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By Dr. Bruce T. Marshall
May 6, 2010
READING
The Stolen Mother Moon
as told by Clarissa Pinkola Estes in Warming the Stone Child
Once upon a time there was a wonderful village where everything
happened the way it was supposed to. Except for one thing: this
beautiful, harmonious village was surrounded by a moat of black
murky bogs. It was dark there always and it stank because everything
was rotting. For that reason—the darkness of the quagmires—the
people depended on the light of the moon to guide them at night.
Some nights she did not come. And on those nights, the bogs were
filled with treachery because there were evil things that lived
there, things that live in the darkest corners of human minds would
come out and lead the poor struggling travelers into the quagmires
and drown them.
In a short period of time, several people died and when the Moon
Mother learned about this she was filled with sorrow. She decided
she would come to earth and see for herself. So when the dark of the
month came, she stepped onto a slow shooting star and landed at the
edge of the marshes. She wore a black cape pulled around her so no
light could escape and as far as she could see, the bogs were like
black mirrors. Around the bottom of her cape was a bright donut of
light. She pulled her cape even tighter, and it was so cold that she
was trembling, and she feared the evil ones just as we all do. But
she loved the human soul more.
She began her investigation, guided by the little golden light that
leaked from the bottom of her cape. She felt her way through the
grass with the dank ponds on the right and the quagmires on the left
and just as she thought she had the lay of the land, she felt a vine
reach across her legs and she began to fall forward. She reached for
a twining tree, the kind under the control of the evil ones, and as
she grabbed its branches, it sent out tentacles around her wrists
and ankles holding her like manacles and the more she struggled, the
tighter it held her.
There she was in the blackest dark, shivering and straining and she
heard a voice calling from far off. AHelp me, please. Help.@ She
listened and the cry came nearer and she heard footfalls stumbling
and at last by the dim light of the stars, she saw a head, a
despairing face with fearful eyes. And she knew it was a person who
had lost his way.
He now caught sight of the light from the captive moon, and made his
way toward the light, thinking it meant help, but there was a
quagmire in front of the moon. She was filled with sorrow because
she was luring him with her light, luring him to his death. Frantic
to warn him, she struggled, until her hood fell back and her
dazzling hair lit the black waters. A flood of yellow, the precious
light of the moon shone.
How relieved the traveler was to see the evil ones rush back to
their holes. The moon struggled against the branches that held her
tighter, and she was so glad he was safe, but he ran to the edge of
the marsh so quickly and with such haste and relief that he forgot
to wonder about what had just occurred.
The Mother Moon sank exhausted into the mud, and as she did, her
head fell onto her breast and her hood fell back over her head, and
all became darkness again. The vile things that loved the dark came
to her with a kind of whisper chatter, AWe=ll get her now. Now we=ll
kill her.@ They gathered around the moon, kicking and grasping, and
they drove her into the ground.
Now no more light shown across those waters. The one who gave light
and who shown down on mothers nursing their babies, the one who made
sleeping women kiss their lovers backs, the one who put words into
the dreams of poets, that one was pushed deep into the mud. For the
evil ones don=t care about mothers or babies, they don=t care about
lovers or poets. The Moon Mother let one last ray of light zigzag
across the waters before she disappeared completely and the evil
ones rolled a great boulder over her grave and danced a crazy dance
on top of it.
So then, on nights there was no light to guide the people and many
became lost. Many children were orphaned. So many people suffered
that the villagers decided that they must go and find what had
become of the moon. Armed with torches and clubs, they trekked
through the night into the bog, sinking down into the wet and slimy
grass. Cold and wet they went on and the evil things were about
them, scratching and clawing.
But the flames from the torches kept them safe until they came to a
great boulder that they did not remember from before, and there was
a little lip of light all the way around it that shown whiter than
white. With great excitement, they lifted and tugged until the
boulder rolled away and left them staring down into what seemed the
most beautiful face they had ever seen, with eyes filled with love.
The light rose up and up, lighting their faces first from beneath
and then straight on and then from the top as the Moon Mother
escaped from her prison and climbed the dark staircase up to the
sky, where now, on most nights, she travels across the sky with her
hood turned down and her light radiant, everywhere. And on those
few, now predictable nights, when she veils herself in gray and does
not shine, travelers have learned to stay inside by the hearth and
wait. Until she shows the way again.
SERMON
Today we observe Mother=s Day. It=s a good day for florists and
candy makers. It=s a bad day to show up at a restaurant without a
reservation. This morning there will be lots of sermons given on the
virtues of motherhood, including this one.
Yet, our Mother=s Day observances strike me as schizophrenic. For
while we honor motherhood as an institution, our society does not
honor the values of mothering. We give out flowers and candy and
free lunches to our mothers, but those who try to live by the ideals
motherhood promotes often find themselves swimming against the tide.
There seems something of the guilty conscience in our showering of
attention on mothers today, while too often ignoring what motherhood
stands for.
Our world is in trouble, strained to the limit by conflicting
desires and demands. Many of us too face our own personal
challenges. This morning I would like to suggest that some of these
troubles could be addressed by taking more seriously the values
conveyed in good mothering.
• • •
The story of the Stolen Mother Moon offers a place to begin.
The villagers in that tale live in a happy, harmonious land, except
that it is surrounded by a dark and murky and dangerous bog which
they must occasionally cross. Evil ones inhabit that bog, evil ones
that snare travelers who have lost their way. The Mother Moon cares
about the safety of people who make this journey and to help them,
she offers a gift of light. Light shining down from the sky to help
them find their way.
This Mother Moon does not smother her children in love and devotion,
she does not attempt to take over their lives, she does not make
their choices for them, she does not even identify which pathway to
take. What she offers, simply, is light: light that enables us to
see through the thickets of our lives.
Fairy tales can be read as accounts of our inner being. Each figure
in a fairy tale—each person, character, beast, spirit—represents a
part of ourselves. Within each of us is the happy and harmonious
village, as within each of us is the dark and treacherous bog.
Within each of us are pathways toward the life that we seek and
within each of us are those evil creatures who snipe at us,
criticizing and demeaning. Within each of us also is the light—the
light of the moon, the light of the mother—that can help us find our
way.
What is light, this gift the Mother Moon offers? In the external
world, it=s obvious enough what light is, but what does it represent
inside ourselves, within our souls?
Light, in this fairy tale—in any fairy tale—is what makes it
possible for us to see: to understand, find patterns of coherence,
to make sense of things. Light is what helps us spot dangers strewn
along the path. The light of the moon that illuminates the bog and
brings the evil creatures to scatter and hide is consciousness,
intuition, instinct, common sense—those qualities within that make
it possible for us to sort through the tangled mess of information
we receive and find our way. The light within also is the energy
that drives us, that gives us the extra burst of strength it takes
to free us from the vines that grasp at our ankles. It is the
burning vision that gives us purpose and direction and reason to be.
That light within—consciousness, intuition, instinct—is the province
of the mother. The fire within—vision, desire, compassion and care,
love: that also comes from the mother. She breathes it into life and
sustains it and offers it to help us along the journey that is ours
to take.
• • •
When individuals do not have good mothering, we lose our way. The
light of the Mother Moon is concealed, buried by those evil things
that reside in the corners of our minds, and we find ourselves in
darkness. When a society does not value good mothering, we also lose
our way. We get confused about what truly has worth and what can
feed our souls. We lose touch with what gives us life.
It=s not that the light of the Mother Moon goes out. In these
stories of our consciousness, the light never really gets
extinguished. Rather, it is hidden, lost, forgotten, piled over by
layers of muck. And so our challenge is to find the light and
uncover it. Our task is to revive the gift of consciousness that is
our birthright in this world.
Here are some things we can learn from our mothers—from motherhood
in general—about how to uncover the light and keep it shining in our
souls.
Such as, good mothering involves seeing the divine in the simple.
Tying a child=s shoes. Making oatmeal or Cream of Wheat on a cool
morning. Teaching a child to ride a bike. That=s what a mother does:
simple things that are not that important in themselves but that
convey a deeper love. Preparing and serving a meal. Creating a space
in which one feels safe and at home. Offering care and concern to
soothe one=s pain. Through these small acts of attention, the mother
shows that you are valued, that you matter, that there is something
holy in who you are. Good mothering keeps the flame inside alive by
assuring you of your worth, your value as a child of God.
Good mothering also promotes relationship. Relationships among
people, relationships to the world and the community around us,
relationship with the deepest currents of oneself. We are not
isolated creatures living by abstract codes, as men would sometimes
have it. We live in relationships that must be tended and cared for.
That=s what mothering is about: attending to those relationships
through which we stay in touch with the light we all share.
Good mothering encourages us to listen to our heart, our intuition,
our vision. Good mothering advises us to listen to our gut and not
let our heads take full control over our being. We are a head-strong
society. We talk more than we listen. We impose goals and objectives
upon situations rather than letting them develop of their own
accord. We impose our wills upon the environment, upon the
community, upon other nations, upon ourselves with often disastrous
results. Good mothering calls a halt to that madness and encourages
us, sometimes, just to sit down and be quiet and have some cookies
and milk and listen. Just listen to what’s going on all around.
Good mothering honors the distinctiveness of others. A good mother
does not try to make the children into the people she wants them to
be. Instead, she gets to know her children and honors what is
important to each of them and honors who they are and lets them
develop as people in their own right. She offers the light that
helps each discover who he or she can most authentically be.
Good mothering also calls us to accept ourselves, trust ourselves.
You can=t honor the distinctiveness of other people without also
honoring yourself. Which is to say that self-sacrificial motherhood
is no gift to the world. Good mothering, rather, is based in valuing
oneself: valuing ourselves, not emptying ourselves. Valuing who we
are so that our children will also see how to value who they are.
You know, there is no lack of criticism in this world. We=re always
being criticized for something—that’s not what the mother offers.
Her role is different. It is to remind us to be gentle with
ourselves. To be good and decent to ourselves. To trust in our own
value, in our own light, and let it guide us toward who we may yet
be. That’s the light she offers and that’s how we keep our own light
inside burning.
Each parent, mother and father, would like to protect her or his
child from hurt. We would like to keep them from the harshness of
the world, from its pain, from its disappointments, from those times
when things are just awful. But we can=t. It is the great
frustration of parenthood: we can=t protect our children from the
world.
The good mother does what she can to protect her children but
realizes that, ultimately, she has a greater responsibility. It is
to enable that child to know his or her own strength, his or her own
integrity, his or her own authenticity. It is to help that child
discover the light that burns within. For in following that light,
we are best able to negotiate the bogs and find the abundant life
that is the hope of every mother for her child.
• • •
Our society today could use a strong dose
of what good mothering offers. We could benefit from uncovering the
light of the Mother Moon.
For in our society today, there isn’t much of seeing the sacred in
what is simple. We are pushed always to do more, attain more,
accumulate more. We learn that the meaning of life is “get more,”
rather than seeing the value and beauty of what is.
In our society today, there isn=t much in the way of promoting
relationship with each other as we each pursue our solitary and
lonely path. And too often we ignore our relationship with the earth
as we continue to try to impose our will upon the environment.
In our society today, there isn=t much encouragement to listen to
our heart, our intuition, to develop our own vision. We are so
driven by what we find in our heads that we don=t even know how to
get access to that wisdom we find in our guts.
In our society today there isn=t even much help in valuing ourselves
as people of worth, of affirming the distinctive value of each
person. We find ourselves used to accomplish other people’s ends. We
are valued to the extent that we get others to where they want to
go, rather than being encouraged to find satisfaction in who we are.
That is to say, we may revere motherhood, but we don=t take its
values and contributions seriously.
And so on this Mother=s Day and in the days and weeks and months
that follow, maybe what we need is to gather up those villagers that
inhabit our consciousness. Give them torches to help them find the
way through the darkness and the muck to those places where the Moon
Mother has been hidden. Roll away the rock under which she has been
trapped to reveal the light she offers—uncover that light in our
communities, in our families, in ourselves.
That is, return to the values of the mother who offers light to help
us find our paths through the treacherous lands we traverse in this
life. And toward the abundant life that each mother yearns for her
child to find.
Listen to your mother for she has wisdom to tell. Listen to the
person who is or was your mother and listen also to the mother
within. Listen to all those mothers out there, trying to help us
find a different way, a better way.
Words by the poet, Mary Oliver.
You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting—
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.
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