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Good morning

My first experience of the death of a member of the family was my maternal grandmother, who died when I was in my teens.

This was a woman who had lived through some hard times, bringing up a large and lively family through wartime London. She set a high moral tone, with integrity, honesty and humour. You didn’t cross my grandma, but you could turn to her in any need.

Her funeral was held at the church the family attended, and I can remember one Sunday, not long afterwards, singing there the hymn, often chosen for Mothering Sunday, ‘Now thank we all our God’, with its lines, ‘Who from our mother’s arms has blessed us on our way, with countless gifts of love, and still is ours today’.

Suddenly the words made sense, in the way that familiar hymns sometimes make dramatic new connections in new circumstances. There was a line from my mother, to her mother, and beyond. The names changed as the women married, but there was a connection of culture and character; the formation of one generation by the last, and an intangible transmission of values and value.

I know I am well blessed in my maternal inheritance, and that this is not a universal experience by any means. But I also owe a debt to the many other women who have blessed me on my way, and whom I acknowledge as mothers and sisters: among them Catherine Winkworth who translated the hymn from which those words are taken, and was a campaigner for women’s education.

On the eve of Mothering Sunday, we give thanks to God for all those who have nurtured and cared for us, and passed on a sense of value and fun.

Amen