This Sunday we celebrate motherhood and mothering in all its forms. Please read the homily below or watch the complete service by clicking here!

Mother’s Day has become one of those “Hallmark Holidays” that celebrate an ideal that doesn’t exist in real life.  The mother who none of us had or have, or are or will be.  It’s dangerous to put mom up there on a pedestal, because the reality is that she’ll never live up to that image of perfection.  Some of you in this room know that feeling all too well.  Either your relationship with your mother was strained or maybe even non-existent, or you’re a mom who struggles just to make it through the day, constantly feeling inadequate to the standards society sets for you.  So let’s, for a moment, offer up our thanks to mothers who do the best they can, instead of being perfect.  And then let’s get on with the celebration of the idea, instead of the ideal, of motherhood.

The idea of motherhood goes far beyond the biological, to the point that it can include those who give birth and those who can’t.  Those who choose to have children and those who don’t.  And, speaking of choice, let me digress here for just a moment. Because I don’t think we can think about motherhood today without acknowledging the news of this week, what appears to be the impending demise of Roe v. Wade. It sickens me, as I know it does many of you, that a pregnant person’s right to choose what to do with that pregnancy and what to do with their own body is now in jeopardy. In 2015, the Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregation’s adopted a Statement of Conscience which proclaims, in part: “As Unitarian Universalists, we embrace the reproductive justice framework, which espouses the human right to have children, not to have children, to parent the children one has in healthy environments and to safeguard bodily autonomy and to express one’s sexuality freely.” That Statement goes on to say that “the world we envision includes social, political, legal, and economic systems that support everyone’s freedom of reproductive choice…” The right to choose is just that: a legal right that should not be controlled, regulated or legislated out of existence. Period. There’s a lot more I could say about this, but that’s the bottom line.

What lies at the heart of this broad, comprehensive and inclusive concept of motherhood are two key elements:  the power to create, or what I’ll call the creative impulse; and the power to nurture. What I’ll call the sustaining impulse.

The power to create isn’t limited to just those who have babies.  Anyone who has birthed something into being has this aspect of motherhood within them.  What is it that you want to create?  Is it a work of art or a piece of music? Or is it a movement to bring more peace and more love into the world?  Maybe it’s a new “you,” a new way of being in the world.  What are you being called to give birth to?  Whatever your creative impulse, whatever you are called to give birth to, that is the first aspect of motherhood.

The second is, in some ways easier and in other ways harder than the first.  Because it’s not enough just to create something.  You’ve got to be committed to it.  You’ve got to sustain it.  Nurture it.  Help it grow into the best thing it can be.  I say this is in some ways easy, because if it’s something that we’ve created, something that we have a burning desire to birth into the world, we’re bound to want to care for it so that it grows and thrives.  But nurturing and sustaining this thing we’ve created is also hard work.  A mother doesn’t just give birth and walk away.  They need to stick with it – whatever “it” is – through all the ups and downs, to love it and care for it even when it doesn’t turn out exactly as they’d had planned or hoped it would.

So on this Mother’s Day, I ask you to celebrate your own mother, if you can.  And I ask you to seek out the mother that may be lurking inside of you.  Ask yourself, “What am I called to give life to?  How can I bring it into the world?”  And when you find that thing, love the heck out of it, guide it, coax it, cultivate it until it blooms into the beautiful flowering of its full potential.  Whoever you are, mother it for all you’re worth.