(c) Jill Ann Terwilliger, 2009
I offer a prayer for mother’s day today.
This is who it is for:
It is for all the mothers in this room, in this city, across this continent, and in every land around this planet.
It is for the mothers whose homes resound with children’s laughter, screeching toys, loud music, or the sullen teenage shrug.
It is for the mothers who gave birth in joy or in agony or in grief.
It is for the mothers who have adopted the motherless and discovered how wide love can reach; and it is for the mothers who have given over their children to others.
This prayer is for all the women who have wished to be mothers and are not.
It is for all the mothers whose children have ever gone off to war, for the worry they endure and the tension they carry through every hour of absence. It is for the mothers whose children return whole and unscathed, or who return wounded in mind or body, or who do not return at all.
It is for all the mothers who grieve – lost pregnancies, lost children, lost hopes, lost futures.
And this is my prayer:
May peace come to you.
Peace amid the noise and chaos of active children
Peace amid the silence and the absence.
Peace with the choices you have made, the paths taken and the ones not taken.
Peace with the grief you have endured.
May peace come to you, and may you greet it and welcome it, and make a place for it to live within you. May peace find a home in you, and from that home, may peace venture widely over this earth.
1 comment:
Your prayer was read at our Sunday service here at UUCGB in CT and I was very touched by yours words. Thank you!
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