MOTHERING SUNDAY YESTERDAY was Mothering Sunday. Greetings card shops and florists hopefully did a good trade! It is only right that once a year we should give thanks for the most fundamental form of care that one human being can give to another. Giving birth and nurturing infants is both a great blessing and a demanding responsibility, and the responsibility doesn't stop with infancy, grown-up children continue to need care and support.

Giving flowers, a card, or a gift to our mothers shows just how much we appreciate them. It is a way of saying thank you for all their effort, all their love, and all their care. And even if our mothers have died we can still remember them with thankfulness and perhaps visit the place where they are laid to rest.

It is so easy in our fast moving society to forget to say thank you, that we need occasions like Mothering Sunday to remind us. Without these thank yous, life would be the poorer. It is not easy to say thank you, so we need as much help as we can get to put our thanks into words.

We also need to remember that saying thank you to someone does not imply that they have been perfect. There is no such thing as the perfect mother. All mothers fail in one way or another.

Accept

To say thank you means that we accept the good that has been given us, and, at the same time, accept that life isn't perfect. But, even though the perfect mother does not exist, there is such a thing as the good enough mother who has tried her best, even though she has sometimes failed us.

For some people Mothering Sunday can be very difficult. Some people do not know who their mothers are, and others have to live with very painful memories of child abuse. It is perhaps anger and resentment, not thanksgiving, which is uppermost in their minds. It is important for us if we feel like this not to bury our feelings. We need to be honest with ourselves and those around us. But, there also comes a point when we need to learn to forgive those who have hurt us.

We need to learn forgiveness not just for the other person's sake but for our own. To harbour such feelings actually casts a cloud over our own lives. We need to find ways of forgiving others for our own sake, for our own health.

Mothering Sunday is a time to give thanks for mothers, but it is also a time to give thanks to God and his church which also nurtures and feeds us in the spirit. In his regular weekly

column, the Vicar of

Bolton, the Rev Michael

Williams, shares his thoughts with readers

on life in Bolton

and elsewhere. THOUGHTS FOR THE WEEK

Michael Williams

Vicar of Bolton Parish Church

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.