On January 25th, at 4:10am, Myles emerged into the world, weighing in at 8 lbs 3 oz. He was bigger than I expected and more beautiful than I could have imagined. They say that the birth of a first child is also the birth of a mother. And so Myles and I share this birth date and the indescribable experience of one being becoming disentangled from another…the birth of a child and the birth of a mother.

In the days following this miraculous birth, I discovered that there’s a viciousness to mother love. I spent hours gazing at my baby’s tiny body, and I knew that this little being had a hold on me in a way that no one else did. What I wouldn’t do—what most any mother wouldn’t do—to ensure my child’s safety and well being in the world.

What can be said about these sweet beings who enter our lives, toppling all that we thought we knew about ourselves and the world? I believe the bodies of babies hold the blessings of mothers, the prayers of grandmothers, the breath of our ancestors. And so they call forth the best in us. They remind us that we are beautifully and wonderfully made. They remind us of our hopes for the world. They remind us of the sweet goodness harbored within the human spirit. We look at our babies, and we long for peace. I believe mothers all around the world do this.

Yet so often our hopes are hijacked by our fears. Deep within the mother-soul is the dreaded fear of losing a child. And sometimes we allow this fear, rather than our hope, to dictate our living. Fear veils the most basic truth about ourselves: that we exist in relationship with all of creation (not just those who look like us, not just those who reside within our borders). God created the earth and all that is in it and God said, “It’s good!”

Alice Walker says it another way: “It is always us and only us that we wound when we harm another. There is no way to be separate from the rest of creation. We indulge the fantasy of being separate to our own peril.”

And more specifically, to the peril of our children.

Perhaps one of the most pressing questions we can consider this Mother’s Day is whether mothers will identify with mothers across battle lines and borders. Or will we instead choose fear of the “other?” Will we embrace our commonality as women, as mothers, as those who long for peace? Or will we prosper the systems of violence and inequality into which our children are born by competing for a seat at the table of power?

Consider the stories of Hagar and Sarah from the Hebrew Scriptures. Sarah, you may recall, is childless. God promises her husband Abraham descendents as numerous as the grains of sand on the beach, and yet Sarah remains barren. As her age hints that she will never birth a child, she instead hatches a plan. You see, in a culture that denied women inheritance rights, Sarah’s security was dependent upon the men in her life—her father, her husband, and (in old age) a son.

Sarah’s plan is this: she will give her slave, Hagar, to Abraham as a concubine, for the purpose of bearing a child on behalf of Sarah.
Hagar, forced into sexual relations with Abraham, soon births a son, Ishmael. Theologian Delores Williams notes, “For Hagar, motherhood will be a coerced experience involving the violation of her body over which she, as a slave, has no control.”

Sarah’s plan stumbles when she becomes unexpectedly pregnant in her old age. Now, rather than claiming her adopted son Ishmael as her own, Sarah worries that Ishmael will stand in the way of her son’s inheritance. Her concern for security provokes her to declare: “that slave woman’s son will never share the inheritance with my son.”

Hagar, cast out with her child and a skin of water into the wilderness, faces the fear that all mothers dread—the death of her son. As she wails the mournful cries of a mother, God comes to her. God comforts her. God promises her good things. God leads her to still waters, and Ishmael is restored as water passes his parched lips. He too, like his half brother, will become a great man and the father of a nation; a nation which eventually, they say, gives birth to Islam.

Like many of us, Sarah feels threatened as a woman in a patriarchal world. Her response to a world which denies her power, however, is not to transform the broken system. Perhaps she feels it is unchangeable. Instead, she uses the privilege of her nationality and social standing to control and isolate Hagar. Sarah’s chosen course of action does indeed secure her power, but it does nothing to change the fact that her granddaughter will face relative powerlessness in a patriarchal world. Sarah’s course of action does nothing to mend the split among women of differing classes and cultures.

Sarah, of course, is not alone in her decision. Sometimes, we too are shortsighted. Sometimes we too exchange the struggle for true peace with a temporary security upheld by brute force. We want to feel safe. We want our children to inherit all that we imagine they are entitled to in this life.

Sarah and Hagar remain unreconciled. And I believe that until mothers gather together across the boundaries that divide us to dismantle the systems that deny our families real security, Sarah and Hagar will remain unreconciled.

The truth about Mother’s Day is that it’s not about flowers and chocolate and Hallmark cards. Mother’s Day was founded upon the premise that women can link arms and call for the ultimate reconciliation—an end to war. Julia Ward Howe inaugurated the first Mother’s Peace Day with this moving proclamation:

“Arise then...women of this day! Arise, all women who have hearts! Whether your baptism be of water or of tears! Say firmly: 'We will not have questions answered 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 of those of another country To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.' From the voice of a 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 indicate 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 counsel. Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead. Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means Whereby the great human family can live in peace... Each bearing after his own time 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 someplace deemed most convenient And 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.”

Perhaps when we are able to accomplish this—when the women of many nations and classes and colors converge to call for peace—perhaps then Sarah and Hagar can be reconciled. That’s the greatest hope that I can impart to my newborn child this Mother’s Day.

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