Dear Mother… | May 10, 2026 | Rev. Dr. Kathryn Benton
- The Church for the Fellowship of All Peoples
- May 10
- 5 min read
Dear Mother…the womb of our being…you who undergirds our existence…we call on you today, saying we are in need of the touch of your hand.
Hildegard of Bingen, calls on the Great Mother…so bright and glorious…terrible, yet gentle…incomprehensible to us.
Although we want to believe you are with all and in all, right now;
“The winds are burdened by the utterly awful stink of evil, selfish goings-on. Thunderstorms menace. The air belches out the filthy uncleanliness of the peoples.”
The song from the Oakland Interfaith Youth Choir brought me to tears. I have spent the last weeks listening to the heartbreak and rage of so many who are experiencing the continual assault on our souls and our beings. I have heard questions such as; I don’t understand it and How can people be so cruel? This cruelty and hate is incomprehensible to us. There have been some who have apparently given up totally. Some have said that they have taken their question to God in prayer, hence my opening prayer, calling on the Great Mother of All…the one who birthed us and watches over us.
This is not the mother of Mother’s Day cards…it is not the mother of a box of chocolates or even the one who cared for us as a child. This mother is important to acknowledge, but the celebration also trivializes the power of the feminine…the feminine spirit of the earth, the creator…both the terrible and the gentle…it makes of her a side issue…one who may not be foundational to our being…at the ground of our being, still active today in our world. I want to believe that…I want to believe the idea that there could be peace…there could be healing, reconciliation, even redemption in our current moment. Listening to the young people singing was like a balm to my soul…
This balm reminds me of the words of Loren Eiseley that I wrestled with last week. Writing in the 1940s…during a time not unlike our current time, he wrote:
Let it be admitted that the world’s problems are many and wearing, and that the whirlpool runs fast. If we are to build a stable cultural structure above that which threatens to engulf us by changing our lives more rapidly than we can adjust our habits, it will only be by flinging over the torrent a structure as taut and flexible as a spider’s web, a human society deeply self-conscious and undeceived by the waters that race beneath it, a society more literate, more appreciative of human worth than any society that has previously existed.
The balm then, is that structure, much like a spider’s web…creating a human society undeceived by the waters that race beneath it…the waters that are running so fast that we can barely keep up…we cannot adjust our habits to the current challenges.
Yet some are able to adjust. Just as in years past, some are able to tap into the power and the will of the Great Mother, who represents our courageous and audacious ancestors, including the spider’s 300 million years of experience. Some are able to tap into this spirit of the Mother of All…Mother Earth, as well as the goddess Ala from the Igbo tradition who holds us in her embrace…in her sacred womb that awaits each one of us at our death.
My prayer to the Great Mother of All reflects the cry of my soul to our creator…to come to us now. Tennessee State Representative Justin Pearson also asked this of God; Why is this happening? The answer: We are still here!
Representative Pearson is tapping into the Great Mother…the one who protects what she loves from the evil, selfish goings-on…the one who guides us…whose laws the people follow. But he didn’t end there, he continued by explaining…
The Civil Rights Movement paid in blood for the progress we have made toward the realization of our Royal Personhood…our infinite worth as children of God…of the Great Mother of All. It is a mother worthy of praise…worthy of gratitude, much like our own mothers who sacrificed for our well-being…who also paid in blood for our very lives. Hildegard of Bingen, 12th century mystic inspired these words of praise:
Praise Her, most awesome of the mighty!
Revere Her, she is a woman of the people.
Adore Her, she is clothed in love.
Laden with vitality, Her lips are sweet. Life is in Her mouth.
When we see Her, our rejoicing becomes full.
She is glorious; she is beautiful.
Her eyes glisten like the morning star;
Her face shines like the sun…
She is a woman of the people; with her is their counsel.
The fate of all the living she holds in her hands;
She protects the day and guards the night.
She opens the heavens to life, the earth to seed and flower…
She keeps the hearth fires bright and heals the soul of Her people.
Power is in Her hands; compassion is in Her heart…
Praise Her when you come upon Her…singing inside you.
Amen
Dr. Dorsey Blake knew of this praise. This was one of his favorite songs that we heard at his memorial service last year:
I’m in tears again. Not only because I am reminded of our beloved Dr. Dorsey Blake, friend and mentor, though that is a powerful reminder. I am also touched and encouraged by the voices of these young people. I have more hope than I thought I could have for the future of our world. There were the spiders, Representative Pearson, the Oakland Interfaith Youth Choir, and then Z0! Gospel Choir!
But there is one more piece of evidence. It is an instrumental version of Bob Marley’s Redemption Song by the Kanneh-Masons:
This was a song written in 1979 that included key lyrics derived from a speech given by Pan-Africanist Marcus Garvey. The lyrics of the song can also give us some hope…hope that earth’s regenerative force…the same one that spun the spider’s web…the same one that gave birth to the young people that are now charged with carrying out their mother’s wishes…their mother’s charge to heal, to redeem the shriveled barrenness of our current system…the lack of life force in the people. Yet another teacher of mine, Sobonfu Somé also apparently had some hope…hope that our Mother will provide us with a way out of no way. She wrote:
We can learn a great deal from the way Mother Earth holds us all – the criminals, the saints, the weak, the strong, the rich, the poor without rejecting us, and always giving us a chance to start over.
And our starting over is not a starting from scratch. It is based on a foundation built by our ancestors…Dr. Dorsey Blake, Dr. Howard Thurman and Mrs. Sue Bailey Thurman, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Fannie Lou Hamer, Sojourner Truth, and so many others.
May we believe in the power of the Mother to redeem and to strengthen us that we may do the work we are being called to do in this tumultuous and pivotal time in human history. Let us call on the power of our mother…the mother of all beings throughout our evolution to sing inside us.
Comments