Reclaiming Mother's Day for our children, for peace

How did our country ever lose the meaning of Mother's Day?

Hallmark cards have told us that it is all about honoring our mothers and demonstrating how much we cherish them for their unconditional love and support. Breakfasts in bed, baskets of flowers. Kindness rules the day.

I am certainly not going to disagree that mothers deserve a day of recognition. I enjoy the extra thoughtfulness that has greeted me on this special day for the past seven years.

Yet, it may come as a surprise that Mother's Day was not intended as a day to sit back and bask in our motherly glory. Prior to 1914, when the first national Mother's Day was enacted, there were calls for a day in which women would rise up for peace in the world.

In 1870, Julia Ward Howe, perhaps most famous for her words to the "Battle Hymn of the Republic," shared with the world her Mother's Day Proclamation in which she called for a day when the world would ultimately honor what we mothers hold most dear: the lives of our children, and all children. Her words rouse and inspire our deeper motherly instincts that compel us to take direct actions to protect and ensure that all children are healthy, educated, safe and loved.

A Mother's Day Gathering for Peace is taking place the day before Mother's Day in Snohomish to call attention to the overall well-being of our children in Snohomish County and around the globe. The main sponsor of this event is the Snohomish County RESULTS group, a grass-roots activist organization that is committed to creating the political will to end hunger and the worst aspects of poverty worldwide.

RESULTS recognizes that until poverty ends, the roots of peace cannot find solid footing. RESULTS also realizes that it is no small task to provide the support that citizens need to be effective advocates and be in action with their members of Congress. The organization has a unique network, focused strategy and support system that make effective involvement very easy.

Living in one of the most privileged countries in the world, we have the responsibility to use our "motherly" resources to lift up those living in poverty in developing countries, millions of whom are living on less than a dollar a day.

One dimension of poverty reduction is creating a global commitment to provide quality basic education for all children. Eighty million of our world's children do not have access to at least a free primary basic education. Education is the cornerstone of development and critical for stabilizing democratic institutions. Yet, this "luxury" is unobtainable for so many, especially girls. Education for all is also the second goal of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals — eight goals that serve as the blueprint by which humanity could halve extreme poverty by 2015.

You can kick off your Mother's Day by contacting your member of Congress to request that they support the leadership of the Foreign Operations Committee in providing increased funding for global basic education, as well as targeting this funding to ensure that it is focused on reaching the goal of universal access to education for all children by 2015.

RESULTS can help you make that request.

Making a difference in the life of a child in your neighborhood, much less in another country, is a challenge when mothers are not supported and valued by their families and communities.

It is all too easy to get locked into the routine of caring for our family's needs — not acknowledging our deeper strength to advocate for the health and well-being of other children. Or, perhaps in our fear-based culture of the day, we choose to insulate ourselves and forget about the reality that it does take a village, a healthy village, to raise a child.

The purpose of the Mother's Day Gathering for Peace is to inspire all to step up beyond concern and into action, be it locally or globally, because none of our children are truly safe and able to thrive unless all children are provided the most nurturing, healthy environments possible.

Teresa Rugg is the volunteer group leader of Snohomish County RESULTS (www.results.org). The Mother's Day Gathering for Peace will be at 10 a.m. Saturday in Ferguson Park, 1330 Ferguson Park Road, in Snohomish.