What Would Our Mothers Say?
Stop right there.
I invite you to put any unresolved mother-issues
To the side.
Just for a few breaths.
You can pick it up again in a few moments.
Imagine your mom in essence, deep inside.
Imagine the very, very best of her,
Wishing the very, very best
For you.
What would your mother want for you?
What would her prayers be for you?
Ponder.
~~~
Here is my matriarchal lineage:
My mother Tillie
My grandmother Sonia
My great-grandmother Rifka
My great–great grandmother Nachama
I say their names to invoke their presence.
What would their prayers be for me?
I imagine their prayers would be:
That I be safe and loved.
That I be comfortable and protected.
That I live true to myself.
I imagine.
What about you?
Can you imagine what your mother’s prayers for you might be?
Your grandmother’s prayers?
Great-grandmother’s?
Great-great—all the way—mothers?
Ponder.
~~~
(Thank you to Susan B., for sending this on.)
Yael Deckelbaum is an Israel/Canadian singer-songwriter-activist. Although the video below is seven years old, its prayers, its longing, its community-based intentions are timely, so timely today.
Here are Yael’s words, slightly edited, explaining the Prayer of the Mothers:
“The song “Prayer of the Mothers”, was born as a result of an alliance made between myself and a group of courageous women, leading the movement of “Women Wage Peace”.
The movement arose in the summer of 2014 during the escalation of violence between Israel and the Palestinians, and the military operation “Tzuk Eitan”.
On October 4, 2016, Jewish and Arab women began with the joint “March of Hope” project. Thousands of women marched from the north of Israel to Jerusalem in a call for peace. A call that reached its peak on October 19th, in a march of at least 4,000 women, half of them Palestinian, and half Israeli, in Qasr el Yahud (on the northern Dead Sea), in a joint prayer for peace.
The very same evening 15,000 women protested in front of the prime minister’s house in Jerusalem.
The marches were joined by the Nobel Prize for Peace winner Leymah Gbowee, whose leadership led to the ending of the Second Liberian Civil War in 2003, by the joint force of women.
In this song, I combined a recording of Leymah, sampled from a YouTube video in which she sent her blessings to the movement.”
~~~
Let’s not give up before the miracle.
Let’s continue to imagine,
To believe,
To hope
For peace.
From our mothers
And our
Mother’s mothers—
Peace
To ourselves
To our children,
Forward
And
Back,
Our lineage
Of light.
Here and there
And
Everywhere,
May we
All
Be
Safe.
May the
Prayers
Of our
Mothers
Live.
All blessings,
Aruni
~~~~
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