Mothering Sunday 2020
Sunday 22 March 2020
Today is Mothering Sunday in the UK, and I am sitting at home in self-isolation because of this awful war the world is waging against an invisible enemy. It gives me time for reflection. My mother, Gwen Anderson, born Gwen Starbuck (1916-2006) in Sheffield, England, was a Salvation Army officer for almost 70 years, which is as long as I have lived. She gave birth to me four years after the Second World War, in what was then the Salvation Army Mothers’ Hospital in Hackney, London, which makes me a Baby Boomer! I want to concentrate on the qualities that my mother showed in this blog.
Firstly, she was courageously resilient. She was born to
Salvation Army officer parents during the First World War, and was an officer
in the Salvation Army during the Second World War, particularly serving in the
London Underground bomb shelters at a time when people lived in great fear of
the ‘Blitz’ bombing of London. Many live in fear of the coronavirus today as it
sweeps through our societies. My mother was dedicated to helping others even
when her own life was in danger, and she displayed stoicism in the face of it.
Later, when called to be a missionary in Africa, she left with my father (who
was born in Zimbabwe) and her two small children to live in a continent she had
never been to, on a mission station in a remote part of Mashonaland. Almost
immediately she began learning ChiShona and within a couple of years was able
to preach in the language. My father had grown up in Matabeleland and was
fluent in the other major African language of Zimbabwe, SiNdebele. My mother
was a better preacher and shared equally with her husband in public ministry.
Today is Mothering Sunday in the UK, and I am sitting at home in self-isolation because of this awful war the world is waging against an invisible enemy. It gives me time for reflection. My mother, Gwen Anderson, born Gwen Starbuck (1916-2006) in Sheffield, England, was a Salvation Army officer for almost 70 years, which is as long as I have lived. She gave birth to me four years after the Second World War, in what was then the Salvation Army Mothers’ Hospital in Hackney, London, which makes me a Baby Boomer! I want to concentrate on the qualities that my mother showed in this blog.
Firstly, she was courageously resilient. She was born to
Salvation Army officer parents during the First World War, and was an officer
in the Salvation Army during the Second World War, particularly serving in the
London Underground bomb shelters at a time when people lived in great fear of
the ‘Blitz’ bombing of London. Many live in fear of the coronavirus today as it
sweeps through our societies. My mother was dedicated to helping others even
when her own life was in danger, and she displayed stoicism in the face of it.
Later, when called to be a missionary in Africa, she left with my father (who
was born in Zimbabwe) and her two small children to live in a continent she had
never been to, on a mission station in a remote part of Mashonaland. Almost
immediately she began learning ChiShona and within a couple of years was able
to preach in the language. My father had grown up in Matabeleland and was
fluent in the other major African language of Zimbabwe, SiNdebele. My mother
was a better preacher and shared equally with her husband in public ministry.
My mother was a great believer in social equality. She hated
racism of any form. I can remember one occasion when she was in a park in South
Africa when she saw a sign on a bench “non-whites only” and she deliberately
sat on it to show her disgust and disapproval. But it was more in her actions
and relationships with Africans that she was a shining example. They were her
equals and she knew it. There was no room in her life for prejudice,
ethnocentrism and the kind of arrogant nationalism and popularism we see rising
in the western world today.
On a more personal level, my mother loved her children and
grandchildren deeply and did whatever she could to support them for the rest of
her life until she succumbed to Alzheimer’s and gradually retreated from us. I
could give many examples of this love. My parents were in Zimbabwe and Zambia
for some 20 years and then in South Africa for about the same time, where they
eventually retired. They spent the last seven years of their lives near us in
Birmingham, where incidentally my mother had lived as a girl for a time. My
father died in May 2006 and my mother followed seven months later at the age of
90. I could not have asked for a better mother and I salute her on this
Mothering Sunday. She left a brilliant example for her children and
grandchildren to stand up for righteousness and justice without compromise, to
love the people around her unconditionally, and to do with all her might the
task she believed God had given her to do.
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