Minilogue - May 2005
Mother's Peace Day
By the Rev. Bruce Johnson
I was a good student in high school, and a good enough hockey player to receive some attention from a few college recruiters. One of the schools that showed persistent interest was the United States Air Force Academy. I had expressed no desire whatsoever to attend any military academy, so I was quite surprised when, in the early spring of 1971, one of their coaches showed up “out of the wild blue yonder,” to wine and dine my parents and me at the Earthwood Inn, the only restaurant in my hometown that could conceivably be called “fancy.” I vividly remember that dinner, not just because it was the first time I’d ever had filet mignon, but because of something my mother said while we were waiting for the entrée to arrive.
The coach naturally wanted to steer the conversation in the direction of hockey and the wonderful (free!) education I would be receiving at the Academy. While my father enjoyed discussing the fine points of the game with him, my mother waited impatiently for her chance to speak. What she really wanted to know, it turned out, were the coach’s views, not on hockey, but on American foreign policy. Specifically, she wanted to know what he thought about the war in Vietnam, which was even then entering into its final tailspin. “What are we doing in Vietnam?” she asked, as if the coach had come directly from a briefing by the Joint Chiefs of Staff. She pressed the question passionately, relentlessly, like a fore-checking hockey player, intent on keeping the puck in her opponent’s end of the ice.
Our [partners] shall not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our [children] shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
I remember feeling embarrassed, squirming in my seat and hoping to deflect the conversation toward safer territory. At the same time, deep down, underneath the adolescent ego that had been enjoying all the attention, I knew that she was right to raise these questions, and even in that moment, I felt a quiet pride and gratitude that she was my mother. She awakened my political awareness, pointed me toward the “real world,” and modeled courage in speaking her truth.
In 1870, Julia Ward Howe, saddened by the carnage of war she had witnessed since penning the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” in 1861, started a campaign to create a “Mother’s Peace Day” which would bring together women from various nations to bring an end to war. This great Unitarian writer composed a manifesto which read, in part: “Arise, then, women of this day! 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.”
Howe’s attempts to create a national holiday did not bear fruit in her lifetime, and by the time Mother’s Day was officially recognized by President Wilson in 1914, the original connection with peacemaking had largely been forgotten. Mother’s Day is nowadays associated with the sentimental and domestic qualities of maternity. Don’t get me wrong; we are right to honor and celebrate those intimate acts of mothering that are inwardly and personally focused. I have many warm memories from my own childhood of my mother’s tender and gentle ministrations. But it is that memory of her fierce and passionate concern for the world far beyond her own home that I think of on Mother’s Day.