Mothering Sunday

Mothering Sunday

Mother’s Day in the United States is said to have started after the Civil War in the 1860’s as a peace movement by women in the South and in the North who were tired of sons dying in battle. It was eventually set as the second Sunday in May.

Mothering Sunday in the United Kingdom is much older and part of the church calendar; it always falls on the middle Sunday in Lent, which means paying attention to the weekends in March.

In both countries this event has been taken over by the greeting-card and floral industries. I recall giving my mother gifts on Mother’s Day—usually something I had made in school, like perfumed soap decorated with ribbons and pearl stick pins, or flowers made out of colored tissues and pipe cleaners. When I was in the 5th grade, a five-and-dime store opened near our house in Starkville, Mississippi—which was a big deal because the main street shops were too far to walk to alone—and I went to get something nice for my mother that was within the budget of my weekly quarter allowance. Only I managed to break the item I was considering buying—I forget what it was—and an employee escorted me out of the store. I ran home in tears and poured out my guilt to my mother, who proceeded to walk me back to the store to apologize and pay (surely with her help) for the damage.

Seminary taught me that Mother’s Day is not a loving occasion for everyone. Some people mourn not knowing a mother, while other folks deal with being neglected or abused by their mother. As a minister I pray on Mother’s Day and on Father’s Day for everyone who serves as a caring parent or a faithful guardian or a trusted mentor.

Then there are those of us who wanted to be mothers but it didn’t happen. For me, Mother’s Day was for many years a day to ignore for being ignored. Like barren women in the Bible I felt forgotten by God. Left out. Abandoned. Made to bear emptiness and bitterness and pain. Pain that punched me in the stomach every time I saw a school bus or was invited to a baby shower or heard children playing or read in the news about another abused child or watched other people’s kids pass milestones.

And wouldn’t you know it, the one stage of my life when I tried to get pregnant and, failing that, went through fertility treatment, I was serving the one congregation in my ministerial career that was brimming with young families. Every month somebody would announce during worship they were expecting, and I would endure, privately, my period again.

We considered adoption, first in Minnesota and soon after moving here to Scotland ten years ago, but learned that as non-U.K. citizens we were ineligible.

Then in March 2004 we were spending the night at a guest house along Loch Lomond, taking a break from house-painting and pastoring. Once again my anxiety and despair about being childless woke me up. Only this time I got up, got dressed, and went outside to have it out with God. I stood beside the lapping water and looked up at the clear dark sky filled with stars and said, “God, you gave me these maternal urges. You either satisfy them, or I’m giving them back to you. For good.”

Wouldn’t you know it, it was Mothering Sunday.

Since then I’ve made peace with myself. And with God. I still get angry when someone over here asks me, “Do you have family?” As though I could be an alien from a lonely planet. What they mean is, do I have children? But rather than answer in the negative, I answer in the positive: I have a partner and three wonderful stepchildren and their partners and three grandsons, and my mom who lives near my brother and my sister-in-law and my two nephews. Thank you very much.

Rape Dreams

Rape Dreams

I once heard a sexologist—now there’s an occupation to write down on your immigration form—explain why people dream about being raped. I was 34 years old and listening to the radio as I drove to a sex therapy appointment, which for any of you prurient readers was very similar to other enlightening counseling sessions I have benefited from only it focused on my non-existent sex life.

This sex expert was being interviewed on public radio, and she said that rape dreams are the psyche’s way of making us jump through hoops in order to experience pleasure. We can’t just enjoy the moment, or the climax; we have to pass through shame and guilt and whatever other uncomfortable emotions our subconscious throws up at us.

Interesting, I recall thinking at the time, especially given that I had never had a rape dream, or at least not one that I remembered. Which might have indicated how repressed I was.

Coming to terms with things, like sexuality and such, in my mid-30’s had its benefits. I was tired enough of wading through my genetically-inherited anxiety, which doesn’t just run in my family—it races. I simply vowed to myself then and there not to feel guilty about God’s gift of sexuality. Never have since, and never will.

Augustine, the one who fulfilled the adage, “Every saint has a past and every sinner has a future,” would’ve made a prime candidate for sex therapy. As it happens he never worked through his shame or guilt. After abandoning his partner of many years and the child they had together, he plagued Christendom with a recurring nightmare: the Doctrine of Original Sin, which he attributed to females—the sin, that is, not the doctrine. The doctrine is 100% man-made.

Providentially, these days there’s a helpful 12-step organization for people such as Augustine who find themselves addicted to sex or obsessed with sexual issues. Like Alcoholics Anonymous or Narcotics Anonymous, its full name is Sex-addicts Anonymous. But there’s still so much stigma attached to sexuality that many SA groups publicize their meetings as a gathering of “the Saint Augustine society.”

If we need hoops to jump through, let it be these:

Serenity to accept the fact of life that our sexuality is a gift from God.

Courage to change any unhealthy attitudes about our God-given, uniquely-made, widely-varied human bodies, sexual orientations, recreational practices, and means of biological reproduction.

Wisdom to seek professional help when we’re tired of the same old bad dreams.