For Women Everywhere: Mother's Day is for Protest, Prayer & Peace

For all who suffer for one reason or another on Mother's Day, I fully acknowledge you.  I am one of you, too.  For years this day has reminded me of the scars in my heart and the empty womb that once held embryos but was unable, for whatever reason, to keep them alive.  There are other pains, too, that I will not share in such a public place, but you can be sure that they are there.

Take heart, dear ones.  Much love to all of you!  I pray that we all will find comfort and renewed passion by examining our roots. 

Photo by Matt Wynne

Mother's Day is not about chocolates and flowers (although both, if fairly traded and pesticide free, are lovely).  It's not about jewelry and store-bought cards.  This day is not about being a consumer zombie.

This morning, my pastor reminded us all that Mother's Day in America originated with the prayerful protest of Julia Ward Howe.  In her earlier years she had penned the Battle Hymn of the Republic, but as she experienced the dreadful agony of war, her motherly despair caused her to cry out against the violence.  (Experience of violence, grief and suffering has a tendency to change our theology.)  As relevant today as it was when it was first prepared, let us read, hear, speak and pray these words of protest, prayer and womanhood.  Let us remember what it means to be alive!

Against war. 

Against mindless consumerism feeding ceaseless hunger for more.  

Against governmental decisions that put our loved ones in danger on account of lust for money and power. 

The Zombie Within - A Prayer for Release

Lord,
I desire to be at peace.  I desire freedom from anger, freedom from hatred, freedom from death, pain and darkness.  I desire fullness of love and abundant mercy to flow out of me like a wellspring of living water.  Dear Lord, I want to be whole.

I want to be able to give from an infinite wellspring of life and abundance.  This sort of giving is only possible through intimate communion with You.

But You are not all I desire.

A Simple Zombie Credo

The following was just posted in response to a comment on ZombieTheology.  I invite you to read the post here, and then to continue reading this one.

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Dear Sonny ~

You said,

“Zombie Theology isn’t about finding cool walking dead references in the Scriptures (we’ll have fun with some of that, who can resist?), it’s about the disease. How it’s contracted,how it’s spread from host to host. How they can be stopped (got to shoot them in the Soul, their head) and the most important question of all, how do we cure ourselves once we are bitten by the overwhelming Zombie Army?”

Here, dear one, is the gospel: we don’t have the cure. God does. The cure came in the form of Jesus Christ and is being distributed by the Holy Spirit breathed into the world as Jesus breathed His last. Jesus came to resurrect our imaginations, to give our brain-dead appetites something other than each other to gnaw on. One day, all of creation and all of humanity will remember the goodness and freedom it was crafted with. We look forward to that day.

You are right when you say that many Christians are acting in ways that resemble zombies. We are part of a world that is infected with the virus, (or the toxin, or the radiation, whatever imagery we find in zombie literature can be applied). We’re born into it, we’re raised by infected beings, and we’re exposed to it every day. The zombie infection is everywhere. It’s what gives all humans (and other animals, for that matter) a tendency towards violence, self-preservation, destruction of others and other behaviors that are not conducive to societal uplifting.

Are we Human?

In the zombie apocalypse the first thing most people think of is the violence of survival.  Simply getting by day to day is exhausting in the days, weeks and even months following a disaster of any degree. Imagine then, one where our family and friends have completely lost their sense of humanity.  It may cause us to loose our own sense of self as well.

Consider your zombie survival plan.  Our survival kits, particularly those geared for adults, almost always hold a wide variety of weapons and martial arts manuals.  We want to become as efficient as the enemy in killing.  Murder is never very far from our brains.  This is particularly true in times of war, upheaval or, for our purposes in this discussion, in the time of the zombie apocalypse.