Mothers Day

Me and Mom

I have heard from many sources that the "Original" intent of Mothers Day was a call for Peace. It is wonderful to have a day of breakfast in bed, reasonably well behaved children and maybe a gift or two. There is something to be said for a day where people reflect upon their mothers as real people with needs, feelings and individuality. Mothering can be difficult and demanding, there are those moments when only true unconditional love sustains us. It is because we have that kind of eternal, unbreakable bond with our children that the greatest Mothers Day gift ever would be to live in a world where no parent would ever need worry that one of their children would be lost to the senseless and brutal act of war.
Happy Mothers Day and Peace to all
Jenny




Mother's Day Proclamation 1870

The first North American Mother’s Day was conceptualized with Julia Ward Howe’s Mother’s Day Proclamation in 1870. Despite having penned The Battle Hymn of the Republic 12 years earlier, Howe had become so distraught by the death and carnage of the Civil War that she called on Mother’s to come together and protest what she saw as the futility of their Sons killing the Sons of other Mothers. With the following, she called for an international Mother's Day celebrating peace and motherhood:

Arise, then, women of this day!

Arise all women who have hearts,

Whether your baptism be that of water or of tears

Say firmly:

"We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies,

Our husbands shall not come to us reeking of 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."

  

From the bosom of the devastated earth a voice goes up with 

Our own. It says, "Disarm, Disarm!"

The sword of murder is not the balance of justice!

Blood does not wipe out dishonor

Nor violence indicate possession.

As men have of ten forsaken the plow and the anvil at the summons of war.

Let women now leave all that may be left of home

For a great and earnest day of counsel.

Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.

Let them then solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means

Whereby the great human family can live in peace,

Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,

But of God.

In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask

That a general congress of women without limit of nationality

May be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient

And at the earliest period consistent with its objects

To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,

The amicable settlement of international questions.

The great and general interests of peace.

© 2010-2011 Nanakoosa’s Place, authored by Jennifer Hazard