It's hard to imagine, but Mother's Day originated as a cry
for peace in the wake of war. In 1872 Julia Ward Howe--mother, abolitionist, poet, and
suffragist--envisioned that for one day each year
the women of the world would call for peace. She
named it Mother's Peace Day. With the blood
of the Civil War fresh in her mind, Julia proclaimed,
"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 taught them of charity, mercy, and patience.
We women of one country will be too tender to
those of another to allow our sons to be trained
to injure theirs."
Julia Ward Howe understood that war is ultimately
a spiritual failure. In our time, we
still have not cultivated a national spirit
that urges us to reason with other nations,
to seek reconciliation in the face of conflict,
to beat our swords into plowshares. Poet Alice
Walker speaks of war this way: "It is always
us, and only us, that we wound whenever we harm
another. There is no way to be separate from
the rest of creation; we indulge the fantasy
of being separate to our peril."And, I might add, to the peril of our children and our
one shared earth. War is a spiritual failure.
In my work with Women’s Action for New Directions (WAND),
I educate women and men about the true cost
of war. When considering the outrageous cost,
we talk about numbers--numbers like 4,052 soldiers
dead or 29,628 wounded. Numbers like $522 billion spent. For the cost of this war we could have instead spent
these same tax dollars insuring 153 million
Americans--like Michael Boyd, the 33 year old
son of a member of my congregation who recently
died of cancer because he was uninsured.
The true cost of war is also profoundly ecological. What
is the carbon footprint of an F-A-22 fighter
jet manufactured in the state of Georgia and
flown half way around the world to engage a
so-called enemy? These are just some of the
costs associated with what has been called the
$3 trillion war, costs that will be passed on
to our children and grandchildren in the form
of enormous tax burdens, reduced public services,
and a planet that is hotter than ever before.
No wonder mothers imagine a world without war.
Mothers want peace for their nation, because we want peace
for our children. Mothers want a future in which
problems are solved not with bigger guns or
smarter bombs, but through dialogue which values
the common decency of all human beings. Mothers
want to end war. Even more, we want to prevent
it. Mothers want peace because we know that
the incredible miracle of a child is one that
we share in common with women all around the
world.
And yet, mothers aren’t simply born with a greater sense
of family values. Rather, becoming a mother
compels women to value families. The unique
experiences of motherhood give women new eyes
with which to view the world. Our children 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 and the sweet
goodness harbored within the human spirit. We
look at our children, and we long for peace.
I believe mothers all around the world do this.
Every
morning, my child baptizes my day with a giggle,
rekindling my faith that peace is possible.
These days, some say it's naïve to believe in
peace. Yet in the era of preemptive war and
nuclear weapons, it's simply a mother's common
sense. Without peace, we will perish. That first
Mother's Day, Julia Ward Howe called for "a
general congress of women…to promote the alliance
of the different nationalities, the amicable
settlement of international questions, the great
and general interests of peace." This Mother's
Day, let's honor the mothers in our midst by
adding our voices to her vision.
Rev. Amanda Hendler-Voss is the Faith Communities Coordinator of Women's
Action for New Directions (WAND) and the Minister
of Christian Education at First Congregational
United Church of Christ in Asheville, NC.
