On Generosity Sun, 12th May, 2013
Sometimes I feel like a motherless child… at a very early point in his life I began singing that old folksong to our son, and the haunting words stuck. He sings it now, teasingly, when I refuse one of his requests. I always laugh, though I actually feel a little guilty making fun of one of the saddest images in the human imagination.
Beneath all of the idealization, the sentimentalism, and even the psychoanalysis of motherhood is every person's actual first experience of helpless dependence on another human being for survival - to call that formative bond with another human being love is an understatement. It goes much deeper than love. And becoming an adult brings knowledge of sexuality and desire that complicates even further the image we carry of that powerful first presence. No wonder many of us wrestle with that relationship for the rest of our lives.
The Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh observed, however, that those who simply want to escape their past relationship with their mothers are doomed. As he says: your mother is you…. to think that you can have nothing to do with her is sheer ignorance. Learning to be at peace with ourselves means coming to terms with that part of us that is our mother.
But does mothering have to involve love of mythical proportions? Although I am grateful to Julia Ward Howe, the founder of our modern Mother's Day, for her efforts to advocate for peace, her view of maternal devotion (all mothers want peace, because what mother wants her son to die in war?) doesn't find much support in reality. The examples we humans have historically held up of motherhood are so fraught with self-delusion that I find little in them to comfort or inspire me.
Instead, nature provides me with more inspiration. It is no accident that we coined the term Mother Nature and speak of the Earth as our mother. Taoism teaches that one of the most remarkable things about nature, and the example we should take from it, is its generosity. William Martin, in his book The Parent's Tao Te Ching, describes the Tao as the Great Mother and source of all that is. Her resources are inexhaustible; you can never be outside Her love. Therefore the wise parent should be like water, content to nourish all it touches without asking anything in return.
And so, as we celebrate Mother's Day, let us appreciate the gifts that we have been given, the nurturing we have received, despite our inability to repay it. Enjoy the flowers, who bloom for everyone whether we deserve them or not.
Sometimes I feel like a motherless child… at a very early point in his life I began singing that old folksong to our son, and the haunting words stuck. He sings it now, teasingly, when I refuse one of his requests. I always laugh, though I actually feel a little guilty making fun of one of the saddest images in the human imagination.
Beneath all of the idealization, the sentimentalism, and even the psychoanalysis of motherhood is every person's actual first experience of helpless dependence on another human being for survival - to call that formative bond with another human being love is an understatement. It goes much deeper than love. And becoming an adult brings knowledge of sexuality and desire that complicates even further the image we carry of that powerful first presence. No wonder many of us wrestle with that relationship for the rest of our lives.
The Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh observed, however, that those who simply want to escape their past relationship with their mothers are doomed. As he says: your mother is you…. to think that you can have nothing to do with her is sheer ignorance. Learning to be at peace with ourselves means coming to terms with that part of us that is our mother.
But does mothering have to involve love of mythical proportions? Although I am grateful to Julia Ward Howe, the founder of our modern Mother's Day, for her efforts to advocate for peace, her view of maternal devotion (all mothers want peace, because what mother wants her son to die in war?) doesn't find much support in reality. The examples we humans have historically held up of motherhood are so fraught with self-delusion that I find little in them to comfort or inspire me.
Instead, nature provides me with more inspiration. It is no accident that we coined the term Mother Nature and speak of the Earth as our mother. Taoism teaches that one of the most remarkable things about nature, and the example we should take from it, is its generosity. William Martin, in his book The Parent's Tao Te Ching, describes the Tao as the Great Mother and source of all that is. Her resources are inexhaustible; you can never be outside Her love. Therefore the wise parent should be like water, content to nourish all it touches without asking anything in return.
And so, as we celebrate Mother's Day, let us appreciate the gifts that we have been given, the nurturing we have received, despite our inability to repay it. Enjoy the flowers, who bloom for everyone whether we deserve them or not.
I'm happy to announce that my wife, Betsy, will be featured as our guest blogger for May 12, in honor of Mother's Day. May she return as often as she likes. —George