Contemplating motherhood: A mother’s day reflection (not only for mothers):

Though the world tells us to have a "happy" mother's day, for many the day comes with a bittersweet undertone. Hildegard of Bingen offers us some consolation here.

Holding my child in the garden of my childhood.

Dear fellow traveler,

I spent this mother’s day sitting beside my mother in the garden of my childhood in rural Germany. It was a beautiful Spring day, with white clouds on blue sky, soft breezes, birds singing, and so on.

Just sitting side-by-side holding hands while listening to the sounds of the garden and my mother’s humming along felt like a gift to cherish. Not only because we usually live continents apart but also because a new tender connection has sprouted between us since Alzheimers has taken hold of her.

I take it as a wondrous gift that my mother is losing not only her factual and short term memory but also some of the rigid costume in which she wrapped herself before. It’s how women her age had been brought up to be, I guess. Thus, I find myself witnessing her heart of hearts growing more beautiful even while she starts forgetting my name.

Some years ago I wrote about the “bittersweet” tone of mother’s day. And the sacredness of all “mothering” that Hildegard of Bingen reminds us of. Today I feel like coming back to it.

But before I do so, I want to give my heart felt thanks to Mary Kay for becoming our 50th paid subscriber. I cannot tell you how much it means to me that 50 of you have decided to support my journey into becoming an independent writer. It is a special way of “mothering” and I am grateful for each of you who mothers this vision of The Cloister into being.

Thank you, Thank you.

Contemplating motherhood. A mother’s day reflection (not only for mothers)

Though the world tells us to have a "happy" mother's day, for many the day comes with a bittersweet undertone. No happy children posting happy messages. Some have lost children before they could birth them. All mothers are also daughters, some cherishing, some mourning, some still struggling with their own mothers. 

Having born, nurtured, and lost our children, mothers know from experience about hope and fear. We have contemplated the big questions of being and non-being not only with our minds, but also with our bodies. Being granted the ability to give life, we are also confronted with the fragility and insecurity of all life, and the joys and sorrows motherhood carries at its core. 

There is in all of us, sons and daughters, a deep longing for our motherly home.

HILDEGARD OF BINGEN has seen this deep longing embedded at the heart of human creation: In one of her stunning illuminations she pictures the soul's journey from being embodied in her mother's womb to her search for her spiritual home to set up her tent. We are born in a unity of body and soul, with our original wisdom (“sophia”) folded like a tent inside us.

Hildegard speaks in poignant terms of the longing of the soul, and its challenges and lamentations on the way. Being faced with the pain of a bodily life the soul cries out to mother Zion: where shall I flee?

But instead of a quick answer, Hildegard gives room for the soul’s lamentations. Because as wisdom teachers know, the answer lies in the contemplation of our human lot itself.  In doing so we are reminded of our Divine origin, of being living breath and body all-woven-together, able to transcend our sufferings and to trust ourselves to life anew. Do not forget, my daughter, says mother Zion in Hildegard’s vision, that the giver of all life has given your soul wings to fly above all obstacles.

Though Hildegard  was never a birth mother she has become a mother to many. A foremother, a mother in spirit, an example of motherhood, a strong symbol for the mother archetype. For her, motherhood has always also been a powerful metaphor for the life force of all creation. Birthing is at the center of her cosmology as well as her spiritual teaching. 

Thus, we do not need to be mothers, not even women, to participate in the mystery of birth. We all have the spiritual ability to birth new life, to create and recreate. We all know about the "birthing pain" whenever wisdom or new insight is born in us, know the joy which ensouls us when we are first pregnant with and then give birth to the holy within us.  As we also know the fragility of this journey and the places of pain and loss within. 

And like mothers we can offer comfort and warm embrace to our own and to other’s struggling souls.

So here is my blessing for all who are mothering:

And if this mother’s day 
has come to you
wrapped in ambivalence,

joy and sorrow
densely interwoven
indistinguishable,

tend patiently to each
young green shoot growing
quietly 
towards the sun

under the dead layers
of wet, nourishing leaves.

AF

With great love, Almut (with Chuck and little one)

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