We Together Carry the Life Force
of the Great Mother
Dear Brave Souls, The origin of Mother's Day in the USA was a day of 'the mothers against war,' those mothers and grandmothers against the 'meaningless slaughter of hundreds of thousands of their sons and grandsons in the Civil War in America... over 660,000 of the young of the land, lying dead... the war
was fought over not allowing half the the nation to leave and start its own nation in the south... it was fought over land contraction and expansion, economics [who would have the upper hand in wealth,] and slavery.
Here, Mother's Day meant anyone with a heart, to decry and resist any future slaughter of the beloved young. Those minds were to be recognized as carrying the heroic heart of The Mother Force... a force greater than any one woman herself, larger than any one man himself. Rather the MAGNITUDE of the fiery Life Force embodied in us as mereling humans.
Mother's Day rose up after the flurry of military and government orders and laws against rising up against government, and through which the populace and especially the mothers could not prevent young boys being cut down at close range in farm fields, in the streets of villages which had not sidewalks nor more than a block of buildings,
in the beautiful forests where surely the trees wept at the slaughters that were often 10,000 brothers and sons lying dead in only one day's battle-- also at the edge of blue lakes, after a day of battle, thousands, tens of thousands of boys dead forever never to be greeted again by the family dog, never to give their heart to a lover, never to bring children for the future, never to write a poem, invent an invention.
The civil war slaughtered more young people than wwi, wwii, korea and vietnam altogether. it is barely thinkable. Nearly 700,000 of the young, dead between Union and Confederacy.
And so the mothers, after the civil war, instead of only weeping themselves dry for the war was not 'over there' far away, the war was right here just steps or a quarter mile from where they drew water from the well, tended the animals, sewed the cloth, raised the little ones...
The women, instead of becoming stone, which in every case would be completely understandable, they took to the streets [sound familiar]... to the streets to proclaim the preciousness of life, loudly, without apology. {Sounding familiar still? Good! Keep going!]
We have many mothers' groups worldwide who still raise the cri de couer, the cry from the heart about their children taken long ago... or about to be taken, or threatened with being taken now...
Las Madres are in Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, they are in Peru and Ecuador and Bolivia, in Venezuela and Brasil and Chile, in Laos, Cambodia, in the Middle East, in Benin, in Nigeria, here in the USA, and so many more
and ... the mothers STILL march for return of their loved ones, the bodies of their sons and daughters-- for the abuelitas y abeulos, the madres y papis are para la vida: They grandparents, parent are FOR Life! They commend and demand LIFE in the now and LIFE eternal, in concrete terms and in blessed memory.
So too we. We together carry the Life Force of the Great Mother who protects, defends, teaches, helps, heals, lets die what must die, lets live what must live, and creates.
Although some in imagining The Great Mother tend to veer into only what I sometimes call 'psych porn,' meaning an overage of breathless excitement and hyperfascination with 'the dark' which is surely a part of the great Feminine and the great Masculine in entropy, but only a tenth of the cycle of what I call life/death/life...
The Great Mother is in the Holy Cycle of Life/Death/Life. Though some ascribe only destruction and destruction to her. We know the difference between The Grand Cycles, and the psychotic.
The Great Mother is Life Itself, calling out for natural cycles of rising to zenith, dropping to nadir, and rising again in all possible ways, without calling into being the The Death Wastral to slaughter all that lives...
but instead ever and ever calling forth Great Mother Creator who creates/ finds other means, more peaceful means, to quell what cannot be allowed, and what must be given life.
I would just gently suggest to you this Mother's Day, despite the hype which almost need not be noted so ubiquitous is the tritely-trite, that you mother someone, something, meaning remember in honor someone, something, bless someone, something, ACT in other words as your own version of Great Mother in your own much smaller way.
We Can Do This Today
Today I blessed the water
in the acequia nearby,
the water ditch.
Mother blessing on water.
Today I blessed el viento,
the wind who makes
the cottonwood leaves
literally glitter and sing
their sandpaper song.
Wind blessing from this mother.
Today I blessed the cottontails,
and the hawks and eagles here.
Life blessing from the mother.
I talked to them,
told them of their beauty,
told them to be careful,
to go fast and be safe.
Today I called several persons
I know are alone,
some of their children being 'too busy'
for years now, and we talked
about what wonder-actions
they did and often are still doing.
**Mother blessing the mothers.**
You too, in your own way, can bless the hearts of the mothers, be they men, women, children, boundary waters people... for they are for protection of life, health of life, happiness of life, meaning in life, mending of life, return to life from the dead, and new life ever.
The Great Mother is the archetype of all those and more... and we carry the mother instincts to be gentle-fierce, because we are made of earth and sky, like the Mother of ancient memories.
I send love. And below I will put the first USA proclamation for Mother's Day if you would like to read what bones and blood and fierce mother-love are REALLY the rootstock of Mother's Day in the USA.
It is by Julia Ward Howe, who was an activist, "a heaven-raiser" as I call women who rise up... Remember we come from, each of us, no matter to which tribe/ race/strata born, woman like Howe, who struck the drumskin over and over to create a rhythm for us to follow in all honor and full voice.
Be not afraid, we are in good company.
With love again...
dr.e
CODA
Mother's Day Proclamation from 1870/ USA
"Arise, then, women of this day! Arise all women who have hearts, whether our baptism be that of water or of fears! Say firmly: "We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies. 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. 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 our dishonor nor violence indicate possession. As men have often 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 their own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar, but of God.
"In the name of womanhood and of 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."
Julia Ward Howe 1870
"We Can Do This Today," poemcito by cp estés ©2017, a/r/r/
Dr. C.P. Estés’ is a lifelong activist in service of the voiceless; as a post-trauma recovery specialist and psychoanalyst of 48 years clinical practice; and as a journalist covering stories of human suffering and hope.
She is Mestiza Latina [Native American/ Mexica Spanish], presently in her seventies. She grew up in the now vanished oral tradition of her war-torn immigrant, refugee families who could not read nor write, or did so haltingly, and for whom English was their third language overlying their ancient natal languages.
She is first generation of her immigrant, deportee and refugee families, to complete grade school, high school and go to college.
No comments:
Post a Comment