On this Mother’s Day 2016 we find the world all around us continuing to be torn apart by the cross currents of economic, racial, ethnic and religious strife. Each morning’s headlines make it seem like the future is caught in a tragic downward spiral. Yet we recall that it was on this same May 8th in 1945 that World War II ended in Europe with the surrender of Nazi Germany to Allied Forces in Rheims, France.

It is on such days that we are able to see more clearly how to strip away the hard lines and divisions that separate us, and humbly recall that no woman’s son or daughter was ever delivered into this world with all its joys and abundant sorrows without the aid – body and heart – of a mother. And in those times we also discover that the divisions that we cling to so tenaciously, and often see as definitional, somehow become less consequential as our common humanity surfaces and makes a family of us all once again.

Perhaps in these times of strife and dislocation this is the message to sow on Mothers Day 2016.  So, thanks to all the moms who labored so that we might, too, have a name, and for the many long years of dedication and sacrifice that came with that one three-letter title, the one we knew you by, but was only one of many you had to carry. Your examples stand as a constant bulwark against the cynicism and doubt that stakes false claim to a common ground that your service honors and that we celebrate in your names today.

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