Mothers Day Proclamation(s) of Peace

Before Hallmark got to it, Mother's Day wasn't so much about flowers and cards and tender poems. It was about peace. Julia Ward Howe, best known for authoring the "Battle Hymn of the Republic," wrote the following proclamation in response to the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War in 1870. It's a call to arms, of sorts, calling women--and men--to be engaged mothers (and fathers):

Arise then, women of this day!

Arise all women who have hearts, whether your baptism be of water or of tears!

Say firmly:

'We will not have questions decided by irrelevant agencies.

'Our husbands shall not come to us reeking of 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 to 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 forsaken the plow 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 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 be appointed and held at some place deemed most convenient and at 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.

Of course there were other Mother's Days, but this one seems most apropos today. I'm reminded, because of the example of my own mom--her example of peace-making, and the kind of Catholic social-justice "engaged spirituality" she and my dad taught me--of an excerpt from one of my favorite Wendell Berry poems, "Manifesto: The Mad Farmer Liberation Front," which, ending with the powerful command "Practice resurrection," seems to fit the kind of mother's day we need today:for power, please women more than men.
Ask yourself: will this satisy
a woman satisfied to bear a child?
Wil this disturb the sleep
of a women near to giving birth?Seems like a decent measure to me. (After all Saddam and Osama and George W and Dick aren't women.) But women aren't faring so well in this world. Globally women (and children) suffer disproportionately in terms of poverty, violence and disease (Billl Gates speaking on NOW Friday night backs this up, as did Cheryl Thomas, director fo the