Motherhood: A Way of Being for All of Us
If “to mother” is to help bring about the world that God, Our Mother, so loves and labors alongside us to bring forth, then all of us are called to mother.
Dearly Beloveds,
I didn’t plan on motherhood being a theme in my writing, but that’s the thing with plans and with motherhood. They have a way of letting themselves go from your tight grip whether you want them to or not. They look a lot like the wind or the waves–sometimes obvious and obliterating, other times quiet and quick.
But as I look back at my writing over the years, themes of motherhood are everywhere. I have a whole folder in ‘My Documents’ on my computer entitled, “Mother Essays,” writing I couldn’t help but create as I processed the ever evolving relationship between my mother and me in my late 20’s and early 30’s.
I rushed to download the Natalie Maines solo album, “Mother,” when it was released in 2013, a solid two years before I would give birth to our first child, Wade.
As I’ve written here before, Elizabeth’s opening line in Blessed Are the Women is “I was a mother before I was a mother,” a line that came to me while listening to an NPR story about mothers and their children being separated at the Texas/Mexico border. I had to pull over to the shoulder of the road listening to the mother’s cries, I felt them so viscerally.
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Our American Western Christian culture assumes young women are supposed to get married and “become mothers'' as if giving birth to actual children is the sole definition of motherhood. Yet, when a woman becomes pregnant before being married, she is left with little choice, even less help, and loads of shame.
Do you see the pattern of blame and responsibility being placed solely on women as if men are not in the picture at all?
Layer upon layer of expectations are placed upon women and mothers by the patriarchy so that we constantly strive for a perfect version of ourselves that will never exist. This striving keeps us buying and bowing to the system that profits off of our confusion, misalignment, and shame.
But if “to mother” is to help bring about the world that God, Our Mother, so loves and labors alongside us to bring forth, then all of us are called to mother.
Last I read, Jesus said, “Now that I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also should wash one another’s feet.” (John 12:13-14)
There’s no singling out by gender or role in Jesus’ statement. Instead, there is a call and a command for all of us to serve one another in love.
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While all of the women in Blessed Are the Women do not have children, all of them are our mothers.
After all, the origins of the word “mother” have their roots in the Old English sense of “that which has given birth to anything,” and the term was often used to address any elderly woman, whether she’d given birth to children or not. (Source: Online Etymology Dictionary)
For centuries we’ve heard of the Patron Saints of the Church with little to no mention of the Matron Saints–Our Mothers who, by their ingenuity, compassion, and steadfast love, have kept the world spinning forever.
Blessed Are the Women introduces (and reintroduces) you to the following faithful, all of them mothers in the sense that without them, we wouldn’t have any of it.
Elizabeth: Matron Saint of Fertility
Mary: Matron Saint of Womanhood and Birth Justice
Anna: Matron Saint of Prophets and Old Age
Eve: Matron Saint of Questions and Forgiveness
Susanna and Salome: Matron Saints of Leadership and Love
Adama: Matron Saint of Healing and the Earth
Miriam and Mari: Matron Saints of Presence and Reproductive Justice
Edith, Rachel, Sarah, and Leah: Matron Saints of Embodied Prayer and Sisterhood
Ashera and Talliya: Matron Saints of Mothers and Daughters
Mary Magdalene: Matron Saint of Storytelling and Preaching
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Because our prayers on Sunday must make a difference and hold meaning in our lives on Monday, the mothers in Palestine who are giving birth in the midst of unspeakable horrors and the Black mothers in the United States who face systemic racism and often deadly results because of it must be named and mothered by us if we claim to follow Jesus and the women.
Learn more and give here and here, for starters.
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Motherhood is a way of being for all of us.
May we follow. May we love.
Amen.
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It’s BOOK LAUNCH MONTH, which means if you haven’t pre-ordered your copy of Blessed Are the Women yet, it’s time to get to it!
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BOOK LAUNCH!
02.28.2024 | Blessed Are the Women Book Launch | Parnassus Books | 6:30 p.m.
OTHER UPCOMING EVENTS
02.04.2024 | Speaking at Vine Street Christian Church | 10 a.m.
02.18.2024 | Teaching at Westminster Presbyterian Church | 9:30 a.m.
02.21.2024 | Leading Tapestries Lunch & Learn | 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m.
If you’re interested in finding a time for me to teach, lead, and/or preach at your church, with your community, or at your organization, please email me at claire@clairemckeeverburgett.com. I’m available both in-person and virtually.
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03.07.2024 | Reclaiming Mary Magdalene: Women’s HerStory Art Exhibit | 6:30 p.m.
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JOIN ME FOR MY TEXAS BOOK TOUR IN MARCH!
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