Pause for Thought – Mothering Sunday can prompt a wave of compassion
OVER the last few years, I have started receiving emails from various companies before Mothering Sunday, asking if I prefer to be opted out of that holiday mailings.
It is a nod to showing understanding that not everyone wants to think about the upcoming holiday for whatever personal reason. A simple thing to organise but it shows a little compassion in a world of constant advertising and commerce for any festival possible.
My brother and I are blessed with our Mother and she’ll be celebrated on the weekend with the usual love and teasing as we normally do. I have no strong opinions about other festivals and don’t need to have myself removed from mailing lists, but it is such a simple thing for mailing lists to offer. For many it will offer a kindness, for not everyone is blessed with a good relationship with a parent -or they may be dealing with grief and rather not be reminded every other day what they have lost.
It is such a small simple thing to offer compassion. However, it seems the world is moving further and further away from this and is closer to sowing division. If companies can, with a simple mailing, show compassion then how much more can we as community and society show by talking and dealing with people.
The cards we see all over the place celebrating Mothering Sunday speak of gifts of love, kindness, caring and compassion. What a great clarion call for us to all step up and use the gifts we celebrate with mothering to care for the world and its inhabitants. We need to celebrate these gifts wherever we find them.
Mothering Sunday is about celebrating those who mother, be it their biological, adoptive, step-children and infinitely more ways of being family. I hope you all have had someone to celebrate and emulate in that role and if it is a time of grief, be it fresh or years old, may your memories make you smile.
As for me, my Mother is the voice in my head, urging me to try and do my best and I do listen – except for when she is navigating – for as much as I love her, her sense of direction is shocking.
By The Reverend Zoë King, TSSF Rectorial Benefice of Barry
- The views expressed by columnists of this newspaper do not necessarily reflect the views of the Glamorgan Star, its employees or its proprietors.
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