Our Mothers’ Divine Love & Wisdom
by Rev. Cory Bradford-Watts
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Readings
Matthew 23:37 / Luke 13:34
“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing.”
Hosea 13:8
“Like a bear robbed of her cubs, I will attack them and rip them open; like a lion I will devour them—a wild animal will tear them apart.”
Isaiah 66:13
“As a mother comforts her child, so will I comfort you; and you will be comforted over Jerusalem.”
Isaiah 42:14
“For a long time I have kept silent, I have been quiet and held myself back. But now, like a woman in childbirth, I cry out, I gasp and pant.”
Divine Love & Wisdom #33 by Emanuel Swedenborg
All human feelings and thoughts arise from the divine love and wisdom that constitute the very essence that is God. The feelings arise from divine love and the thoughts from divine wisdom. Further, every single bit of our being is nothing but feeling and thought. These two are like the springs of everything that is alive in us. They are the source of all our life experiences of delight and enchantment, the delight from the prompting of our love and the enchantment from our consequent thought.
Since we have been created to be recipients, then, and since we are recipients to the extent that we love God and are wise because of our love for God (that is, the extent to which we are moved by what comes from God and think as a result of that feeling), it therefore follows that the divine essence, the Creatress, is divine love and wisdom.
Read the written message below with music videos
In general, our mothers envelop us in their love and wisdom as we grow, just as we’re sustained and developed within them as embryos. Similarly, we are said to be growing within God as we receive more of her Divine Love and Wisdom! This same Divinity is the source of all the greatness and care in our mothers. Indeed, the case can easily be made that our mothers tend to be the most potent and obvious image and likeness of God that we encounter in our earthly lives – except perhaps for the Divine Mother known by many names that we find within. Like a child in the womb, we are enveloped within God’s Divine light of awareness and we receive our own light from it, what the mystic Swedenborg describes as the spiritual sunshine of Divine Love and Wisdom and the source of our very being. Today let’s celebrate the reality of being held and developed in the wise and caring arms of God, known by many names, and rejoice in all the ways she shines – especially through our mothers and within ourselves.
Mothers’ Day is a special one because it reminds us of what we should do every day – give thanks for our majestic mothers in all their forms, and celebrate the Divine Mother always sustaining and empowering us! Mothers give much of themselves, often sacrificing much more than we could ever imagine. They often exude patience, love, care, compassion, and wisdom – in the wonderful image of the Lord. Indeed, all of us first internalize a fundamental semblance of God’s care and warmth in our mothers’ (and sometimes trans fathers’) wombs. Without that time of peaceful quiet development, not only would we have no body, but our minds would lack the mental grounding of pregnancy’s state of peaceful connection.
In our reading today from Divine Love and Wisdom #33, the 18th-century esoteric Christian Emanuel Swedenborg calls God the “Creatress” (“Creatrix” in his original Latin) and describes how she is the source of all our love and wisdom, which is our very being, as our Divine Mother. This may be confusing for some of us since he also believed that Jesus Christ (presumably a male) is the incarnation of the same God (although, he also believed that salvation could come to us independently from believing in the historical Christ). In response to any confusion, I invite us to remember that – to many of us – God transcends all earthly images, that all people are made in God’s likeness and receive their good and beautiful attributes from Divinity as well as their healthy spiritualities, and that Christ’s form in the transfiguration was shining like the sun.
That being said, I think most of us can see that the source of that supreme good we call motherhood is the Lord! That indeed, we are still gestating in the cosmic womb and the spiritual one of love and wisdom. When we celebrate our mothers, we are celebrating the Lord in them.
In a way, this idea can help clarify what we keep from our mothers (and motherly figures) and what we note to let go of. In celebrating our mothers’ embodiments of the Divine, some of us may also have to release resentments and judgments, as well as let go of our own reflections of our mothers’ pain, anxiety, anger, and hurt. Our mothers have had to carry immense weights and it’s all too natural to be somewhat human in those ordeals, especially within cultures still gestating as well. Thus, even in those moments that don’t seem to resemble Divine Motherhood we can learn something about ourselves, human life, and sometimes through contrast, our God.
But most of us have little to complain about! And our loving relationships with our mothers can ultimately serve to help us start to discern through them that the Infinite cares for us as well. And from them we learn a lot about what it means to be compassionately wise. The allusions to God as a mother throughout the Christian and Hebrew Bibles, as well as in many other traditions’ texts, are no accident!
Our mothers also serve as an invitation to our own compassionate care and awareness, and to help empower and support others, both in how they behave toward us and in what they strive to instill in us (just like the Lord). In a way, no matter our gender or histories, we are each called to more deeply connect with and embody that Divine Motherhood we see shining through our mothers’ lives.
This can often involve intentionally reconnecting with that peaceful state of development and peace we get so much of in the womb – which means regularly just sitting still for a moment or twenty and meditating like an embryo, so to speak. Not ruminating about anything at all, allowing thoughts to pass and become still, and yet in deep connection with Mother God and all being. It’s also similar to a baby being held by their mother: simply happy to be – with no analysis, identification with strings of events, or distinctions between self and other. Aspects of this type of meditation we can bring to every moment, reminding ourselves to reconnect with the Mother within, our intrinsic love and wisdom found in open compassionate awareness, as we watch our minds.
In this type of meditation, where we give little credence to the passing thought or yearning (noting that all thoughts come from the mysterious clarity of awareness and back into it) we can start to settle back into a peace we haven’t known since childhood. This is what many current mindfulness sages seem to allude to (like Eckhart Tolle), and what ancient Buddhist masters wrote. It’s also the type of peace that I think Christ speaks to when he invites us to stop worrying, to stop hurting ourselves and others, and to pray from a state of peace as we follow God’s will in love, spiritual wisdom, and care. Perhaps this is also what he means when he says we must become like children to enter the kingdom of heaven!
Further, today we find ourselves in a more obvious state of gestation due to the pandemic. As we start to gather again let us remember that we are forever forming a new world with our presence and actions, remembering to allow the Divine Mother to be embodied in our peace, compassionate awareness, and wise actions. Like a good mother, let’s hold space for each other in our diversity, listening to each others’ tough experiences and lessons through the pandemic and before, and seek to express and celebrate the role of motherhood in all the things we do and are.
Our mothers should be celebrated every day and so should our Mother Creatress! They all envelop us in their Divine Love and Wisdom, supporting, teaching, caring, and instilling life. My mother and grandmother are examples of this in my journey, women of deep spirit and life, always there to lend a hand, teach, connect, and support. Today we celebrate all mothers and the power that they’ve helped instill in each of us. Thank you for your service and care. Thank you for your Divine Love and Wisdom, helping us to grow, to uplift, and to know what God is like.
Happy Mothers’ Day to you,
Cory