Message May 7, 2011

Opening Prayer:

We call upon our omnipotent God/Goddess, parent of us all, we trust in your power to create, to sustain, to teach and to enable.  We trust in your gift of salvation and in the Holy Spirit you have given us to show us your way of love and life.  We ask you to bestow upon each of us an additional measure of your Holy Spirit to enable and empower us to live in love, peace and tolerance and to fulfill your will.  We ask a special blessing for all through the mother of this earth.  Be with us.  Strengthen comfort and guide us.  Enable us to bring all that we are to you, so that we might experience your touch in all areas of our life. Our God, father and mother, who is greater than the most powerful forces in this world, enable us to be still and know that you are God. Bless all the mothers of this world that that they may be your instruments and become makers of your peace in our homes, in our communities, and in our world. We pray all this in our elder brother’s name, Jesus. Amen.

Opening Song: The River is Here – by Andy Park

(I understand this is a favorite song of Rev. Bob Brophy, thank you Rev. Bob for suggesting it.)

http://youtube/gcxdSaxVP_E

God’s Feminine Side - God the Mother

Any feelings of love, softness and warmth that the word ‘Mother’ elicits –

 God is all that and more

This is an excerpt from The London Times
September 10 1999

EUROPE

Pope John Paul II praises 'God the Mother' to pilgrims

FROM RICHARD OWEN IN ROME

THE Pope, who this year said that God was not "an old man with a white beard", went a step further yesterday and referred to "God the Mother."

The Pope, regarded as dogmatically conservative and patriarchal, has surprised critics this year with uncharacteristically open-minded revisions of doctrine as part of his preparations for a Christian mission in the new millennium. He is keen to broaden the appeal of Christianity, his advisers say, and to ensure that no sections of society feel "left out of its all-embracing message." The Pope has clashed with feminists and remains opposed to the ordination of women. But he praised the "vital role" of women in the Roman Catholic Church, and talks with reverence of his own mother, Emilia, who died when he was nine in Poland. The Pope is also a devotee of the cult of the Virgin Mary, although she is referred to as the Mother of God, and not as a God Mother, since she does not share the divinity of God and Christ.

The Lord's Prayer opens with the words "Our Father, which art in heaven," and in the Gospel of St Matthew, Jesus says: "Everything is entrusted to me by my Father; and no one knows the Son but the Father, and no one knows the Father but the Son" (Matthew xi, 27). But, speaking to pilgrims in St Peter's Square, the Pope said God had both a male and female nature.

Reflecting on the forgiveness of sins, he said: "The hands of God hold us up, they hold us tight, they give us strength. But at the same time they give us comfort, they console and caress us. They are the hands of a father and a mother at the same time." The Pope said the parable of the prodigal son reflected this dual nature, with the father in the story disciplining his son and even throwing him out, but later welcoming him back. The pontiff said the capacity to forgive those who repented was, if anything, more a female trait than a male one.

Theologians said that in admitting that God had a "feminine side" the Pope was conscious of a remark made by his predecessor, Pope John Paul I, who in 1978 astonished pilgrims by remarking that God was "the Father, but is also the Mother."

The Pope's latest remarks were welcomed by liberal theologians such as Dr Hans Kung, who was forbidden to teach theology 20 years ago after repeatedly defying Vatican edicts. He said that it was time to acknowledge that God "transcends the sexes."

I remember that day so well.  This is when I first started realizing that God as omnipotent.  That he had all the characteristics of both male and female.  Throughout the Bible there are verses showing the feminine aspects of God’s character.  As humans we are limited, each having some of God’s characteristics but not all.  It seems that when God saves us and places the Holy Spirit within us, the Holy Spirit sets about filling in the understanding of and characteristics of God each one of us is lacking.

Healing Meditation: For a New Beginning

Robert Mendelson has a wonderful Yahoo Group he calls The Great River Euphrates in which he sends out beautiful thoughts like these in song, picture and verse. This one was inspired by Rev. Bob Mendelson.

http://www.panhala.net/Archive/For_a_New_Beginning.html

The following are the words of the Presbyterian minister, Rev. Charles P. Henderson in his article: No Greater Love.

The woman credited with founding Mothers Day is Anna Jarvis. The Methodist Church in Grafton, WV is called "the Mothers Day Church" because Anna Jarvis was active there; her home in Grafton is a national landmark. Anna Jarvis was inspired by HER mother, Anna Reeves Jarvis who organized "Mothers' Work Day Clubs" in the 1850's in the area. The clubs provided medicines for the poor, inspected milk for children, provided nursing care for the sick, and shelters for children with tuberculosis.

When the Civil War broke out she called together four of her clubs and asked them to make a pledge that friendship and good will would not be a casualty of the war. In a remarkable display of courage and compassion the women nursed soldiers from both sides and saved many lives from both sides. As if that weren't enough, Anna Reeves Jarvis became a genuine peace maker after the war. The wounds and animosity between families who fought on either side were deep and harsh. Anna Reeves Jarvis organized "Mothers' Friendship Days" to bring together families across the Mason Dixon line.

Anna Jarvis was born in 1850 and was an impressionable child and teenager when her mother was at the peak of her courageous work. So in 1907, two years after her mother's death she organized the first "mothers' day" in Grafton, WV that the work of peacemaking and the war against poverty which her mother waged would not be forgotten.

Another one of the earliest promoters of the idea of Mother's Day was Julia Ward Howe.

She is most famous as the author of the Battle Hymn of the Republic. Julia Ward Howe was a militant abolitionist, and her "Battle Hymn" poem was inspirational to the cause of the Union Army in the Civil War, the troops sang "God's truth is marching on," as they headed into battle, and "As [Christ] died to make men holy, let us die to make men free."

But as the war dragged on and she saw the terrible price of conflict, Julia Ward Howe turned away from the militant attitude expressed so powerfully in her famous hymn. When the Civil War was over, she focused her attention on two other causes: voting rights for women, and world peace. In 1870 war broke out between France and Prussia. The war in Europe did not make sense to her and she wrote, "Why do not the mothers of mankind interfere in these matters to prevent the waste of that human life of which they alone know and bear the cost?"... "Arise ...Christian women of this day. As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil at the summons of war, let women on this day leave the duties of hearth and home to set out in the work of peace." She began organizing what she called "Mothers' Peace Day" festivals which were celebrated annually on June 2nd. Her basic conviction was that though the world may be divided by war and conflict, there is something in the experience of childbirth binding the mothers of the world together into one family.

The struggle to gain voting rights for women, the cause of peace among the nations of the world, the fight against poverty and the abuse of children, these were the central concerns of those who established Mother's Day. From the beginning this was a day not simply to remember one's own mother, but to find in the experience of such active, courageous mothers as Anna Reeves Jarvis and Julia Ward Howe, lessons that apply to all.

These women were not celebrating the mere fact of bearing children, but what they had learned for the pain and suffering of childbirth about the essential meaning of life for us all. And this is where I begin to see the deep connection between the themes of Mother's Day and the sacred themes of Easter.

While he was with his disciples following the resurrection, Jesus also called his family to a higher cause. In the pain of death and in the suffering of the cross, he exhibited a love that knows no bounds. God's love extends across the boundaries that separate families, tribes and nations from each other. In speaking of God's love he called God, Father. In this image he found a powerful new way of speaking of God's compassionate love for all.

Today there are those who want to express the same truth by speaking of God as Mother. These biblical scholars and theologians have noticed that the Bible contains a host of images and metaphors that illuminate God's maternal care for all creation. In a powerful and provocative book, "She Who Is," Elizabeth Johnson who teaches at Fordham University, weaves these ancient biblical texts together. She points out that within the Bible, the wisdom of God was often personified as one in whom there dwells a compassion that is clearly maternal. And so Johnson traces these biblical passages in which God as Wisdom "cries out in terrible labor to deliver the new creation of justice (Is 42:14). As Wisdom God suckles the newly born, teaches toddlers to walk, bends down to feed them, and carries them about, bearing them from birth even to old age with its gray hairs (Is 46:3-4). As a mother comforts her child, so too God comforts those who lament (Is 66:13). But unlike some human mothers, God ... will never forget the children of her womb (Hos 11:3-4; Is 49:15).

Hosea the prophet depicts God as furious as a mother bear deprived of her cubs. Angered by those who threaten her children God says, "I will fall upon them like a bear robbed of her cubs; I will tear open their breast" (Hos 13:8). This is not sweet mother of the Hallmark greeting cards, but one moved to awful deeds to protect what is hers." Writes Johnson, "The religious experience of divine mercy is made luminous in maternal metaphors. By the power of her mighty Spirit God gives birth anew to those who receive the word, those who become her children, born not out of blood nor of the will of the flesh, but born of God (Jn 1:13). The compassion of God the Mother insures that she loves the weak and dispossessed as well as the strong and beautiful. We do not have to be wonderful according to external norms to elicit her love, for this is freely given by virtue of the maternal relationship itself. God looks upon all with a mother's love that makes the beloved beautiful. ..."

I would submit that this understanding of God's nature is exactly the antidote we need in the face of the ills of our culture and our civilization. The real issue is not the gender of God, but how the love of God transcends differences of gender, and everything else that divides us and brings us into conflict. The one thing that can free us from the anxieties, the pressures of life in this all too hectic world is the knowledge that we are loved by God. But how does that love which is surely greater than we have know in any mother or father truly free us?

We live in a world which makes us feel inadequate and incomplete. Despite the almost total fascination with self fulfillment and personal success, we are left with the feeling of dissatisfaction and failure, simply because we can never live up to the ideal of perfection projected throughout the culture. Despite all our frantic efforts we will never be thin enough, or rich enough, or young enough, or smart enough, or loving enough. So that while we pay tribute to the gospel of self-esteem, people experience a lack of esteem, a feeling of inadequacy. The one thing that can address this situation and brake this stalemate of the spirit is the sense that we are loved, not despite our shortcomings, or because of our achievements, but simply because, we are of immeasurable value to God. This undermines the chief enemy of faith and confidence: the assumption that our value as persons is to be measured by social norms and established by the judgments of others.

In the end, there is nothing more radical than to teach people that they are loved by God, and that this is a matter of sheer unmerited grace; for this is a source of a deep self-confidence that will never fail.

In conclusion, I believe it is appropriate to celebrate Mother's Day in the church of God. For in its origin, inspiration and intent, this day touches upon the deepest truths of our religious tradition. As we are reminded on this day, the most powerful gift that any mother can give is this sense that we are loved unconditionally. This is what each of us needs. Yet it's what only a few of us have experienced fully even in the most loving mothers. But what we have seen in part in a mother's love, we see fully in the love of God. And its that love which supports and inspires us as we struggle to make God's love and God's justice real not only for ourselves and for our families, but for all the peoples of the world.

God/Goddess, God the Father, God the Mother, this Mother’s Day let us meditate on the feminine side of God.  It is interesting to me that Mother’s Day follows so close on the footsteps of the Passover/Easter season.  It is such a natural order in which to think of God’s plan for man.  The Bible tells us God created woman in His image just as it tells us He created man in his image.  We must understand the characteristics of both men and women to truly understand the nature of God.  We need remember God has both a feminine and masculine side.

The Plain Truth Magazine published this tribute to mothers I thought you would enjoy:

Somebody said it takes about six weeks to get back to normal after you’ve had a baby.
Somebody doesn’t know that once you’re a mother, “normal” is history.

Somebody said you learn how to be a mother by instinct.
Somebody never took a three-year-old shopping.

Somebody said that if you’re a good mother, your child will turn out to be well behaved.
Somebody thinks a child comes with directions and a guarantee.

Somebody said you don’t need an education to be a mother.
Somebody never helped a fourth-grader with math.

Somebody said you can’t love the fifth child as much as you love the first.
Somebody doesn’t have five children.

Somebody said a mother can find all the answers to her child rearing questions in books.
Somebody never had a child stuff beans up his nose or ears.

Somebody said the hardest part of being a mother is labor and delivery.
Somebody never watched her “baby” get on the bus for the first day of kindergarten – or on a plane headed for military camp.

Somebody said a mother can do her job with her eyes closed and one hand tied behind her back.
Somebody never organized four giggling Brownies to sell cookies.

Somebody said a mother can stop worrying after her child gets married.
Somebody doesn’t know that marriage adds a new son or daughter-in-law to a mother’s heartstrings.

Somebody said a mother’s job is done when her last child leaves home.
Somebody never had grandchildren.