Practicing Hope: A reflection ritual for Mother’s Day

The original Mothers' Day Proclamation, Julia Ward Howe, 1870:

Arise, then... women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts, whether our baptism be that of water or of tears!

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 out dishonor, nor violence vindicate possession.

As men have often forsaken the plough 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 council.

Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.

Let them then solemnly take council with each other as to the means whereby the great human family can live in peace, each bearing after his own kind 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.

Reflection

Howe wrote this as an appeal for the women of the world to unite for peace.  A pacifist reaction to the carnage of the American Civil War and the Franco-Prussian War, this proclamation declares a refusal to participate in the death of the world’s children through war.

Every day I wake up and decide what act of god I am going to perform

Since I do not outsource my divinity, I create ritual and meaning for myself. This is one of my annual rituals.
I read this proclamation and I remember that I have brought five children into this world.
And then I ask myself, in my own divine creative power:
What kind of world am I helping create for them?

What kind of people am I raising?
How do I use my voice?
My strengths?
My talents?
My networks?
How do I contribute, in whatever small ways I can, to moving the human animal closer to collective wellness?

This is what secular spirituality means to me.
I do not abandon of reverence. I participate in the conscious creation of it.

Tomorrow morning, I will wake again and decide what act of god I am going to perform.