Today is Mother’s Day, the Mother of all high holy days, a day of greeting cards and potholders, cheap cologne and FTD flower arrangements. It is a day marked by sentimentality in the media and celebration in the boardrooms of the nation’s restaurant chains.

Rarely do we hear about the origins of Mother’s Day. It started in 1870, part of an early feminist effort to involve more women in public life to work for reconciliation after the carnage of the American Civil War and the Franco-Prussian war in Europe. A Mother’s Day Proclamation, inspired by the work of Anna Jarvis, called for “a general congress of women without limit of nationality…to promote the alliance of the different nationalities, the amicable settlement of international questions, and the great and general interests of peace.”

That’s right; our little Hallmark Holiday got its start as a Christian pacifist movement, first celebrated in 1908, at Andrews Methodist Church in Grafton, West Virginia, where Ann Jarvis taught Sunday School. In four years, the custom spread to 43 states and in 1914, President Woodrow Wilson declared the first national Mother's Day, as a day to honour mothers whose sons had died in war. Unfortunately, in only nine years, the original intent was swept away by a tide of commerialism so strong that Anna Jarvis’ daughter, foremost advocate for the holiday, withdrew her support.

Mother’s Day – arising out of motherly passion, is now sustained by a corporately manufactured sense of filial obligation. An ad for cameras in this month’s Rolling Stone blares “She didn’t like your music, your clothes or your friends. Make sure she likes your Mother’s Day present.” Ah…the perfect ad campaign: appealing to both guilt and fear, with a generous helping of resentment for good measure. It’s the classic formula for sitcom mothers like Marie Barone - maddening, yet strangely endearing.

There is, literally, nothing quite like the bond of mother and child. In no other human relationship, does one party start out being formed and nourished and protected inside the body of the other. No wonder people are fascinated – even fixated – on mother stuff. It shouldn’t surprise us that a Google search for “Mother Quotes” produces 6,850,000 results. Here’s an apparent favorite, considering the number of times it pops up. “A mother is the one who, seeing five people and only four pieces of pie, announces that she never did care for pie.” This is a comforting, reassuring image of the perfect mom.

Part of what we celebrate (one reason why Mother’s Day is so huge) is this ideal of motherhood. Some of you may remember the sentimental old song: "M" is for the mercy she possesses, "O" means that I owe her all I own, "T" is for her tender sweet caresses, "H" is for her hands that made a home: "E" means everything she's done to help me, "R" means real and regular, you see, Put them all together, they spell "MOTHER," a word that means the world to me.

Less sentimentally, perhaps, but no less emphatically, Abraham Lincoln wrote: "All that I am or hope to be I owe to my mother." This reflects the traditional assumption that it is the mother’s job to properly socialize and spiritually instruct a child, and it informs these words found in the original Mother’s Day Proclamation, which included these defiant yet pleading words: “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, the women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs." As the old Spanish proverb observes, “An ounce of mother is worth a ton of priest.”

Becoming a mother has long been viewed as a deep mystery, one holding great power. As such motherhood participates in both the creative and redemptive work of the divine. It is little wonder that the Hasidim have a saying; “God could not be everywhere at once, so he gave each child a mother.”

Which is ironic, coming from the Hasidim, considering the Jewish tradition of the creation of woman in the garden. Eve, the proto-mother, the mother of all humanity somehow exists without benefit of a birth mother. In that connection, yesterday I heard a traditional song, “Sorry For Old Adam”, which speculates that all the world’s troubles started because Adam had no mother to hold him on her knee.

For some, indeed, the trouble starts because there was no reliable knee upon which to be held. For others, there was too much knee time and not enough free time. And, for some, a mother’s knee was something you got “put over” to receive corporal punishment. There aren’t many whose relationship with their mother is uncomplicated. Mark Twain wrote: “My mother had a great deal of trouble with me, but I think she enjoyed it.” As if to illustrate that point, comes the story of a man who calls his mother on the phone. "Mom, how are you?" "Not so good," says the mother. "I'm very weak." The son says, "Why are you so weak?" She says, "Because I haven't eaten in 5 days." The man says, "That's terrible! Why haven't you eaten in 5 days? The mother answers, "Because I didn't want my mouth to be full in case you should call."

Joking aside, there are few relationships as fraught as that of a mother and child. Mothers and children struggle to measure up to one another’s expectations and their own. And, as is often the case, one or both parties can be formidable. Maya Angelou wrote: “To describe my mother would be to write about a hurricane in its perfect power.” One of my most vivid memories of adolescence was learning to stand up for myself, not to my father (formidable in his own right) but to my mother. She didn’t like my music, my clothes or my friends either, but now she has passed beyond Mother’s Day peace offerings of cameras or candles. Further reconciliation with my mother must now be pursued through the redemption of my thoughts and feelings through the spiritual work of holding her in my prayers and sending her my best current approximation of Christ-like love.

Perhaps we can all reclaimMother’s Day from mawkish sentimentality and recover some of that initial emphasis on reconciliation and redemption. We do this through the expression of our own creativity. John Lennon was initially abandoned by his mother and raised by an Aunt. He got to know his mother in later childhood, but lost her for good when she died during his adolescence. Years later, stemming from that unfulfilled, unrealized, rather askew mother-child relationship came a song of longing for reunion and for an idealized mother figure:

Half of what I say is meaningless but I say it just to reach you, Julia. 
Julia, Julia, ocean child, calls me. So I sing a song of love, Julia.
Julia, seashell eyes, windy smile, calls me. So I sing a song of love, Julia.
Her hair of floating sky is shimmering, glimmering in the sun.
Julia, Julia, morning moon, touch me. So I sing a song of love, Julia.
When I cannot sing my heart, I can only speak my mind, Julia.
Julia, sleeping sand, silent cloud, touch me. So I sing a song of love, Julia.

Please join me in prayer: Almighty God, you have charged some of us with the care of children: To all who are called to the sacred ministry of motherhood, give your calm strength and patient wisdom to bring them up, that they may learn to love whatever is just and true and good, following the example of our Christ Jesus. And to all of us, unlike Eve, born of a woman, give us both the desire and the will to approach all mothers with gratitude for their sacrifice and compassion for their suffering. Amen.