Mother’s Day Was (and still can be) About Peace

Today, mother’s day has become a commercial venture, replete with over priced and unsustainable cut flowers, mountains of cards printed on non-recycled paper and questionable gifts. But it wasn’t started that way.

Mother’s Day creator Julia Ward Howe, who also wrote “The Battle Hymn of the Republic,” wrote the following proclamation, in part as a response to the bloody Civil War in the United States:

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.

I’ll be joining CodePink for a silent vigil today in San Diego and I’m working on the practice of a daily minute of silence at noon for peace. You could join me in that where ever you are.

Write well and often,

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