A Watered-Down Mother's Day

      I love Mother's Day, don't get me wrong. It's great to have a time that smartens us up and encourages us to give thanks and attention where it's due. The perspective of mothers is the best and most whole and holy thing we have. The world would be much better if women ran it and men just did the heavy lifting, doing what they were told.
     Mother's Day has a great history, but I doubt if many know of it. It had nothing to do with flowers or having breakfast made. After the Thirty-Years War in Europe, over two hundred years ago, thousands of women of all backgrounds organized in the first women's movement of its kind. It was an anti-war movement in hopes that men in the future would not make war on each other. The women were sick and tired of losing their husbands, brothers and sons over the whims of other men. It shook the establishment but obviously had little long-term affect.
    After the Civil War in the U.S. a similar movement was attempted. Nothing happened. But finally, fifty years or so later, a Mothers' Day was recognized by the federal government, watered down, of course, to lack any resemblance to the meaning of the original wish of mothers.
   But it sells a lot of flowers and cards, a great way of gathering in our most loved grouping. It is, however, a shame that we've been bought off by the 'powers-that-be' as we most often due, allowing our deepest needs ( peace and understanding) to be supplanted by the cute and nice.
   Mothers, we so need you to again put the truth before us. No one else is, not churches and certainly, not the governments. The wealthy in all nations is against real justice and peace and we men are just too easily brain-dead and led astray. We need you to find your  mother instinct and lead, to not be bought-off by the mundane. Don't let us get away with it.
   Thanks.