LA Quaker: Celebrating Mother's Day and My Birthday: Homing In On Tomorrow

Wednesday, May 5, 2021

Celebrating Mother's Day and My Birthday: Homing In On Tomorrow

This week Jill and I will be celebrating Mother’s Day with her 91-year-old mom, and also my birthday (May 9th). When I first met Jill’s mom and sister ten years ago on Mother’s Day, I shared with them Julia Ward Howe’s “Mother’s Day Proclamation,” a radically pacifist call to action published in 1870. Howe, a well-known abolitionist, called on mothers around the world to form an international gathering to end war.

This may have seemed an odd thing for me to share, but Jill and I met three weeks earlier at the Palm Sunday Peace Parade (led by our mutual friend Bert Newton) and I wanted my future family to know that I am a Quaker pacifist.

Fortunately, my mother- and sister-in-law appreciate my peace-loving ways and I love them both dearly for that and much, much more.

I’m turning 72 this Sunday and am very grateful that God has led me to work for peace and to address poverty by advocating for affordable housing. This challenging but beautiful work, and my marriage to Jill, keeps me feeling young ((except when my back is acting up!).

I am grateful to my own mother for having a soft spot for those in need and I want to send a shout out to mothers everywhere. There is no calling more crucial, more worth honoring, than being a mother.

Sad to say, far too many mothers are at risk of becoming homeless. According to the New Republic (March 16, 2021)

“10 million Americans [are] currently at risk of eviction. More often than not, they are mothers. Having children is the single greatest predictor of whether someone will face eviction. It can be difficult to make rent and support a family, especially for women of color, who on average are paid less than white women, and single mothers living on one paycheck. Landlords—eager for an excuse to rid themselves of tenants whose children might cause noise complaints or property damage, or for whom lead hazards have to be abated or child services called—are often all too happy to begin eviction proceedings.”

Julia Howe's Mother's Day Proclamation

People of faith often help mothers and families in crisis by providing needed services, like food or clothing or a motel voucher. But some congregations are getting to the root of the problem and housing low-income families. For example, the Methodist Church has used some of its land in Orange County to build Wesley Village, two three-story residential apartment buildings that provide affordable housing for working families and seniors, and a large community center for Head Start Learning, with a health clinic, library, and multipurpose rooms accessible to community service providers. (Scroll down for a picture of this beautiful affordable housing complex.)

Jill and I both know from personal experience how affordable housing can help single moms raise their kids so they will thrive. When Jill coordinated the STARS tutoring program at Lake Avenue Church twenty years ago, she saw that many of her students were having trouble in school because their families worked multiple jobs to pay the rent and lived in overcrowded apartments. When she helped move them into an affordable housing complex called Agape Court here in Pasadena, the families paid only a third of their income on rent and didn’t have to work quite so hard and had more time for their children. Their children had room to study and thrived and went on to college. Jill also helped her roommate Estella move into Agape Court with her son and you can see them on the video link about MHCH’s One-Day Housing Justice Institute. Jill has conducted 8 institutes, mostly in Colorado, and is now planning them for Bellflower, CA, and Durham, NC.

Please consider making a contribution to MHCH so we can help make affordable housing happen here in Pasadena and around the nation. What better way to celebrate Mother’s Day, and my birthday!

Please Contribute to Making Housing and Community Happen

May 9th is not only my birthday, it’s also the day on which I proposed marriage to Jill and she accepted my proposal (the best birthday gift ever!). May 9th is also special because it would have been the 100th birthday of Daniel Berrigan (1921-2016), a Catholic priest, poet, playwright, author and antiwar activist whom Jill and I both deeply admire. Berrigan worked passionately to end the Vietnam war as well as the threat of nuclear war.

Berrigan worked passionately to end the Vietnam war as well as the threat of nuclear war. On September 9, 1980, Berrigan, his brother Philip, and six others (the "Plowshares Eight") began the Plowshares movement. They trespassed onto the General Electric nuclear missile facility in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, where they damaged nuclear warhead nose cones and poured blood onto documents and files. They were arrested and charged with over ten different felony and misdemeanor counts. They served time in jail and were eventually paroled after a ten-year legal battle. Berrigan words about the "Price of Peace" are worth taking to heart:

Paying the Price of Peace

"Certainly the trouble is not that we do not want peace. We have seen enough war, we are sick of it, unto death….We want the peace; but most of us do not want to pay the price of peace. We still dream of a peace that has no cost attached. We want peace, but we live content with poverty and injustice and racism, with the murder of prisoners and students, the despair of the poor to whom justice is endlessly denied. We long for peace, but we wish also to keep undisturbed a social fabric of privilege and power that controls the economic misery of two thirds of the world's people. Obviously there will be no genuine peace while such an inherently violent scheme of things continues.”

Jill and I admire Daniel Berrigan for taking risks and going to jail for peace. Peace is also part of MHCH’s mission. Our logo has the “vine and fig tree” motif from Micah 4:4, where God declares that “everyone shall live under their own vine and fig tree, at peace and unafraid, and nations shall learn war no more.” War is one of the biggest displacers of people from their homes. Please join us in the effort to end nuclear war by going to this Quaker website:

Nuclear Disarmament: Friends Committee on National Legislation