Dear Friends,
We hope that you are safe and well.
Today's Meditation presents a powerful reflection on Models of Motherhood. You might particularly enjoy the picture of his own mother banging her walker as she stormed out of church protesting what the priest just said.
We invite you to join us as we commit ourselves to working tirelessly to end systemic and structural racism in our society, in the church, in healthcare, in the workplace--wherever it shows up so that everyone may come to have more abundant life. May this meditation nourish our contemplative-active hearts and sustain all of us in action.
In the spirit of our philosophy of co-creating community and our awareness that the Spirit speaks through each of us, we invite you to share your meditations with us as well. We truly believe that it is God's economy of abundance: when we share our blessings, our thoughts, our feelings, we are all made richer.
We hope and pray that you find peace, healing, hope and the infusion of joy in your life!
With our love and care,
Ron and Jean
MEDITATION: Matthew Fox shares Models of Motherhood
Mother's Day, 2022: Four Models of Motherhood
May 8, 2022
A Blessed Mother’s Day to all Mothers, Grandmothers, Mothers to be! And all artists and birthers and co-creators who are also mothers in their fashion. (I think that covers all of us.)
I would like to salute four women who offer us needed insight about motherhood at this fraught time in human and planetary history.
First, is Julian of Norwich who lived through the bubonic plague of the 14th century and very likely lost her husband and child due to that pandemic that killed between one of two and one of three persons. Yesterday’s news informed us that our current plague has currently killed 15 million humans around the world, over one million in the US. It has also disrupted our lives profoundly from schooling to hospital care to the economy (spiking inflation and unemployment and much more). Which in turn feeds political unrest.
Julian of Norwich and her vision of the universe the size of a hazelnut, held together by the love of God. Icon by Br. Robert Lentz, OFM and sold through Trinity Stores.
Julian taught us that “God is delighted to be our Mother” and that “Christ is Mother” and that the essence of motherhood is compassion. In this way, we are all called to be God-like and practice compassion in that most “nearest, readiest and surest” way that mothers do. Julian is a leader in deconstructing patriarchy that has taken over western religion and education, law, business and economics over the seven centuries since her time.
“Sister Dot: A Modern Martyr”
Poster by the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur.
Second, is Sister Dorothy Stang (“Sister Dot” for those who knew her), born in Ohio and buried in Brazil. Sister Dot was a champion of Mother Earth, indeed she deserves to be a patron saint for all those defending Mother Earth. She spent 42 years serving her and the peasant peoples of the Amazon region in Brazil. She set up schools, worked to empower the farmers and families, women and men, of the rainforest that was so under attack by giant conglomerates committed to destroying the forest.
Sister Dot was gunned down one day while walking alone down a dirt path by three gunmen who ambushed her and left her 72 year old body lying in the dirt and her own blood. Before they gunned her down she had just enough time to reach into her backpack and pull out her Bible and start reading the Beatitudes to her killers.
At her funeral, a peasant farmer got up and declared, “Sister Dorothy, we are not burying you, we are planting you.” She is one of tens of thousands of martyrs in Latin America in our lifetimes who stood up to defend the poor and those without power including the rainforest itself from human and corporate exploitation in South America. She reminds us that there is a price to pay for loving Mother Earth in times like ours. That generosity matters.
A Fourth Mother to Honor on Mother's Day Season 2022
May 9, 2022
Another mother I wish to speak of this Mother’s Day Season is my own mother who died twenty years ago. The older I get (now 81) and the more I look back on my own life and work and spiritual journey, the more grateful I become for the strength and inventiveness, the curiosity and life-force, that my mother embodied and passed on to myself and my six siblings (three boys and three girls).
So much of it was born of her own intuition and deep thinking as she could only afford to attend one semester of college, but read voraciously and was a continual learner.
She passed on to the rest of us a love for life and for action—“no child of mine will ever be bored” she would respond when, on a rainy day we complained we were bored. She saw to it that our family had lots of magazines ranging from Mechanics Illustrated to Boy’s Life to Saturday Evening Post to Time, etc. She encouraged us to go to museums or art shows, to go canoeing, swimming, hiking, skating or whatever sports were appropriate to the season of the year. She herself bicycled and played tennis and walked us miles (we had no car for many years) some in the wagon, to swim or attend July 4th fireworks and many other events.
Family portrait of Beatrice Fox and her children. Used with special permission from Matthew Fox.
She developed her own conscience and expected us kids to do the same. Once, when she and I were doing dishes together in my teen years she turned to me and said, “Tim, when you’re grown up, make sure you are a person with opinions.”
The eagle is a sacred relative who teaches insight, integrity, and strength. Photo by Birger Strahl on Unsplash.
Shortly after my father died, when they were both in their late 70’s, I visited her to inform her that she would be learning soon in the press that the Vatican was going to silence me for a year for “being a feminist theologian and calling God ‘Mother’ and preferring Original Blessing to Original Sin,” etc.
I began my conversation by asking her what it was like being the mother of a somewhat controversial priest and she replied, “Oh, I walk out of church all the time if the priest says something in his sermon that is really stupid.Your father and I had an agreement that he would continue in Mass and I would wait outside and there would be no arguments when we drove home.”
This was the first time I had ever heard that story and I asked, “when was the last time you did this?” “Oh, just a couple months before your father died,” she said. “But wasn’t that when you had your hip operation and you were using a walker”? “Oh, yes it was. And I banged that walker as loudly as I could as I left, such nonsense that priest was preaching!”
I am grateful for a mom like that on this Mother’s Day who walked her walk of conscience even when she needed a walker to do it. And made extra and deliberate noise in doing so. Wouldn’t you be?