Mother

Community sermon (5.10.2026)

For today, a sermon I delivered a few months ago on Mother’s Day…

Mom. Mama. Mother.

What even are you? I mean, seriously.

Before I go in on this, I’ll just name that mothers aren’t a monolith, each one is their own, they bless us and they wound us and they defy simplification. They are not simple creatures, mothers.

So with that said, I want you to consider what all a mother is or may be—you know, the bleeding, the conceiving, the whole growing-humans-in-your-own-body thing or opening your heart to a human someone else grew thing, the nursing, the feeling, the surrogating of feeling, the multidimensional sensing, the guiding, the giving, the grounding, the menopausing, the wisdom keeping, and so much more, I know, way more than I’ll ever know—you think about all this, about what all a mother is, and that all of this on its own should be enough to bring us to our knees in humble awe every day, should get you lifetime achievement awards, medals of valor, front page articles, handsomely paid tenured positions, et cetera, et cetera, but that instead you’re doing the whole mother thing in this society, in these times, which is to say that instead of explicitly rewarding you for your many and diverse labors we implicitly punish you (is that too strong a word?) by asking you to adapt to a status quo that does not center you. That instead of following you, we’ve pathologized you. Instead of seeing you, really seeing you, we have for generations, across cultures, all over the world gone to great lengths to see whatever we’ve needed to see to maintain our illusions of control and superiority (I’m talking about men, yes, but I’m also talking about a afflicts us all and isn’t good for men anymore than it is for women or anyone else)...

…So, you think about what a mother is, and then you think about the adversity mothers face, each mother in her own incomparable way, and it becomes spontaneously clear to anyone who’s seeing clearly that mothers are the crown jewel of our species. Obviously it’s not a competition. Every jewel in the crown is precious, none better or worse than any other, but damn that mother diamond really pops.

We all come from the Mother, and to her we shall return like a drop, of rain, flowing to the ocean…

It’s wild that we all come from a woman. Everyone. That’s how it works here. The biggest, baddest man on the block, where did he come from? And is he even actually a man, in the sense of being truly not-woman, not-mother? I’m gonna get a little weird here for a sec and ask the therapists in the room to just give me a minute before you start psychoanalyzing me okay?, but see, we’re not exactly not our mothers, not the Mother, you know what I mean? Each of us is ourselves, yes, of course, and yet, I think this human being thing is more like an ancient aspen grove—many different trees, one organism.

When a leaf breaks away from a branch, is it suddenly no longer the tree? Imagine a fallen leaf, looking up at the tree and being like, “You…are…definitely not allowed to vote.”

We all come from the Mother…

Maybe it’s that we’re uncomfortable with the profound vulnerability of our need for our mothers and the almost shocking intimacy of the whole arrangement. How, to start it all off, we set up shop in her viscera. You ever made your home in anyone else’s viscera? I hope not. And then how we passed through their vaginas, y’all, or were pulled out of their cut stomachs. You ever done that with anyone else? How we suckled their breasts. How we cried, again and again, and again and again, for them, and how they picked us up and rocked us and brought us home, again and again, or how they didn’t, but how the fact remains that it was her we were crying for.

That is a unique relationship, to put it euphemistically. Imagine an alien anthropologist coming down here and being like, “Wait wait wait wait, so, you came from, like, inside her…and then you came through, what, that part?...and it was excruciating for her, for you to arrive here…wow, okay…and then you sucked…like suck sucked?…for how long?...and now you guys just kinda vibe…huh, so, uh, how is that for you?”

We all come from the Mother, and to her we shall return like a drop…

God I dread the day my mother dies. I know it’s natural, I know it’s all part of the divine design, and I know there is no death, at least according to her (sidenote: imagine having a mom who may not be clear about some things, like how to properly silence her cell phone during a ceremony, but is super-duper clear on the whole death-is-an-illusion thing—you can psychoanalyze me all you want on that one)...so I get it that Mom’ll never truly die, I guess, but there’s a little baby boy in me, like I see in my son now, who just wants his mom and no story about death-is-just-a-story will ever replace what being able to see you now, Mom, and hear your voice, and hug you, what that does for me. You are where I began. And I know I am not you. And you are the first great gift of my life.

And now, the great gift of seeing Tana become that great one for my son, and soon—no, right now! already!— for our new baby. It’s so good. To see him cry for her. I mean, it’s the worst, when he cries, but it’s also beautiful. He sleeps with me at night, and Tana’s in the other room so she can actually get some rest, and like clockwork at 4am he wakes, cries out, army crawls through the bed like it’s trench warfare and I’m the enemy if only he can just make it back to the Motherland, and then I’ll scoop him up gently, lovingly, daddy’s here, and I tell you what, if Child Services ever heard the sound he makes when I take him back into the POW camp of my breastless embrace, I’d never see my son again. For all the complexities and complications that can ensue re: our mothers, that love is deep. Raw. Real. Forever.

We are never severed from her. That’s why we still miss her after all these years, or why we’re still angry at her, or why we expect her like we expect gravity, or the sun at dawn, or our next breath. Our connection to her is our first connection to the whole aspen grove, to the big mama, the OG mother of us all. Yes, the Earth, but who gave birth to the Earth, and to Jupiter and Saturn, and the Milky Way, and all the galaxies, the mother of creation supreme whose face we cannot see, whose face is everywhere. Every day is your day, oh great and holy mother. Happy Mother’s Day, mom.