Consider Moses’ mother.
Pregnant, she has hanging over her Pharaoh’s edict: if it’s a boy, you must throw him in the river. Can you imagine such a threat? Pregnancy involves all kinds of feelings, thoughts, hopes, fears, dreams. But on top of these normal influences, you have a death sentence to contend with. Mother love is powerful. Can it find a way out?
The baby is born and it is a beautiful boy. She manages to keep him hidden for three months. She knows that he is going to be found out. Surely she reaches out with all her heart to the God who is the ultimate first Mother, the God who birthed us all. Surely she comes to see that Pharaoh’s mandate is impossible to sustain in the presence of the divine Mother-Love, the creator of all, that is infinite, universal, joyful acceptance, and broods over all Her divine creation.
Here’s what comes to Moses’ mother: Put the baby in a basket, a mini-ark lined with pitch so it will float. Set it into the river in the bulrushes. Have your daughter keep a watch over it. Moses’ mother follows her intuitions, not knowing the outcome. Isn’t it fitting that the daughter of the very Pharaoh who has laid out the edict of death for Moses is the one who finds him, falls in love with him, and becomes his new mother?
How faithful, how unselfish, how just-right is the solution that came to Moses’ mother. It illustrates important lessons for all mothers. A mother’s love cannot be put down. It does not give up. It can never fail to love no matter how difficult the situation is.
But a mother’s love also has to learn to let go almost immediately when a child comes into the circle of this love. Moses’ mother shows us that we, too, can let go of personal attachment to our children, and even to cherished beliefs and practices and possessions and stories. As we do, we can actually keep them safer and love them more, bless and make them into blessings.
Perhaps Pharaoh’s daughter was childless and longing for a baby herself. Perhaps baby Moses became a gift to two mothers, as the man, Moses, became a gift to all mothers through his great life work. Did his mother cherish hopes that he would grow up to be a new kind of leader? And so he did– and led 600,000 people out of slavery. In the process, he discovered fundamental laws that we call the Ten Commandments, laws that help the rest of us to stay out of slavery permanently.
As the baby Moses is lifted out of the river, his sister runs to Pharaoh’s daughter and asks if she needs someone to nurse the baby until he is weaned. Yes! Again, both mothers are blessed by this baby when Moses’ own mother is engaged to care for the baby. Was she able to continue as the child’s nanny and watch him grow up and does she teach him his destiny to save a whole nation?
Mother love is powerful. By giving up her attachment but not her love, Moses’ mother preserved her child. She blessed both her own Hebrew people and Pharaoh’s people as well. No one is any more benefited by enslaving others than by being a slave. Though they would not admit it, Pharaoh and the Egyptians needed rescue as much as the Israelites did. This is how Mother love works. It blesses one and all at the same time.
Not many of us have had perfect human mothers. But we all have the same divine Mother. It is never too soon or too late to turn away from attachment to our human mother or child or work or story, and find the divine Mother-love. It is always available, constantly standing by to comfort, understand, nurture, and embrace us and what we care about. As we detach from personal ownership and control we are not giving up affection, but lifting it to a higher plane and attaching it to God, the divine Mother.
Long after Moses had left behind both of his mothers, fleeing into the desert to once again escape death at Pharaoh’s hand, this same Mother-love came to Moses in a burning bush saying,
“I have surely seen the affliction of my people which are in Egypt, and have heard their cry by reason of their taskmasters; for I know their sorrows; Come now therefore, and I will send you unto Pharaoh, that you may bring forth my people the children of Israel out of Egypt.”
And so divine Mother-Love brought Moses again to Pharaoh’s court, still protesting the injustice of slavery. Through Moses, the Mother-Love finally wrested the children of Israel out of Pharaoh’s slavery and brought them to freedom. Every step of Moses’ life was preparing him for this destiny—from familiarity with Pharaoh’s court to intimate knowledge of the ways of the desert—and it started with a mother’s prayer and a love that would never give up.
We all have this ability to love like a mother, whether we are male or female, whether we have had a good human mother or a bad one. Sometimes a bad experience with motherhood sends us more urgently on a search for divine Mothering. Wisely detaching from the good or the bad story, just as the mother bird prepares for her chicks to leave the nest, doesn’t have to leave us feeling loss. The love that lets go can propel a child into a larger contribution to humanity. Giving up “little l” love for “big L” Love–the kind that comes from the divine and universal Mother-God, makes everything freer and more satisfying.
A wise mother once said that true motherhood is really mothergood, Mother-God. I wish you all a thoughtful and happy Mother’s Day celebrating your own experience of Mothergood.
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