HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY MONTH 2014!

Dear Friends,

How do you feel about the abduction and sale into sex slavery of the 300 young girls in Nigeria? And would you think for even a moment that a mother or mothers would be able to do such a thing? I do not know any single mother of any culture who would even conceive of taking someone else's children and putting them through a hell like that. ...

Therefore as we consider our role as women and mothers, especially at this time in human history, we can clearly see the need for change and positive influence. We might not be able to make a big impact right away on a big level, but we can start right where we are in our own families and communities to raise up a different kind of generation of children and adults who will cherish one another in heart, and value each other's differences in race, religion, and nationality.

His Holiness the Dalai Lama, in an interview a few years ago, talked about his own mother when he was a little boy. He was riding on her back, and would pull her left ear to steer her left and her right ear to steer her right, and she would cheerfully comply--and she thus made him feel so close and comfortable and safe with her. His mother in India is a very simple woman, with no education. But she gave him a treasure for life! He concluded by saying he felt sad that in today's culture such intimacy between mother and child, or between father and child, has been, more often than not, lost.

He therefore called on all women, the simple mother, any mother, to go outside her household into the neighborhood and community and share her simple heart of love with others, taking care of them, showing compassion and generosity.

This is also exactly the call of WFWP to women of all ages, to let our parental heart guide us and to express to others such a pure and simple love of a mother. And as this occurs more and more around the world, I am certain we will one day never again hear of news such as that in Nigeria!

Let your motherly heart shine!

Angelika