By Barb Hauge
It's a blessing my mother is no longer with us. The way society has evolved would be an overwhelming shock to my proper, dainty, ladylike little mother. All the words and thoughts one did NOT express publicly (in Mom's view) are now being broadcast to The World. In later years Mother often asked, "Is nothing sacred anymore?"
Mother believed that functions of the human body were private and should be kept that way. She poured over books on herbal healing and knew that knowledge of the human body was essential but consigned to the needs of nutrition, health and healing. In the interest of modesty, women should seek health care from female nurse practitioners and midwives. After all, doctors were men and they could not be expected to behave objectively around unclothed women and God forbid they should be any part of the birthing process! Hospitals she considered unsafe and unsanitary which probably dates back to a time when doctors went from autopsies on cadavers to birthing women without scrubbing. This resulted in death for mothers and babies.
The sacred things in Mother's life were: Marriage vows which should never be broken. If the man became abusive, then the women and children must seek safety with family and friends and only then was divorce permissible. Belief in the great creative force in the universe called God and prayer for his guidance in your life was also sacred. Religion, like sex, was a private thing. You did not make of it a public display. She was shocked at the tent preachers who ranted and raved about sin, thus turning religion into a three ring circus. Mother believed love was the best and most powerful force in the Universe and that true sexual love was the core of human happiness.
Although Mother did not dwell on the devil, she did believe there were terrible forces of destruction in the universe. These she attributed to forces of Nature which cause natural disasters; droughts, floods, earthquakes, volcanoes etc. She recognized man's penchant for evil as the cause of brutality, violence and war. She said, "Each of us has the capacity to do good or evil. We are civilized when we learn to control the evil within us and to develop that which is good."
Mother would be shocked to the core at witnessing human atrocity via the media; by a medical profession which invades and harmfully interferes with natural healing of the human body; by television and internet which tell all, from vulgar display and language to presidential peccadilloes; by scams and con artists and perverts who access us through telephone and Internet; by the rampart invasion of human privacy via every known modern device.
She would approve all expose' of evil when it is not too graphic. She once wrote, "Tears for the dead but not the dead in graves; tears for the dead who walk; who see the world's injustice and yet are too cowardly to talk!"
In Chinook School I once wrote and recited at a Mother's Day tea: "Mother Love, Oh Mother Love; Inspiring Great Ambition! From The Bottom Of My Heart I Salute You, Sweet Magician!"
