Mother's Day Sermon: A Love Letter to Millennial Women* and Mothers (Matthew 11:28-30), May 12th, 2024

Sermon: A Love Letter to Millennial Women* and Mothers 

(including *trans and non-binary parents) whether you are single, divorced, in relationship, with chosen family, or with partner, it’s a love letter for you.) 

 

If you visit any bookstore in Victoria, you would quickly notice that there are not only books on the shelves, but eye-catching card decks in cute palm-size boxes: “Rest Deck”, “Nature Meditation Deck”, “Yoga Deck” …  I bought this one (Show it) and really enjoyed it: “The Story Oracle: A Creative Writing Inspiration Deck” For example, I can draw 2 cards and write how two characters interact.

For today’s sermon, I drew two cards for two characters: The first card I drew was “Plot Twist” (Show the image) for Millennial Women and Mothers. The second card I drew was “Mastermind” for an Immigrant GenX character (that’s me). Basically, Pretzel vs Spider. Will we become friends? How do we interact? How might we intersect?

 

The oracle of Plot Twist, which I connect to Millennial women and mothers, says: “An unexpected event alters everything. New information changes the game. … Subverting expectations. Don’t see that coming. Back from the dead. The person you least expect.” 

 

The oracle of Mastermind, which I connect to Immigrant Gen X says: “The one pulling the strings. The power behind the curtain. The great architect. All-knowing. The designer of intricate plans. Having a finger in all the pies. A visionary. A manipulator.” 

 

Since March, when I shared my burnout experience, quite a number of people shared with me about their own burnout experiences. There were many of us. One of us said, “I am the survivor of burnout” from the field of social work; many are going through it now, some us have been on a healing journey for many years. These academics, government officials, kind and compassionate people basically told me “You are not alone.” And all of them were women, queer and transgender folks in my circle. That truly made me feel sad. Regardless of whether you are White or racialized, born here or an immigrant, regardless of career, position, rank in your workplace, Millennials and Baby boomers, burnout can pass through you.  

 

In March, a BVU member handed me a recent Globe and Mail article and said, “I was thinking of you when I read it”. Next day, I sat down with some freshly-brewed hot coffee, and started to read it. Before my coffee had even cooled down, I finished the two-page article in tiny, fine print. I ached. I could connect the dots between the interconnection of all of us, the interconnection of all of you, the interconnection in me, the interconnection between Millennial Women and mothers, GenX immigrants and Baby boomers, Plot Twist and Mastermind, Pretzels and Spiders. In the article “Some Call it Burnout. Others are ‘Quiet Quitting’”, Ann Hui writes, “Everywhere around me, smart, talented, hard-working millennial women suddenly seem to be falling apart.” Hui was serenading her aching love for her fellow Pretzels. “We were bright-eyed idealists, off to build social enterprises, and perform work with purpose. As young girls, we wore T-shirts emblazoned with slogans of “Girls can do anything.” We were raised with the promise of “Girl power.” And yet — here comes the “Pretzel Twist” — After economic upheavals happening one after another – like the 2008 financial crisis, record levels of unemployment, and on and on - the pandemic happened. Millennial women and mothers were homeschooling their kids, and 63 percent of job losses in Canada in the first month of the pandemic were women. In the first months of the pandemic, more than 20,000 women dropped out of the workforce entirely, and they could not quickly recover from their layoff as their counterparts - men - did. Over two-thirds of those women were mothers: Smart, driven and hard-working millennial women and racialized women, often in service-industry jobs. 

“Women and mothers burn out from ‘over-giving’” my friend said to me. Their energy, talent, ambition, passion, expertise, care, voice and vision — "over-giving", while at work, “We feel unsupported, undervalued; At home, we’re still expected to give more. Everywhere around me, I heard the echoes of the same sentiment: Millennial women are not okay.”  

 

On the other hand, I, GenX/Immigrant and racialized, am the Mastermind. I am the Spider. The last of Gen X and the advent of the Millennial generation, the spider pulling just one more string from the web to make the next line outward.  Since I decided to leave Korea and from the day I arrived in Canada, I remarkably - I highlight “remarkably” here with intended emphasis - rose from multiple flames that burned me: patriarchy, gender, language, racism, sexism, all the things you can imagine when you look at me - . I wove my Mastermind web to protect myself, to resist, to survive, and to flourish. The side-effect of acting like a mastermind spider is that the tough, sticky threads of the web I create to shape myself bind me so that I struggle to venture into the vibrant, dynamic, wider-than-the-web-world full of life, where nothing can be predicted entirely. Just like in Audre Lorde’s remarkable poem, Litany for Survival, written for those who are anxious and fearful, “Remember… We were never meant to survive.” 

 

So, what do Millennial women and mothers (Pretzel, the Plot Twist) and Immigrant Gen X (Spider, the Mastermind) - have in common? 

 

I am not here to give any spiritual advice. Nor will I attempt to suggest one perfect societal systemic solution. But I can tell you, we are not meant to survive. We are meant to live an adventure, which is not in the future tense but in the present, already happening. We are meant to embrace a love affair with life unfolding, life creating, to be playful and to be messy, and to roll and spread out the welcome mat on the green grass. A Korean poet said (I grew up reciting his poetry) in his poem, entitled Picnic or outing,

 

"I shall return to the sky. 

As the dawn light touches and fades,

Together with the dew, hand in hand,

I shall return to the sky.

Alone together in the twilight,

Playing by the shore and the clouds beckoning me,

I shall return to the sky.

On the day this beautiful world's outing ends,

I will go and say, 'It was beautiful.'"

 

In between the life we are granted, and the death we are granted, it is like a picnic, a love affair, an adventure, the now that is streaming around us and through us like the aurora that streamed over our heads this weekend. 

 

I have a friend who is the embodiment of this compelling thing which the West African Song Fanga Alafia Ashe Ashe sings about: the “Ashe energy” as “A basic force emanating from the Creator that unites all living and non-living things.” If it were not for my life-force friend, I could have spent that whole day in my “Calendar Time.” Schedules. Appointments. Kids chiro appointments. Dental appointments. Deadlines. But my friend texted, “Have you gone for a walk to Uplands Park around Clover Point Cattle Point? Let’s go and get good views of the ocean from the mountain / find the eagles and an owl / and many many camas flowers.” So, I accepted the invitation and transported myself from Calendar Time to Adventure Time. To spend time with the Unknown. Time with Ashe All Mighty (quoting my friend) who is everything in everything. Playfulness is our vehicle to move into that Ashe Time and space with Un-wordy-ness (less words, more walk), keen on adventure, not on achieving. We laid down on a rock bluff surrounded by lush camas flowers, connecting our hearts with the clouds that swiftly passed overhead.

My friend said, Ha Na, you know, God is non-binary. In Nature, in its own balance, there’s nothing bad or good which we can measure by human standards. Blurring good and evil, isn’t God everything in everything? 

 

I responded, “Today, more than ever, I feel God as energy forces, alive and fluid, just as the living forces that sustain all in nature.” 

If God is non-binary, beyond human expectation, this life-force energy God, this Ashe, is not the thing that is only in nature, separate from us as ‘Human, Superior and Separate’.

The experiential view that everything in everything is connected with this non-binary God that overflows and sustains everything and myself, revives us, expands us. 

 

If we learn this non-Binary God with our whole body, how we are part of a non-binary wholeness, we revive with God. One with the Earth, not intellectually but experientially… Ecofeminism might be the gentle yoke Jesus mentioned. 

 

My friend responded, “We are safe. Profoundly, ultimately, we are safe”.

 

As we departed for our homes, I said, “Thank you for today’s adventure, friend. “

 

Then, my Ashe full friend said, “Adventure? It was already, a long time ago, and it is present, happening now… “

 

After the camas flower philosophy outing, I started to rethink Jesus’s invitation “Come to me, all you that are weary and carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest.” Before, I considered this passage quite boring. Uninteresting. Meh. Not my cup of tea. Now, after my Uplands Park Non-Calendar Time, I think Jesus’s teaching is quite fabulous! 

 

Enthusiasm is an easy yoke. Pleasure that is meant for you is a light burden. 

 

Jump off from the spider’s tight masterplan web… 

Deliciously devour a Pretzel Plot Twist in one go… 

 

Just imagine… Jesus texts you today. “Come to me.” You’ve got his message. “I will give you rest.” Where does he say we shall meet him? Moka House? Mystic Vale? Mount Tolmie? Munro’s Books? (Where I found the Story Oracle?) Broad View? Jesus knows a great place for a non-scripted outing to learn his easy yoke and try his light burden. 

 

On this Singular Planet, Mother Earth, Millennial women, Spider GenX, Mischief-makers, Pretzels, Masterminds, and all of you… All of the mothers… All of the parents… All of the children… May you all flourish like camas flowers and learn from the clouds, flowing and moving in the wind-filled sky, passing us. We are hopeful. We are resilient. We are rising. Owning ourselves. Owning our authenticity. Owning our new story. Happy Mother’s Day.