On Mother's Day ...

Mother's Day has always kind of a mixed bag for me. My mother was famous for saying she'd rather have us clean up our rooms all year and skip the flowers and candy. (For the record, I sent flowers and candy again this year and yes, the room could use some picking up! :) And as a parish priest Sunday is a "working day" -- no matter how you look at it -- and so our Mother's Days have worked around that fact for lo-these-many years.
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This year with Jamie in Iraq the best Mother's Day Present of all is just knowing he's OK -- which he is. Called from Kirkuk this afternoon. (Well the BEST would be an end to this crazy war and a new President but I'm trying to be reasonable here!) And my Brian sent along with a very sweet Mother's Day note what I imagine he imagines is what every mother wants: a picture of her boy with his dog and his truck. (Kentucky is turning out to have been a very good move for him!)

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Meanwhile, the canine/feline-kids in our family put together a Happy Mother's Day blog over at Harvey & Luna so everybody is "present and accounted for."

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Finally, in the Mother's Day flurry of flowers and brunches and gifts and cards let's remember that long before there was Hallmark there was Julia Ward Howe's 1870 "Mother's Day Proclamation" that got the whole thing started -- a proclamation that was, at it's core, a proclamation of peace that still speaks to us today:
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Arise then...women of this day!

Arise, all women who have hearts!

Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!

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Say firmly:"We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,

Our husbands will 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.

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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.

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"From the voice of a 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.

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As men have often forsaken the plough 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.

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Let them meet first, as women,

to bewail and commemorate the dead.

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

Whereby the great human family can live in peace...

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Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress,

not of Caesar, But of God -

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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 someplace deemed most convenient

And 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.