. She wanted mothers to come together and protest the futility of their sons killing the sons of other mothers. By 1873 women’s groups in eighteen North American cities observed this new mothers’ holiday.

The celebrations eventually died out, but not before planting a seed in the person of Anna Reeves Jarvis. Jarvis organized Mothers Day Work Clubs to improve health and sanitary conditions and a Mother’s Friendship Day in West Virginia in an effort to re-unite families and neighbors divided by the Civil War. When Jarvis died in 1907, her daughter Anna M. Jarvis campaigned for the creation of an official Mother’s Day in remembrance of her mother and in honor of peace. Anna Marie Jarvis never married and had no children

Ironically, by the 1920’s Anna Marie became quite disillusioned with the commercialization of Mothers Day. So much so that she campaigned against the way Mothers Day was observed and was arrested for disturbing the peace. Eventually, she and her sister spent much of their inheritance campaigning against the Mother’s Day Holiday and died in poverty.

She put her objections this way, sending your mother “… a printed card means nothing except that you are too lazy to write to the woman who has done more for you than anyone in the world. And candy! You take a box to Mother—and then eat most of it yourself. A pretty sentiment.”

Of course, no two people can expect to have the identical relationship with their parents. There were five siblings in my family and we all perceived our parents differently. We had different ways of relating to them and they related to us in different ways. I believe that I am fortunate because I had really good parents. I know they were not perfect, but I also know that many people had or have inadequate and downright abusive parents. On the other hand, I know people who have been unbelievably nurturing; we could even say mothering to the children of other people.

To be a successful parent or parent figure requires that we strive to follow the advice in the poem by Mary Oliver.

To Live In This World

To live in this world
You must be able
To do three things:
To love what is mortal,
To hold it against your bones knowing
Your own life depends on it;
And, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.

Being a parent can indeed bring great joy and fulfillment, but being a parent can also bring long periods of utter boredom, exhaustion and sorrow. I am certain that my mother must have experienced all of those feelings and more with me. I was a horrible speller in grade school. My mother spent hours and hours helping me learn spelling lists. (Talk about boring.) My dad must have gotten exasperated with me when I would lose or break one of his tools. I remember one period when, fascinated with how tape measurers worked, I broke at least three of them.

Yet, I also know how proud and excited my mother and father were when I graduated from college and then from seminary and was ordained. Dad showed his pride by always addressing letters he sent to me with Rev. Charles Stephens, and those he sent to my brother with Dr. Bruce Stephens. They took great pride in the accomplishments of all of their children. They were very excited when my sister, my brother and I had children of our own.

Again, on the other side of the ledger, I know how sad my parents were for me when my first marriage broke up and I went through a divorce. Also, when I left the Lutheran ministry, they did not say it, but I knew they were disappointed. They experienced their disappointment but never stopped loving and supporting me, even when my mother’s sister told them that Unitarian Universalism was a cult. Fortunately, they had enough confidence in me to say that as long as I was involved, Unitarian Universalism could not be bad.

Alison and I feel the same way about our three children. I relate to the imagery used by Elizabeth Stone who said, “Making the decision to have a child – it’s momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.”

My way of understanding the first and last of our Unitarian Universalist principles is that we ought to see ourselves as the mothers and fathers of all children. We affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person – every child. We affirm and promote a respect for the interdependent web of all existence of which we are a part. We could say that we are all part of one large interdependent family.

All children, each and every child, deserves to have someone be strong for them when they are weak, to be a voice for them when they are not able to speak, and be their eyes when they cannot see. All children, each and every child, deserves to have adults, their parents and other adults, who will look out for them and see the best there is in them.

Philip Booth, a well-recognized poet, was a member of the Castine Unitarian Church in Maine when I served there. He wrote the following poem, First Lesson. This poem captures for me the sort of trust and faith every child should experience.

First Lesson

Lie back, daughter, let your head
Be tipped back in the cup of my hand.
Gently, and I will hold you.
Spread your arms wide,
Lie out on the stream
And look high at the gulls.
A dead-man’s-float is face down.
You will dive and swim soon enough
Where this tidewater ebbs to the sea.
Daughter, believe me
When you tire on the long thrash to your island,
Lie up, and survive.
As you float now, where I held you
And let go, remember when fear
Cramps your heart what I told you:
Lie gently and wide to the light-year stars,
Lie back and the sea will hold you.

We affirm and promote the inherent worth and dignity of every person –of mommies who used to be girls when they were little and of daddies who used to be boys when they were little but also when they grew and became women and men with children.

We affirm and promote a respect for the one large interdependent family of which we are a part.