Woman Clothed with the Sun

"Today is Mother’s Day in many parts of the world. We let our understanding of that expand. Isn’t every day Mother’s Day?"

by Joyce Krantz, Pamela Gray & John Gray
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Joyce Krantz:  It is a joy to share this hour with John and Pamela on a day that is set aside in the U.S. and several other countries, to celebrate and honor mothers. With so many hearts open on this occasion, I thought it would be useful to focus on what honoring our mother means and why this desire is so fundamental to our being. 

First, we know that our very presence here on earth was dependent on our earthly mother.  She was our living connection into this dimensional world—our umbilical cord literally and figuratively. Without mother (and father) we wouldn’t be here. The miraculous event of our birth alone is deserving of our utmost respect and appreciation for the presence of mother!

But the forces, which designed and created our human forms in the protected womb of our mother, did not suddenly take a holiday when we were born and say, “Okay, you are now on your own to fend for yourself in the world as vulnerable as you are.” No, the provision of mother continues.

There is an intangible bond that connects mother to child. It is universal. If we looked at this phenomenon strictly at a physical level, we would see that both mother and child are releasing endorphins and oxytocin during the labor process which foster a powerful bonding between them. So, following birth, a mother and newborn will stare into each other’s eyes, mimic each other’s gestures, crave frequent attention and touch and have a great need to be close to each other. The mother develops a fierce desire to protect her baby, to care for her, to nurture him, and to sustain life in her child.

From our vantage point, we know that spirit precedes form, so this special, invisible bond doesn’t originate at a chemical level; otherwise, once the hormones stopped being released, the bond would disappear. Not so. The mother/child bond is a connection that remains throughout our lifetime even if our relationship with our biological mother is not sustained for one reason or another. There is always the provision of Mother.

The presence of the one spirit of Mother is here now. She has not gone anywhere. Just look at Mother Nature and the myriad living forms surrounding us on this planet providing our food source and companionship. What would the world be without the song birds and the cute beluga whale (who was caught on camera this week fetching someone’s cell phone from the ocean depths—how precious is that?) or the bees who are busy pollinating the flowers for the plants to grow, the trees that provide shelter for us and oxygenate our air to breathe? Why would we not want to do everything in our power to love and protect this home among the stars?! And what about the unfailing love for mankind? Certainly, as a species we hardly deserve it. But our very presence here in this moment gives indication that there is hope we will wake up to our responsibilities for tending and keeping this garden. But we should not try Mother’s patience!

I have often heard mothers say, I just want to raise happy, healthy children who will grow up to make a positive difference in this world. Where does that desire come from if not from the very nature of Mother whom we embody naturally through our hearts?  That self-less love, which gives without concern for results, which does not condemn or put down, which protects and keeps all living things safe and desires for all living things to thrive and reach their full potential. 

We honor Mother by personifying her nature.

I was reminded of a moment in time when I was a young girl and my mother was hosting a dinner party. This was no small feat for a mom who had six children to tend to and lots to prepare. As a family we all dined in our small kitchen where the inevitable glass of milk would spill or the vegetables we weren’t too fond of would find their way to the floor, if they didn’t make it to the dog’s mouth first! So, the formal dining room was preserved for the special guests, the grownup company whom my mom and dad loved to entertain.

When the tarnished silverware made an appearance to be polished, I was usually the one assigned to the job. Depending on the number of guests attending, the place settings could be numerous and take time and elbow grease to clean. But I didn’t mind. I loved shining up those spoons, forks and knives, the coffee and teapots so when they were placed on the table they sparkled. Then my mom brought out her mother’s china and we set that out. And it was elegant. There was magic in this moment for me, which did not lie solely in creating a beautiful setting with my mother but in giving something back to her so she would shine, for all to see.

Is it not in our heart of hearts our deepest desire to let the spirit of our Mother shine in this world so all may know the blessings of her eternal presence here and now because we love her nature and we express it? And we care and keep her garden. Particularly the garden of our hearts. That’s how we honor our Mother in this day and every day. Is that such a difficult task? Hardly. It is far more difficult to resist her than to welcome her spirit into our hearts. There is joy waiting to be known, the likes of which we have not seen in this world for a very long time. So let our hearts be open to receive her and may she pour us out a blessing today. 

I would pass the baton now to my dear friend, Pamela.

 Pamela Gray:  Joyce, thank you, my friend. I love your spirit. I always have. You conveyed it so beautifully as you were speaking of the spirit of mother.

I, too, have been considering motherhood as metaphor, whether one has a child or not. We have the opportunity to provide a womb-like atmosphere for others that encourages the excellence in them to emerge. I feel it’s such a hindrance to anyone’s emergence of self-purpose to try to manipulate them toward what we think they should become or to steer them in a direction we think they should go.  No. That is not the true mother’s spirit.

The womb is nurturing. This Mother’s Day and every day I give profound gratitude for my own mother.  I’m glad Joyce brought up her mother today.  I’d like to pay tribute to my own mother, Dorothea McCann, for a few minutes.  She provided that womb of nurturing love without judgment or manipulation so that I could find my own purpose in life.  I was blessed with a home rich in spiritual atmosphere.  I was taught spiritual things by example.  

For instance, my mother had an attunement practice in our home in Iowa.  When people would come for attunements she’d invite me to sit at their feet.  I don’t remember how old I was, but I was a child. She didn’t explain or instruct the art or spirit of attunement.  She didn’t tell me about vibrationally balancing the body’s energies by placing the hands a few inches above the contact points to the endocrine glands. No, I just sat and observed.  I remember gradually feeling such profound peace, and I noticed the people who came for an attunement did as well.  They felt renewed when they left our home.

There was no manipulation as to how the body, the mind, or the heart should be or should become, but simply letting love radiate. In those sessions of attunement I learned respect for the natural healing process.  I was thinking too, as Sanford was speaking recently, of the privilege of simply letting spirit move.  

My mother would often invite local ministers of the three denominations in our town to our home for coffee and conversation.  I’d sit quietly listening from the other room. The conversation always turned to things of a spiritual nature.  The men didn’t always agree with what she challenged about religion, but they respected her and always invited her to contribute a message in the annual local World Day of Prayer event.

I observed, and I learned from my mother, the art of living in the world the way it is with its myriad people—and simply letting love radiate. My mother also provided that womb of encompassment for children less fortunate, who didn’t have that in their lives.  For the first five years of my life we cared for a variety of foster children in our home. Our home was always full of children to care for.  From teaching Sunday school to leading a Campfire Girls troop to welcoming my friends for sledding or sleepovers, children were bathed in her all-encompassing spirit.  In all this and so much more I developed a passion for my life’s work, that of letting the attunement spirit guide me.

In raising our own children and in my various career experiences over the years, the core of what I trust I provided for them was and is the attunement spirit—being one with spirit so that they might grow familiar with the feeling of it, and then let it be expressed in their own living.

My question of myself has always been, “How can I assist others to know their own self-worth? What can I do to help?”  Over years of working with many people I could see what didn’t work: taking the attitude, “What can I do to fix them?”  I’ve learned through experience that I can’t fix things in others—no matter how worthy the reason, no matter how close the person is to me.

I have many connections with people, both in the school system and other friends. Some are dealing with difficult things, like depression, the challenges of having autistic children, the heightened discrimination I see in the school system now, and I’m sure in the workplace, and even child abuse.  Myriad human heartaches are sadly and daily displayed on the news. 

I can’t, of myself, fix any of it.  I know that my greatest gift is a clear emotional realm so that I can be an instrument of peace and healing.  If I’m worried and upset with what I see or feel in others I can’t offer peace.  What meets emotional turmoil of any kind, be it in specific people or in just knowing about it in this volatile world, is the intensification of radiant love.  That intensification of love is the heart of attunement.  Unless my heart is pure and serenely untroubled, the healing current cannot go beyond me.

I think our eyes have a part to play in this.  I feel that our eyes are God’s instruments of service, maybe secret service.  It’s said that the eyes are the windows of the soul. When we look at another we can offer attunement with the spirit of peace and well-being, and give a message that truly, all is well.  When I greet my students lined up at my classroom door, I welcome them individually with words, but with my eyes I say, “You are a special gift from God. Let your spirit free!”  I’m conscious of my eyes scanning my world daily, deliberately, in God’s secret service. I’m reminded of the example of Mary in the Bible, who “kept these things and pondered them in her heart.”  [Luke 2:19] 

We’re aware of the troubling things in the world.  Our secret service is having a state of heart with no judgment, no blame, no manipulation. The untroubled heart is the instrument for the intensity of love.  These days are ripe for that intensification of love current.  It challenges the chaos and all that’s impure. In the pure heart, the mother’s heart, “earth’s pains are healed,” as Martin Cecil wrote.  We are each called to play our parts to restore the earth to order and to beauty.

John Gray:  Joyce, Pamela, beautiful! Honoring mother and the spiritual bonds that we know provides a nurturing presence for everyone.

Pamela spoke of her mother, Dorothea McCann.  I feel honored to have known Dorothea for the last fifteen years of her lifetime. How many people can say they have or had a divine mother-in-law? 

Each of us, each human being and the body of humanity as a whole, was and is designed to give birth to the things of God on earth.  I love that in the Spanish language, the phrase meaning “to give birth” is dar luz—literally, to give light.

There is a beautiful song called “Where Beauty Might Be Born,” written and composed by Chris Foster and Bill Thompson.  The song’s refrain is, “For God did make the earth a womb where beauty might be born.” Indeed!  Of course, there must first be conception in the womb in a safe and secret place, and then the cycle of gestation follows to a point of birth.  The earth is not only a womb but the whole body of Mother God. 

We see beauty in the world, and while this may be most abundantly evident in the living realms of nature, I don’t restrict this observation to the natural world alone.  Human beings can give birth to beauty in numerous ways, as in visual and performing arts, in music, in literature, in science, in mathematics—in fact, any action, any expression that is creative and uplifting. Musical geniuses—say a Mozart or Beethoven, or very great artists and thinkers, such as Michelangelo or Leonardo da Vinci—are rare in the extreme. Everyone, however, has some beautiful qualities, or at least the potential of them.  But what has been achieved in human experience, even what are seen as the greatest artistic and scientific accomplishments, are, to me, but the faintest hints of what is truly possible.  

Humanity has been bumbling around in the dark throughout history, wondering why we’re here and making an unholy mess of things.  When rays of light do find their ways through dense hearts and minds, people congratulate themselves on their creativity and innovation, without any idea of the real source of that illumination. 

It’s impossible to ignore that Mother Earth has been pillaged and ransacked, brutally abused by ignorant humans.  She has immense capacity to forgive being treated this way, but the deep damage done cannot be undone.  Humpty Dumpty cannot be put back together again. She’s scrambled!  People want to fix the environment, reduce greenhouse gases, switch to renewable energy sources, stop polluting the air and water etc. While these are commendable desires, the self-centered human state that produces the ill effects really hasn’t any chance of starting things over, of doing it right, of fixing the mess, because that very state of consciousness and identity is itself the cause of the problem. No matter the intention, nothing that’s done accomplishes much worthwhile until and unless there is a whole new experience of identity.  The old perpetrator must and will pass away.

All along, the inner realities of the individual and collective sources of life itself have been present and are present. Divine identity is experienceable, knowable, right now. All that’s necessary is to turn from self-serving ways and to raise head and heart to receive it.  But if it’s that easy, why have so few human beings done it?  How it’s done has been demonstrated to humanity, but who sees the way?  The heavenly hosts scratch their heads in wonderment at this!  People live in worlds of illusion inside dense darkness. But that experience need not persist. The time will come when it cannot persist.

Picture two adjacent rooms with a well-sealed door in the wall between them.  One room is utterly dark. The other has windows and is full of sunlight.  Now, find the door, turn the knob, and open it. Does the darkness stream into the light room?  Obviously not. The light dispels the darkness because darkness isn’t anything of itself, just the absence of light.  Just so, you and I are the light sources of our worlds of personal experience.  We are here to give birth to divine light streaming from the undimensional into this world of space and time.  And, we see the world in the light that we express. How do things look?

To me the most beautiful work of creation is a human being.  We aren’t man-made. We’re God-made, and that is the source of beauty. The essences of everything truly beautiful on earth derive from Mother God, whether people have a conscious awareness of that or not. And we are, in form, made in the image and likeness of our heavenly mother and father.  

We hear a lot these days about the “Me Too” movement and about strong women asserting themselves in a variety of ways. We also hear a lot about the varied reactions of males to that. While much of this contains distorted, misinterpreted over- reactions, there is an evident pressure here compelling people towards a new level of balance.  Where spirit moves there is purification, and one result of that is the rebalancing of masculine and feminine within ourselves, within the body of those who share awareness of spiritual expression, and within the overall body of humankind.  We hear the word misogynyin the news: the hatred, dislike, or mistrust of women, or prejudice against women. Let’s not be fooled. This is really not about notions of social equality.  It has deep roots in the dark, efforts to deny the reality of Mother God and our intimate relationship in and with Her. That soil is being turned for a new garden to appear.  When the spirit of Mother God is no longer desecrated, She is gloriously revealed. 

Here’s a description from the Book of Revelation in the Bible:  “And there appeared a great wonder in heaven; a woman clothed with the sun and the moon under her feet, and upon her head a crown of 12 stars.” [Rev. 12:1]

 I thank the two sun-clothed women who spoke before me. Today, as noted, is Mother’s Day in many parts of the world. We let our understanding of that expand.  Isn’t every day Mother’s Day?