Lent Practices: Confidence and Letting Go - Mothering Sunday reprise

  Every year Jesus’ parents went to Jerusalem for the Festival of the Passover.  When he was twelve years old, they went up to the festival, according to the custom.  After the festival was over, while his parents were returning home, the boy Jesus stayed behind in Jerusalem, but they were unaware of it.  Thinking he was in their company, they traveled on for a day. Then they began looking for him among their relatives and friends. When they did not find him, they went back to Jerusalem to look for him. After three days they found him in the temple courts, sitting among the teachers, listening to them and asking them questions.  Everyone who heard him was amazed at his understanding and his answers.  When his parents saw him, they were astonished. His mother said to him, “Son, why have you treated us like this? Your father and I have been anxiously searching for you.”

    “Why were you searching for me?” he asked. “Didn’t you know I had to be in my Father’s house?”^[ But they did not understand what he was saying to them.

  Then he went down to Nazareth with them and was obedient to them. But his mother treasured all these things in her heart.  And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man.

 - Luke 2  New International Version (NIV)

So, the pic above is my reflective take today on the Mothering Sunday talk I wrote about last week.  The snap here was taken in a hurry and rather fuzzy: Basically, I decided to juxtapose Cecil Day-Lewis's Walking Away (pasted  into the heart), against the account of the boy Jesus in the temple.  Simplicity is all. The seed case and dandelion were a last-minute addition, gathered as I walked up to church. Not easy to find at short notice these last two; church is in a 'nice,' area and people keep their gardens and verges neat, tidy and relatively weed-free. (to the detriment of my spontaneous bursts of self-expression!)

I've been pondering a bit as to whether I'm bringing some of my own 'stuff,' into what's turning out to be a kind of  visual meditation and the appropriateness of so doing. Last week's - which I forgot to photograph -  certainly did. Then looking at it another way; who's to know what  each viewer (most people are too busy drinking their coffee to notice it in any case!) sees in it? That it's rooted in prayer, authentic and from the heart is surely A Good Thing, regardless of outcome... Hmm? That sounds suspiciously like another example of  'letting go,' and, oh dear, I really am not managing very well on that front, am I ?!

Mothering Sunday - Cutting the Cord

                                            credit: idea go at freedigitalphotos.net

I have had worse partings, but none that so

Gnaws at my mind still. Perhaps it is roughly

Saying what God alone could perfectly show -

How selfhood begins with a walking away,

And love is proved in the letting go.

- Cecil Day-Lewis from 'Walking Away'

I am brainwashing my children not to want to smoke cigarettes (dirty, smelly, they kill you), climb mountains (high, cold, they kill you) or ever get on the back of a motorbike (far too fast, far too dangerous - and - did I mention?  - they kill you). Their father, on the other hand, has now introduced them to the concept of speed as a god to be worshipped.

 - Judith O'Reilly, Wife in the North

Sunday morning -  all-age service and, empty-nester though I am, the 'presentation' of the loving mother nurturing and protecting their child, teaching, comforting, advising and step by painful step making themselves redundant, made me smile and weep (inside) in equal measures.

The poignancy brought a lump to my throat.  I glanced around at the young mums and thought: You really don't know the half of it, do you? So, you worry non-stop about child-proof medicine bottles, buggy hinges that nip little fingers,  bike stabilisers, bike helmets, car seats, SATS results, GCSE results, Piano Grade III results, Stranger Danger, cyberbullying, Parental Advisory Lyrics and computer games,  Uni entry, the job market. Oh and sex and drugs and rock 'n roll of course...

And do you know? It never lets up; you just learn to cope with it differently, you have to, else you'd go crazy: The first all-nighter, Reading, Glastonbury, driving lesson, solo  motorway trip, depression, the post GCSE jolly to Ibitha (or Newquay!), failed job interview, solo packpacking to far-off lands, the angst-ridden phone call when they're far away and you're in no position to help, the darker, seamier stuff you'd rather not think about or begin to imagine. It's a wilderness out there. 

It's also a big, wide and wonderful world and the only way they're going to be able to find that out for themselves is for you to let them cut that cord. Pass on your wisdom, morals  values and faith, yes, let them know you're there for them, yes, 'Ponder and consider these things in your heart,' after all, you're in distinguished company; the mother of Our Lord had to, but like her, you have to let them make their own way eventually.

This is in no way denigrating or glossing over the experiences of those families, where, tragically, a beloved child - and they're your children whatever age they are - did not make it... Words, especially glib words are inadequate...

I chose the two quotations at the start of this post because between them  they so perfectly capture this tension all parents have to live with. To be fully human is to struggle  to live true within our   vulnerability; to risk the heartaches along with the joys and to equip our children and other loved ones to do the same. I might be a grumpy old Mummy a lot of the time and am certain I've made no end of mistakes along the way,   but on Sunday,  as I looked out over the little ones, I remembered my 'big ones,' and felt so, so, proud...

                                                    Saying what God alone could perfectly show - 

How selfhood begins with a walking away,

And love is proved in the letting go.