Saturday, May 11, 2013

Dear Dead Mom

Dear Dead Mom

I'm sorry that when you were living, you denied the beauty of my soul;
Perhaps this was because you denied all people who made you whole.
You had little regard for physical manifestations of The Sacred Spirit,
Denying the true earthly joys of your life, so that all could hear it.

You were so determined to be the girl who was considered best;
You set up embracing pain as a competitive religious contest.
Encouraging the use of our skills was seen by you as arrogance;
For our every honest mistake, you imposed a sever penance.

You saw all men, except the priests, as little more than beasts;
The more any tried to please you, the more your scorn increased.
Your greatest complaint against me was that I was like my father;
I wished that were true; knowing I most favored you, my mother.

My father was unsentimental, save toward his wife and  family;
You hardened your heart against all you had made to come to be.
I have struggled mightily as a mother to my beloved children,
Knowing that on neither example of parenting I could depend.

My children see me as defective, as you wished they would;
You are honored by others as saintly, as you thought they should.
Has the hell on earth you put your children through, cleansed us of sin?
When we knock on heaven's door, will you tell your God not to let us in?

I may have been born of your flesh, but not of your Sacred Spirit;
The physical manifestations of grace, in your world, had no merit.
Much of my earthly manifestation, I derived from your soul,
But your denial of my Sacred Spirit kept me from feeling whole.

I'm not the only person I know who was born to a resentful mother,
Who has found some peace on earth in the eyes of admiring others.
Your version of God and heaven is not my vision of eternity;
My vision is The Sacred Spirit celebrating all that I came to be.
















Pentecost Prayer Day 38

What if we, instead of posting "thou shalt not's" on our walls and front lawns, posted instead, "we shalls"? This way we'd be stating which commandments we follow in our own homes. We could establish and enforce our rules in our own homes, and know which homes are in our committed networks. I believe this would serve to create more peace than continuing to post directions for everyone else to follow. 

My prayer for Pentecost is that we all commit to defending what we believe in through giving good example by our own behaviors.