of mothers, shepherds, and sheep

On this fourth Sunday of Easter (Year A), imagining God as divine mother, in all sense of that... the challenges and the comfort.

Bobby McFerrin: "The 23rd Psalm is dedicated to my mother. She was the driving force in my religious and spiritual education, and I have so many memories of her singing in church. But I wrote it because I'd been reading the Bible one morning, and I was thinking about God's unconditional love, about how we crave it but have so much trouble believing we can trust it, and how we can't fully understand it. And then I left my reading and spent time with my wife and our children. Watching her with them, the way she loved them, I realized one of the ways we're shown a glimpse of how God loves us is through our mothers. They cherish our spirits, they demand that we become our best selves, and they take care of us." (from 'Sing Your Prayers: An Interview With Bobby McFerrin' by Omega Institute:http://www.huffingtonpost.com/omega-institute-for-holistic-studies/bobby-mcferrin_b_1582043.html)

Bobby McFerrin's VOCAbuLarieS featuring SLIXS & Friends,

live in Gdansk, Poland at the Solidarity of Arts Festival, 17 August 2013

A Mother’s Day Proclamation by Julia Ward Howe, 1870

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 shall 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, 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 vindicate 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 council.

Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead. Let them then solemnly take council with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, man as the brother of man, each bearing after his own kind 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 some place 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.


For brief, enriching info about this day:

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/05/140508-mothers-day-nation-gifts-facts-culture-moms/

http://www.history.com/topics/holidays/mothers-day

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/05/11/the-radical-history-of-mother-s-day.html