I try to always acknowledge this occasion in some way in the service. Some ideas and examples of ways to celebrate mothers in the context of a worship service follow:
- In 2001, I had the following note up on the overhead as people arrived for the service:
Welcome to worship with Cityside this Mother’s Day.
During the first part of the service, would you write a sentence or phrase or two as a prayer for your mum or for mothers generally.
Use the paper inserted in your newsletter. Pencils are available on the back table.
The prayers will be collected later and read during the service as part of our prayers for others.
As well as reading the prayers during the service, I collected them into a little booklet that could be hung at the back of the worship space, along with other prayers and poems and thoughts that have been generated in Cityside services.
2. Jen Long wrote the following email response:
I always think it’s a good thing when we don’t just concentrate on praying for ‘mothers’ but widen it to think about and give thanks for women who have positively influenced our lives… this can then include single women, friends, aunts, teachers, role models, including mothers. Then give people an opportunity to give thanks for that person, e.g. lighting a prayer candle, writing a prayer and burning it with incense etc.
I also think it’s a nice time of the year to honour Mary and her story. It seems to me that Baptists are so worried about ‘worshipping Mary’ that we tend not to acknowledge her at all. There is some great renaissance art depicting mother and child, and other biblical women role models. Maybe we could incorporate these, and create a whole contemplative service based around stations showing slides of women and role models from all walks of life, including women from our own congregation.
3. Mary, ‘the Godbearer’
Mary, most often thought about in relation to the Christmas story is also depicted as being present at several of the major events in Jesus’ life. She is sometimes thought of as being the first Christian disciple…one who said ‘yes’ to God’s proclamation of the good news, and her own unique role within it. Mary’s song, the ‘magnificat’ (see Gospel of Luke) has been used for centuries within the church, as song and prayer. It tells of God’s mercy and justice, and reversals in the reign of God. As we reflect on Mary, and join with her in saying ‘yes’ to God and as we live out her song of praise, we also become God-bearers for the world.
4. Article by Peter Calder in the New Zealand Herald
[Mother’s Day] was not invented by the makers of greeting cards who now seem to own it. The day was proclaimed in 1870 as the start of an international peace campaign started by a group of women, members of the Unitarian Church in Boston. The group’s most famous member, to whom history ascribes the peace effort was one Julia Ward Howe, multiply bereaved by the Civil War which had ended five years earlier. The Rev Melanie Morel Sullivan, interim minister of the Unitarians in Auckland, says Howe ‘felt that if women around the world, mothers specifically, united in refusing to send their sons and husbands, men would not be able to wage war.’… ‘It is her 1870 Proclamation for Mother’s Day for which she should be remembered tomorrow. A sample of its stirring text:
‘Arise, all women who have hearts, whether our baptism be that of water or of tears. Say firmly… 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 been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We women of one country will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs.’
5. In India, mothers are celebrated at a foot-washing ceremony. Hindu children wash their mothers’ feet, after a worship chant and the recital of an ancient poem about the greatness of motherhood, and then rub a mixture of powders onto her feet and forehead, before circling her three times and prostrating in front of her.
6. Mother’s Day 11 May, 2003
We used the sermon slot to focus on Mother’s Day. The curator talked briefly about the validity or otherwise of celebrating Mother’s Day in the church, and then introduced four women who talked to the congregation about their experience of motherhood, and the ways in which being a mother had influenced or shaped their faith journey and impressions of God. This was a very moving part of the service, as mothers shared their stories and insights. After this, the curator acknowledged the men in the congregation and that not all women are mothers – not all who want to be can be, and not all who can be choose to be. She then went on to talk about the role of all of us in mothering the will of God in the world as we nurture our dreams and hopes and work to bring God’s justice and God’s kingdom to birth and maturity in the world. She directed us to the Magnificat – the song of Mary, who was not only the physical mother of Jesus Christ, but as her song in Luke 1 shows, recognised the broader implications of saying ‘yes’ to God. A woman from the congregation read the Magnificat to us (Luke 1:45-55). The curator then played some tracks from John Rutter’s choral work Magnificat and passed around paper and pencils for people to write prayers based on anything that arose out of the service. Many of these were collected and read out loud in our ‘prayers for others’ slot.
(Brenda Stone)
Brenda sent the participating mothers this letter:
‘Big thankyou for being willing to share some of your story and thoughts on Mothers Day (May 11). Just to repeat myself …the idea is that in the ‘sermon’ slot, I’ll introduce the general theme, and then invite you to come up one after the other to talk about ‘how being a mother has influenced my faith’ (roughly). I envisage you each talking for two to three minutes each (I’m not feeling stressed about that though – go longer or shorter as you need.) I might then open the floor up for additional stories, insights, anecdotes…or not, depending on how things are going. Below are some questions that interest me, feel free to follow them or to go off on your own tangent.
Pregnancy and birth…how did these processes impact your life and understanding about life and God?
Have you related differently to God since having children?
In what ways has being a mother tested, challenged, questioned your faith?
What have your children taught you about God (who God is, what God is like?)
And so on…
Robyn, if you feel like adding some extra insights about being a grandmother that would be cool too.
Please feel free to be as anecdotal/concrete or theological/abstract as you like!
You’re all gorgeous.
Brenda’
7. See also section 5 Curators Notes – The Mothering God.
8. Background (another version of the ‘official’ origin)
The first official Mother’s Day was held in the USA in 1907 at the request of Anna Jarvis of Philadelphia to honour her mother, a women’s rights pioneer who had died two years earlier. Jarvis created a day of simple, solemn recognition and asked that single white carnations, her mother’s favourite flower, be worn. White corsages came to signify a deceased mother and coloured carnations to be worn by those with living mothers. In 1914 after years of letter writing and campaigning Jarvis persuaded President Woodrow Wilson to declare the second Sunday in May a national holiday. In early years the day was celebrated quietly with church services and small gatherings at family gravesites, but it wasn’t long before the day was overtaken by commercial interests and the emphasis shifted from dead to living mothers and lavish shows of commercialised sentiment.