The American Heritage Dictionary's meaning of the word Mother is:
A woman who conceives, gives birth to, or raises and nurtures a child. But a Mother is so much more. When you experience love from a Mother's perspective, you experience the true essence of love, that deep, tender, ineffable feeling of affection and solicitude toward another human being. A Mother's emotional love transcends that of understanding, it's a love that extends not only to her own birth children but to all children.

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I believe that is the way Julia Ward Howe felt when she wrote her Mother's Day Proclamation, after the devastating effects of the civil war between the North and South. All those young men who were maimed or died on the battlefield, there were no sides, enemy or comrade all were her children. She could feel the deep, relentless misery of every Mother's loss.

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Today, we live in a sad world, where we are once again experiencing the same pain that men have carelessly brought upon us, we the Mother's of the world. They plotted and conceived to find a way to use their war machines. They misled, lied, and finagled the people to justify their reasons for war. There was no thought of the agony and suffering the Mothers would be subjected to. Not from these men of power, not from those who cannot feel.

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The joys of Motherhood are all to temporary. She protects and keeps her children out of harm's way for their entire childhood and when they embark on the threshold of adulthood, they become vulnerable, up for grabs by those who only see them as tools of murder and destruction to satisfy their urge to control and their lust for power.

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On this Mother’s Day, May 8^th 2005, Julia Ward Howe’s MOTHER’S DAY PROCLAMATION written so many years ago, rings true. Read and listen to her words and shed tears of sorrow for the human race who has still not found a way to get along with each other without the madness of WAR! ThinkingBlue

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PS: Below are two poems written by a Mother during the Vietnam War… (the other senseless war!) sent to me by one of my friends.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~Here are two poems I really did write back
in the late 60s or early 70s -- while pondering
Vietnam. Maddi

CRY
FOR THE CHILDREN (circa 1969)

Oh my children, I cry for you when I see your sweet faces
full of trust.
Babes-o-mine, I pain for you when I see what time will do
to you - to you - to you.
This warring world will change your faces. Smiles will be on
plastic faces.
Smiles will hide what hurts inside... Smiles in inappropriate
places.
Oh my children, I bleed for you when I kiss your eyes at
night.
Lovable tots, swaggering youth,
Will you make it through this plight?
will you? will you? will you?

```````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````````THE LITTLE ONES
What will become of the little ones who depend on us? How
will the little ones grow?
While we're fightin', rackin' each other up… How will the
little ones know?
That it's basically just a game, basically just the same,
basically a repeat, a repeat,
That history goes on and on and on in foolish repeat of past.
Same mistakes made.
Will we "big people" learn so the little ones can grow?
OR
Will we keep fightin', rackin' each other up,
Vomiting up the past again and WATCH OUR LITTLE
ONES SLAIN?
Written by

http://maddiworld.blogspot.com

A
MOTHER'S DAY FOR PEACE

Julia Ward Howe

27 May 1819 to 17 October 1910.

Mother's Day Proclamation - 1870

by

Julia Ward Howe

Arise then...women of this day!

Arise, all women who have hearts!

Whether your baptism be of water or of fears!

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, 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.

As we approach Mother's Day this Sunday, we take a look at the woman behind Mother's Day, Julia Ward Howe. Yes, she is the author of the Battle Hymn of the Republic but after seeing some of the devastating effects of the Civil War- death, disease, famine and poverty - she began advocating for a mother's day for peace in 1870. (Amy Goodman DEMOCRACY NOW)

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Julia Ward, the daughter of a wealthy banker, was born on 27th May, 1819. She developed

radical political opinions and was active in the American Anti-Slavery Society. In 1843 Julia married Samuel Gridley Howe, a fellow campaigner against slavery. The couple were both members of the Free-Soil Party and between 1851 and 1853 Julia and her husband edited the anti-slavery journal Commonwealth. She also published several volumes of poetry
including Passion Flowers (1854) and Words for the Hour (1857). In 1862 the
Atlantic Monthly published her Battle Hymn of the Republic.

In 1868 Howe founded the New England Women's Suffrage Association. The following year
Howe and Lucy Stone formed the American Woman Suffrage Association (AWSA). Between 1870 and 1890 Howe and Stone edited the organization's magazine, the Woman's Journal.

Julia Ward Howe, who in 1898 became the first woman to be elected to the
American Academy of Arts, died in 1910.

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