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| Mother Tucking Children Into Bed Norman Rockwell, 1921 image in public domain |
RE VISIONING MOTHER'S DAY
Here's the thing about Mother's Day that gets to me. It is celebrated in a way that highlights dumbing down its origin which originally was a heroine's call to adventure which ritualized mothers actually leaving their roles as mothers to enter history! Whereas the day the way it is being celebrated now keeps mothers in the image and role and does not create the opening for real citizen-speak the way it originally once did in 1858.
Mother’s Day began as a call to action to improve the lives of families through health and peace. Ann Jarvis of Appalachia founded Mother’s Day at first to promote sanitation in response to high infant mortality. But, after the Civil War, abolitionist Julia Ward Howe made a Mother’s Day call to women to protest the carnage of war. She was a feminist and this word carries this double or twin powers which tend the kind of soul-making in it.
The fire in this heart(h)-tending, the spark or logos in the word, "feminist" is "igne sacra inflammata", inflamed by sacred fire, an essia necessary for keeping the cultural polis healthy. (Hestia's cupboard of remedies) That it is this dumbed down signifies a lack and so personally, I want all women kind to come in contact with what they don't know in the way they are not being honored. I want women to hear the call and venture forth seeking contact again with this kind of spark igniting in their own hearts. I want them to re claim their own journey to the great heart(h) of first woman, the genos gynakon; I want them to knowingly receive a divine spark--their original inheritance which will gift them a tongue dipped in essia's hearth so on this one day in May they may without thinking twice, leave their role of mothering [the way it is for them normally], give the workload to the family for the day and unite in a body that matters in the name of "sacred fire" or female force of polis within polis. Thank you for allowing stef's riff re visioning our democracy's national health care plan. Here's some history.
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