Nothing new about mothers … – Sunday, May 10, 1953
One might search and ponder long without finding anything new to say concerning mothers. But need there be anything new? To say that there is nothing new is not to say that some things should not be said again.
Appreciation, deserved praise, assurances of love need often be expressed—for either gratitude is a living thing, like music being heard, or it is a dead thing, like music that is heard no more. One cannot be long sustained by yesterday’s song (nor yet live long on yesterday’s nourishment).
It is the song that now is being sung, the music that now is being heard, the strength that now sustains us, the gratitude that now we feel (and somehow now give evidence of) that is the living thing. And as to mothers: gratitude for them is one of life’s precious privileges—for there is no act of kindness, no hour of service, no loving thought, no office of hallowed motherhood that does not deserve acknowledgment in some sweet way—not always in audible utterance but in a loving gesture, a welcoming kiss, the sharing of a confidence, a little help, an understanding heart.
These things, and much more, are the due of mothers—not for some far future time, but now while they are with us. Mother’s Day is the reminder of some things that cannot be replaced or fully appraised or appreciated, and which can only partly be repaid by a gratitude that shows itself each day as a present, living part of life. Is there nothing new about mothers?
If not, neither is there anything new about spring, or about love, or about the goodness of life or of living. It isn’t the newness of things that we need, but the solid, satisfying things that endure—like the love of mothers, like their service, like their sacrifices, like their willingness to give their lives that we might live; like their presence when we come home—like the emptiness we feel when they are no more there.
Then we know that gratitude should be—always—a thing that somehow shows itself as a song that now is being sung.
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May 10, 1953
Broadcast Number 1,238