Events

 Sunday 30th March
10am Queens Road Unitarian Free Church, Urmston
11.30am Dunham Road Unitarian Chapel, Altrincham
11.30am on Zoom ID 841 9082 8195 no password required.

A service celebrating "Mother", in its many manifestation. Exploring the history and origins of "Mothering Sunday" and "Mother's Day". Celebrating our Mother's and those that have offered unconditional love. Exploring the idea that spiritual community and living spiritually alive is to offer a space of acceptance, a return to love. The service will acknowledge that for some this may be a difficult and painful day, for a variety of reasons. During the service all we be offered posies and a time and space to reflect on these posies, to offer thanks and seek healing and perhaps commit to become people of acceptance and nurture. 

All are most welcome. Come as you are, exactly as you are, but do not expect to leave in exactly the same condition.

The following is an extract from the service...

Mothering Sunday, Mother’s Day, whatever its actual true origins is enshrined in this image of returning home, and this sense of belonging to something more than ourselves. Whether that is actually of children returning to the family home having been working away or of people returning to the mother church. Either way it’s about returning home to a place of safety; it is about returning home to a place of renewal, of re-birth, not only for ourselves but for others too; it is about returning to a place of love and total acceptance of who we are, exactly as we, no matter what we have done or where we have been, we are accepted with open loving arms.

This image of returning to a place of love and acceptance to mind beautiful words attributed to Rumi, that I often sing in the “Singing Meditations” I lead. Although interestingly perhaps the most important words are often missed out.

“Come, come, whoever you are. Wanderer, worshiper, lover of leaving. It doesn't matter. Ours is not a caravan of despair. Come, even if you have broken your vows a thousand times. Come, yet again , come , come.”

In many ways the key is in the words we don’t sing “It doesn’t matter…even if you have broken your vows a thousand times”
When we return home to the loving arms of our idealised mothers we are a returning to a place of total acceptance. It doesn’t matter where we have been or what we have done. The love is there, the total acceptance is there. Now for me this is the ideal of religious community and I suspect it is also what the “Kin-dom of God” would look like, what the “Commonwealth of Love” is meant to be like. It is the prodigal son or daughter returning to the loving arms of the “Mother Community” totally accepted as they are and ready to begin again in love. 

This brings to mind some beautiful words of prayer, a redemptive prayer, I first heard many years ago.

"We forgive ourselves and each other; we begin again in love."
For remaining silent when a single voice would have made a difference

We forgive ourselves and each other; we begin again in love. 

For each time that our fears have made us rigid and inaccessible
We forgive ourselves and each other; we begin again in love. 

For each time that we have struck out in anger without just cause
We forgive ourselves and each other; we begin again in love. 

For each time that our greed has blinded us to the needs of others
We forgive ourselves and each other; we begin again in love. 

For the selfishness which sets us apart and alone
We forgive ourselves and each other; we begin again in love. 

For falling short of the admonitions of the spirit
We forgive ourselves and each other; we begin again in love. 

For losing sight of our unity
We forgive ourselves and each other; we begin again in love. 

For these and for so many acts both evident and subtle which have fueled the illusion of separateness

We forgive ourselves and each other; we begin again in love
When I think of Motherhood and or the Mother Church I think of returning to a place of sustenance of nurture where one feels that they can recharge and renew in safety. A place where you are accepted wholly as you are. From here you can begin again in love, you can if you like be born again, be given birth to once again.
Columbian author, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, wrote in, “Love in the Time of Cholera”, “…human beings are not born once and for all on the day their mothers give birth to them, but…life obliges them over and over again to give birth to themselves.” 

Our lives often take different directions at times. We turn down a new path way, again and again and again. Often we will go down blind alleys, again and again and again. Often we repeat the same mistakes again and again and again. We do not always learn from our mistakes. This is so very human and even if we have made those mistakes a thousand times, we can always begin again in love, we can always return home to a place of acceptance.