Honor your Father and Mother

Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land which the LORD your God gives you.  Ex 20:12  c.f. Deut. 8:18, Mt 15:4, Mk 7:10, Eph 6:2

 Today was my mother's birthday.  She would have been 89 had she not died after a freak accident that left her a quadriplegic.  She died on her 62nd wedding anniversary, May 16, 2003.  She was an extraordinary person.

She was born and raised in New York City.  Her father was an insurance agent and died suddenly when she was 10.  My grandmother remarried a minor political player in the New York City Democratic Party.  She graduated from high school and married my father at 19.  She didn't attend college -- in her era that was normal.  Yet she was an incredibly well read, cultured woman.

There was always music in our home, classical, popular, some jazz.  My mother was an early fan of MTV.  She was not above horrifying her children by dancing around the living room to music.  It was from her that I developed my love for classical music.

Her love of music sticks in my mind today because Beethoven's 6th Symphony was playing on the Portland classical station as I drove around town.  It was the first piece of classical music that I really studied.  We had the album.  I read all the notes on the symphony.  When ever I hear that piece I am back in the living room of our house on Brown Drive in Clairmont, California, sitting on the living room floor as the piece is flowing around me, hunched over the album studying the meaning of each of the movements.


Thanks for the gift of music, mom.

Thinking of my mother today, listening to the Pastoral, the words of the 4th Commandment, quoted above, came to my mind.  Honor your Father and Mother that it may be well with you and you may live long on the earth..

Perhaps there is a dark side to that commandment.  If we don't honor our parents they can make our life unduly short.  I've heard more than one mother say, "I brought you into this world, I can take you out, too."

Honoring is different than obeying.  It's different than agreeing.  It's different than letting your parents run your life when you become an adult.

I think it is about respect.  It is about acknowledging that they have given us the gift of life.  If for no other reason, that should be sufficient to receive honor.

The late Leo Buscaglia, in his book "Living, Loving, and Learning," Wrote about a woman who came to him for counseling.  She had a horrible life as a child.  Her parents were not nice nor good people and she bore the scars of their dysfunction.  As the woman developed some health she became angrier and angrier at how she had been treated as a child.  She railed at Buscaglia, "How can I love such people as that?  I wish they were dead."

While Buscaglia didn't try to excuse their evil behaviors he told her that she was just discovering how precious she was as a living human being.  If there was no other reason to honor her parents, that was an important one.  It didn't mean she had to forget, or be best chums or put herself in harms way, but she could give them their due respect (honor) for the gift of life.  He told her that her development as a caring human being would be stifled if she was unable to let go of her anger and her past with her parents.  He told her that she would never be able to love completely if she had the anger and resentment toward her parents hanging around her soul like an anchor.

Honor your Father and your Mother, that it may be well with you.

Most of us had pretty good parents.  I had a couple of great ones.  They were flawed.  But they loved each other and they loved their four children as equally as any parent can.  They gave us the gift of life and they filled our lives with the gift of love, the gift of faith, the love of family, and music, and theater, and  . . .  on and on and on.

So, today, kind reader, join me in a tribute to my mother.  I love you, mom.  And I miss you terribly.  Happy Birthday.