Mother's Day Proclamation
by Julia Ward Howe, 1870

Arise then...women of this day!
Arise, all women who have hearts!
Whether your baptism be of water or of tears!
Say firmly:
"We will not have questions answered by irrelevant agencies,
Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage,
For caresses and applause.
Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn
All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience.
We, the women of one country,
Will be too tender of those of another country
To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."
From the bosom of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with
Our own. It says: "Disarm! Disarm!
The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."
Blood does not wipe out dishonor,
Nor violence indicate possession.
As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil
At the summons of war,
Let women now leave all that may be left of home
For a great and earnest day of counsel.
Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace...
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God -
In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality,
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.


Dear Mothers, Mothers-to-be, Women who were/are mothered and Women who mother in all those many ways --- all ye WOMEN!,

The idea of a Mother's Day was born from several different women's attempts to organize and inspire women to activism. Julia Ward Howe's effort in 1870 emerged from her distress over the devastation of war - particular for her at the time was the Civil War. She wrote the proclamation above to inspire women to act for peace, and to establish a Mother's Day for Peace.

peaceful and peace-inspiring Mother's Day to you.

Wendy

spontaneity

" … the socially problematic spontaneity of little children is as yet unco-ordinated and "embryonic." We then make the mistake of socializing children, not by developing their spontaneity, but by developing a system of resistances and fears which, as it were, splits the organism into a spontaneous center and an inhibiting center. Thus it is rare indeed to find an integrated person capable of self-controlling spontaneity, which sounds like a contradiction in terms. It is as if we were teaching our children to walk by lifting up their feet with their own hands instead of moving their legs from within. We do not see that before spontaneity can control itself, it must be able to function. The legs must have full freedom of movement before they can acquire the discipline of walking and running or dancing. For disciplined motion is the control of relaxed motion. Similarly, disciplined action and feeling is the direction of relaxed action and feeling to prearranged ends. The pianist must therefore acquire relaxation and freedom in his/her arms and fingers before s/he can execute complex musical figures, but much abominable technique has been acquired by forcing the fingers to perform piano exercise without preliminary relaxation.

Spontaneity is, after all, total sincerity - the whole being involved in the act without the slightest reservation - …"

"… when we say that a pianist or a dancer has perfect control we refer to a certain combination of control and spontaneity. The artist has established an area of control within which he can abandon himself to spontaneity without restraint."

- Alan Watts, Man, Woman and Nature