Love’s Demands

sermon by Alan Taylor

delivered May 14, 2000

Woodinville Unitarian Universalist Church

Some of you met my dear friend Viru at the ordination. We went to college together, and we lived together in San Francisco for several months. Viru recently returned to India for the wedding of his sister, Rupali. Weddings in the Hindu tradition are very big deals. They often last for three days, for in their culture, it is not just two individuals that are bonding together, but it is two families. So there are several rituals that promote this intertwining of two formerly distinct families. One of them is a puja, a prayer, made to Jyotipuja, as a blessing of all the women who are of childbearing age or older. There is also a blessing of all the mothers. Viru’s mother who years ago performed a puja for me and her husband, on this day went to all the women reciting a short prayer with the flame of the puja drawn in front of each of them. These prayers, Viru tells me, honor the Goddess within each woman. There is a tacit understanding that feminine power is strong, and bringing together all the women of the two families is a recognition of the mutual power that is greater than either family alone.

Here in the United States, a tradition of honoring mothers has developed. Today one may not think of Mother’s Day as a time to honor the collective power of women. However, this holiday is much more complicated than it may look. It has its roots in mid-19^th century women’s activism. Women such as Anna Reeves Jarvis is 1858 and Julia Ward Howe in 1872 championed a number of social causes and called all mothers to join them. They held celebrations in mid-spring as a way to gather women around issues such as universal sanitation, making first aid available to all, and the goal of world peace.

Mother’s Day became a national holiday in 1914 when President Woodrow Wilson proclaimed the second Sunday in May as Mother’s Day in honor of their contributions to society. Back then, Congress was made of all men, and the division of gender roles, though fought by some women, were taken for granted. In the resolution authorizing the national holiday, Congress wrote in 1914 that “The American mother is doing so much for the home, for moral uplift, and religion, hence so much for good government and humanity.” There is a considerable difference between the intent of the women reformers and those men who affirmed only the behind the scenes work of women.

Not unlike the American women of the nineteenth century, we have plenty of examples of women gathering to effect change. One of the most haunting images of my childhood is watching the news and seeing groups of women in Argentina surrounding the government buildings. In 1976, the government had been overthrown by military leaders. The free press was abolished. University faculty and journalists began simply disappearing. Thousands upon thousands of people were thrown into prison without any trial, tortured, and, many of them, executed. The disappeared ones, or in Spanish, los desaparecidos, as they were called numbered many of the artists, intellectuals, movers, and shakers of Argentina. Over time more and more mothers of women and men who disappeared gathered to protest the military regime. Armed with signs and tenacity to weather all sorts of elements, these women were noticed by the rest of the world. Their unflagging determination to demand a more just society captured the imaginations of many westerners. Lawrence Thornton wrote a book inspired by just this image of women gathering together. It is called Imagining Argentina. Margaret Mead says, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world. Indeed it’s the only thing that ever has.”

On this Mother’s Day, I want to honor the power of women, and especially the power of all women who take to heart the demands of love. Deb’s song offered a poignant reminder that it is not easy to be a mother. It is important to remember that women who are raising children are not superheroes. The demands of motherhood can be enormous, and they often have a unique viewpoint. There are few disciplines that are so exacting and yet so common and ordinary. I imagine it is tempting to forget the words of Kahlil Gibran: Your children are not your children; They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself. Relatively early in life, we are obliged to learn the knowledge of who we are apart from our parents. We must learn what we value, what we like, and pursue our own goals. It is a much more difficult learning to know who we are apart from our children.

On August 10^th of this past year, Donna Dees-Thomases watched the newscast of a day camp shooting in the Los Angeles area. Watching children being led in a line from the carnage, this woman reports, was too much too bear. The children looked bewildered, confused, and scared to death. These kids were about the same age as her own. One week later, she applied for a permit to march in Washington DC. She wants to protect her children and others by promoting stricter gun controls, especially the licensing and registration of guns. To make a statement, she chose this day, Mother’s Day, to march.

This morning, tens of thousands of people descended on Washington DC and in 65 other cities. Yesterday, Seattle was among other cities that held a rally. The literature of this march says, “It shouldn’t take a Columbine, a Jonesboro or an inner-city drive-by shooting to make us realize that Amercian children are more at risk from firearms than the children of any other industrialized nation. In one year, firearms killed no children in Japan, 19 in Great Britain, 57 in Germany, 109 in Frances, 153 in Canada, and 5, 285 in the United States.” The rate of children killed in this country is five times that of the 25 developed countries combined.

In the United States, young children die or are badly injured because their parents or other gunowners don’t store their firearms properly, and children find loaded guns and use them unintentionally on themselves or other children. Older children are more at risk from horseplay with available guns, while teenagers use guns for impulse suicides and crime. All are vulnerable to getting caught in the crossfire from guns used in domestic violence and in crime.

The gun control debate has illuminated how powerful some special interest groups can be. Children die of freak accidents, sometimes by poorly made toys or swimming pools or any one of dozens of common household items. In 1972, when the Consumer Product Safety Commission was created, the gun lobby’s political power ensured that the one product that children live with that is specifically designed to cause death and injury remained exempt. Many handguns have so little trigger resistance that they can be fired by a three-year old, while many guns also can fire when dropped on the floor. It is ironic that our government recalls or bans hundreds of products when even a few children are killed or injured by a flawed design.

Being compared to the cigarette companies, the NRA is getting accused of being ruled by corporate greed when they do not acknowledge the studies that show that guns are harmful to public health. One of the leading auto manufacturers, an industry that is beholden to lots and lots of regulations, surprisingly issued a report this past week that one of their vehicles is harmful to both people and the environment. Ford Motor Company, in a move to demonstrate they are socially responsible has released to the public their own study that concludes that SUVs are more dangerous than other cars and harmful to the environment. Ford is operating on the philosophy that what will serve their company is providing products that the public wants while also seeking to contributing to the public health.

Gun control laws are sticky because there are plenty of gun owners among us and plenty of people among us who don’t own guns. It is important not to frame the debate between whether people should be able to own guns. The debate needs to center on gun safety. Gun owners and non-gun owners alike can find plenty of common ground here. It is disturbing that while one manufacturing company will now put trigger locks on all their guns, seven others have filed a lawsuit saying that requiring such safety devices is an illegal conspiracy to restrain trade. Yet, car ignition keys and safety belts are now accepted standards in the automobile industry.

A University of Washington study was conducted by doctors in the Family Medical Center. Urging for dialogue between gun owners and non-gun owners, they call fun safety measures. They recommend that all gun purchases should have background checks and waiting periods, that all gun owners should have safety training as hunters are required to have, that guns should be stored in a safe, locked place where children and others who do no own them cannot get to them, that gun manufacturers should be required to sell guns with safety devices, and that physicians need to be trained to ask about gun ownership and to counsel on gun safety without judging their patients as close-minded gun owners.

Clinton said today that the Million Mom March will generate more influence upon lawmakers than the NRA. I am not so sure. It is one thing to support a march, it is another to sustain the support for an issue that is so heated in today’s culture. Many of our political leaders resist gun control. A huge number of people own guns. Gun owners and non-gun owners are our neighbors and friends. We all, therefore, have a responsibility to be concerned about gun safety. I don’t believe guns are in and of themselves bad. If someone purchases a gun, they should know that statistically that gun is 22 times more likely to kill someone they know than a stranger. If anyone can change the political landscape on gun control, it will be women, and very likely those mothers who are like lion protecting her children.

Eighty-six years ago, Congress created Mother’s Day to acknowledge, “the service rendered the United States by the American mother.” As long as I have lived, I have known this day to be more intimate with virtually no civic display of feeling. It is a time to send my mom a card, and if she is lucky, a gift or flowers. Given the potential power within mothers for the common good, I am wondering how we can uphold the women in our lives and affirm, and thereby encourage, their embracing the Goddess within and make Mother’s day that honors the relationships between women.

The New York Times in its lead editorial this morning has this to say: “Perhaps the best fate for this holiday would be to make it, again, a day of open activism, as it is for the women marching on behalf of gun control in many cities across the country today. Not everyone believes, as Julia Ward Howe did, that if mothers could only come together somehow, world peace would ensue. But the second Sunday of every May could come to symbolize a powerful reality of contemporary American politics. Women united behind a cause can be a powerful force for progressive social policies, better child care, broader health coverage, and fully equal opportunity for them and their children.”

May it be so. Blessed be. Amen.