"A Mother's Love."

Rev. Dr. Morris Hudgins.
May 14, 2000.

Introduction
Mother's Day— a day that is not on my UU Calendar of important events. Maybe it should be. When I first arranged the schedule of services I forgot that the 2nd Sunday in May is Mother's Day. I scheduled a sermon on Islam. Somewhere along the line I realized that today is Mother's Day and decided today was not a good day to talk about Islam. That will be another day.

I also remembered a couple of services on Mother's Day that were not particularly well received. After 28 years of ministry this happens. One was a sermon in Raleigh by a woman minister who hated Mother's Day. There is nothing wrong with a woman hating Mother's Day. That is her prerogative. The only problem was she decided to ignore the fact that a lot of mothers do not hate Mother's Day.

I returned the next week to find some angry mothers. One said: "That was the worst Mother's Day sermon I have ever heard. The woman was down right cynical. I didn't appreciate her approach."

A second example was a story told my Robert Fulgham in one of his popular books, titled, It Was On Fire When I Lay Down On It. The following is an excerpt from his story about a Mother's Day sermon he gave while still in the UU ministry. Here is what he says:

One memorable Sunday I said that for all those who had wonderful mothers or who were wonderful mothers or who thought motherhood in general was just wonderful, I would like to say "WONDERFUL." But if this isn't you. . .

Then I gave a kid of moot quiz-asked some questions without asking for a show of hands.

1. How many of you find yourself involved in hypocrisy of the most uncomfortable kind around Mother's Day?
2. How many really don't like—or even really hate—your mother, or hate being the mother you are?
3. How many really don't like or even really hate your children?
4. How many don't really know your mother at all?
5. How many of you find Mother's Day painful, especially when it involves thoughts and memories of such matters as adoption, abortion, divorce, suicide, rejection, alcoholism, alienation, abuse, incest, sorrow, loss, and words like stepmother, mother-in-law, and unspeakable obscene references to motherhood?

I thought these were some good questions Fulgham was asking. Evidently his congregation didn't appreciate them. The story continues:

I had other questions to ask, but the church had become very quiet as I read my questions. The congregation sat very still, and it was clear that a lot more truth than they or I wanted to deal with was among us. I stopped. Looked at them and they looked at me. The look was pain. I sat down, not in the pulpit chair but down in a pew where they were. Enough had been asked to last a long time. There wasn't much joy that Sunday in May. The cold spring rain falling outside the windows of the church didn't help much, either. Bringing up the whole truth seemed like such a good idea at the time, but now. . .

A visiting lady, who had "sainted mother" written all over her face, accosted me after church: "Young man, better men than you have gone straight to hell for suggesting less than what you said this morning. Shame, shame, SHAME for spoiling this day."

Fulgham ends this part of the story with these comments:

So. As I say, I'm a little gun-shy talking about Motherhood. Especially to women. As my own mother often explained when things did not go well: I was only trying to help.

Fulgham must have learned. In 1997 he published a book of love stories, most of them stories told to him. One of those stories goes like this:

This is really my mother's love story. I asked her to tell you, but she's too shy. It's too good not to pass on. It explains why my brother and I say we owe our existence to peanuts.

When she graduated from high school my mother had everything going for her but one. She was pretty, smart, and came from a well-to-do family, but she was terminally shy, especially around men. Boys didn't like to take her out because she was so quiet. She went off to the same college her mother went to and to please her mother, she agreed to be rushed by her mother's sorority. At the first rush party, she sat out of sight at one end of a room, in a corner by a table that had snacks on it. She ate a lot of peanuts out of nervousness.

She began to notice a waiter, who seemed to be as shy as she. He never said anything, but he was taking care of her. He kept her glass filled with nonalcoholic punch and he kept her peanut bowl full. From time to time their eyes met and they smiled at each other.

When the dancing started and the party got rowdy, she walked into the kitchen and out the back door to escape. As she was going down the alley, she heard someone calling. "Wait, wait, please wait." It was the waiter, running down the alley after her with a paper bag in his hands. They stood in awkward silence, just smiling. Then he reached into the bag, pulled out the whole can of peanuts and offered them to her and said, "I only wish these were pearls."

He ran back up the alley and into the sorority house. Well, one thing led to another.

Twenty-five years later, on the silver wedding anniversary of my mother and the waiter (my father), he gave her a sterling silver jar marked "peanuts." She thought that was the gift and was really pleased. But there was more. When she lifted the lid, inside was a string of pearls.

No gift ever pleased her more. She wore those pearls as her only jewelry for years. When my father was killed in a traffic accident, she put the silver peanut can in his coffin with him. I've never seen her wear the pearls since. I think I know where they are, but I'm too shy to ask. (Marilyn, Tacoma, Washington, pp. 91-93, True Love).

MEANING OF LOVE
On this Mother's Day let us be reminded of the importance of love in our lives. But first, let's look at the meaning of love. In the Greek language there is not one but three words for love: eros, philia, and agape. Let's look at these words for a moment:

Eros
The most misunderstood word is often taken to mean eroticism. In Greek thought eros is much more than sex. Eros is the live-giving force, the force which binds us all together. It is the drive for humans to transcend the self. According to Plato,

Eros is the drive which impels us not only toward union with another person in sexual or other forms of live, but incites in us the yearning for knowledge and drives us passionately to seek union with the truth.

Through eros, we not only become poets and inventors but also achieve ethical goodness. Love, in the form of eros, is the power which generates, 'a kind of eternity and immortality—which is to say that such creativity is as close as we ever get to becoming immoral."

So in Greek thought eros was the human's desiring, longing, striving upward, search for the divine. It is our search for happiness and immortality. This is different from the Latin form of eros, libido, which means sexual drive. Eros incorporates and transcends sexual love.

Philia
A second word for love in Greek is philia, which means love among equals, also called brotherly love. I would describe philia as love between friends. This is where the name Philadelphia comes from—so the city of brotherly love. I lived in the suburbs and can say it was a misnomer. Philadelphia, in my experience was far from the city of brotherly love. Philadelphia was the city of Frank Rizzo, the mayor and police commissioner. What I witnessed was a city deeply divided over race, like much of our nation.

The concept of philia is still a good one—love of humanity. We love others not for what they can do for us, or for what it drives us to do or become as in eros, but because we are one with other humans and therefore should love them.

Agape
The third type of love in Greek thought is agape. Influenced by Christian thought, the Greeks saw love in this sense, as the love of God. It is spontaneous and unmotivated love. In Christian thought God loves even the sinner, not because he deserves it or because he accepts it, but because it is God's nature to love all people. This is the part of Christian theology that I like. It is this theology that divides Christians today as it done when the Universalists were founded two centuries ago. The Universalists, unlike the Calvinists, said that God loved everyone. The Calvinists said that God chooses to save some and destines others for eternal damnation.

The Christian believes that God reaches out to humans with an unconditional love. It is spontaneous and unmotivated. Agape is God reaching out to all humans. Unlike Eros which is humans reaching to God, agape is God reaching out to humans. Eros is human love. Agape is divine love. Agape, for purposes of this sermon is "A Mother's Love."

The problem with this analysis of love from Greek thought is that it is based on ancient mythology and a flat earth, with the firmament above. Gods lived in the firmament and would send representatives to the earth. These mythical figures, eros and hades among them, had human characteristics. We had a patriarchal, despotic, jealous god who considered humans as his property. People fought for his favor and his protection.

Early Jewish theology promoted this view of God—a God who chose a particular tribe to be his people. Their god would be victorious over other gods. But later the Jews became a monotheistic religion that promoted a view of one God who was just and merciful.

Christianity brought to an ancient world-view an even broader more universalist God—a God who loved all equally. Some Christians would even say that God is not male or female. God is love, God is justice. According to Erich Fromm, "Then God becomes what he potentially is. . .the nameless One." Paul Tillich referred to this God as the ground of all existence. Some, including many Unitarian Universalists, would even go on to say that God is in humanity. Erich Fromm wrote: "God is I, inasmuch as I am human." (The Art of Loving, p. 59)

A Mother's Love
The person who revealed God to me, or what I imagined God to be, was my mother. She was the person who was there when we needed her. She was the person who loved us even when we did not deserve to be love. She loved us unconditionally.

What I have had to remind my mom is that a loving person also needs to accept love and not merely give love. She is now at a point in her life when she needs to receive and not merely give. It is her time to enjoy the fruits of her labor.

No mom is perfect. Love and perfection are not the same. Let's look at what a mother's love is not. A mother's love is not like "The Dance-Away Lover" as described by Daniel Goldstine. The dance-away lover is more proficient at starting a relationship than sustaining a relationship. Usually a he, the dance-away lover tires of a relationship, let's disenchantment set in, takes flight and leaves his partner wondering what went wrong. (p. 11, The Dance-Away Lover). The dance-away lover expects the partner to fulfill the ideal. When the ideal is not reached they are off to someone else. The Dance-Away Lover looks at the person for what they can get from them. Eros as sexual love is the center of their life.

In contrast to the Dance-Away Lover, a mother's love accepts our inadequacies, over-looks our imperfections, and accepts us for who we are, now and forever.

A mother knows that all children need love to survive. Without love we become as animals. She knows what Herbert Otto wrote when he said: "We are all functioning at a small fraction of our capacity to live fully in its total meaning, caring, creating, and adventuring."

A mother's love is nurturing, caring, creating and adventuring with another. Leo Buscaglia wrote that the opposite of love is not hate but apathy. To love another is to be there with them. Buscaglia reminds us of the telling scene in the classic play, Our Town:

. . . One of its most poignant scenes is when little Emily dies, and she goes into the graveyard, and the gods tell her that she can come back to life for one day. She chooses to go back and relive her twelfth birthday. She comes down the stairs in her birthday dress, her curls bouncing, so happy because she is the birthday girl. And Mama is so busy making a cake for her that she doesn't look up to see her. Papa comes in, and he is so busy with his books and his papers and making his money, that he walks right by, doesn't even see her. Her brother is in his own scene, and he's not bothering to look either. Emily finally ends up in the center of the stage alone, in her little birthday dress. She says, "Please, somebody, look at me." She goes to her mother once again, and she says, "Mama, please, just for a minute, look at me." But nobody does, and she turns to the gods, if you remember, and her line is something like, "Take me away. I forgot how difficult it was to be a human being. Nobody looks at anybody anymore." (p. 44)

On this Mother's Day may we be reminded once again of what a Mother's Love is, that God is love, and what we are to do. Let us not be cynical about love. May we know what mothers know down deep. We all need love. We can all give and receive love—unconditionally. Love is not perfection. May we accept our humanness. Please take some time today to nurture, care for and adventure with another. And yes, say "Thanks" to your mom.