As we celebrate Mother’s Day today let us remember the sources of love and grace in our lives that hopefully brings memories of your mother or a mother-figures in your life.  How did she show this love?  What ways did it help to shape you and equip you for life?

My kids will all admit that I hovered as a mother and still do when I get the chance. I don’t feel too bad about it. Jesus said that if he had his way with Israel, he would pull them under his wings and protect them like a hen guards her chicks.  The idea of hovering is more than just a concept for over-mothering.  But in Jesus’ case Israel didn’t want to be under his wing, and we always have that choice, to be covered by Spirit or not, led by Spirit or go our own ways.  Being under the wing of the Most Divine brings with it many creative and inspirational resources as well as a sense of the Divine in our lives and protection.

Hovering like a bird is what the Holy Spirit did over the deep at the beginning of the creation story in Genesis chapter one.  The universe was chaotic and dark and had no form.  Then this “mə·ra·ḥe·p̄eṯ ” (hovering) over the deep, and it fluttered and brought forth light and life out of the surface of the deep.  Mə·ra·ḥe·p̄eṯ ‘ is only used this one time in the Bible, but its closest noun to it is mê·rā·ḥem which means birth and  rah ma which means womb.  It is an act that is more than hanging over something – it is bringing it to life through this hovering motion.  From this perspective it is safe to see that the Holy Spirit was the bringer of all life and is the source of all creative energy. In fact, the earth was without form and was chaotic and dark.  But this hovering Holy Spirit brought forth structure, order and light.  Maybe you have had a time in your life you felt you needed structure or order or light as you handled life’s problems.  It is a relief to feel the presence of the Holy Spirit hovering over you, helping to bring that into your life, being as the book of John in the New Testament tells us, a comforter and advocate that will always be at our sides.

This hovering over or like a bird above its chicks as an analogy for God’s motherly love is used throughout the Old Testament. When Moses was leaving everything to Joshua, Moses sang a song to Israel.  (Deuteronomy 32: 1-5) and started the song with

“Listen, you heavens, and I will speak;
    hear, you earth, the words of my mouth.
² Let my teaching fall like rain
    and my words descend like dew,
like showers on new grass,
    like abundant rain on tender plants.

Moses was talking to the Israelites who were preparing to go into the Promised Land.  In this song, focused on their new life in the promised land, Moses painted a picture of freshness.  Morning dew.  New blades of grass.  It also says the following:

(Deuteronomy 32:9-11)

In a desert land [God] found [Jacob],
    in a barren and howling waste.
He shielded him and cared for him;
    he guarded him as the apple of his eye,
¹¹ like an eagle that stirs up its nest
    and hovers over its young,
that spreads its wings to catch them
    and carries them aloft.
¹² The Lord alone led him;
An eagle has two active parents teaching it to learn to fly. The parental eagles are very vigorous in the lives of their young.  While they don’t save an eaglet in flight, they do make the nest a little uncomfortable little by litter as the eaglets get larger and continue to put the food farther and farther away from the nest to nurture independence.  Part of Divine’s love is to allow for strengthening of our spiritual selves as we learn to discern more and more. That’s not lack of love, but part of loving us.

But woe to those who disturb a bird’s nests.  I can tell you a story about when I was a little girl and the blue jays used to lay eggs in the dogwood tree off my grandmother’s porch.  She had decorative wrought iron which for me was a good climbing ladder to look in this tree to see bird eggs and baby birds.  But one time one of the parent Blue Jays caught me in her nest and swooped down at me.  It very evidently wanted me to be out of the territory of that nest.  After that the mother bird was never far enough away that I felt comfortable climbing up the wrought iron again.  I knew that these baby birds had a protective parent looking over them. Like the eaglet, God wants to encourage independent thought, but like the Blue Jay, it is best to not mess with the ones under those wings.

This was the idea of the Lord hovering over these Israelites like a bird over its young. It is an image that is used throughout the Psalms and in the books of the prophets in the Old Testament, always equating this hovering mother bird with the care of God or of the Holy Spirit protecting or inspiring the Israelites.

When we get to the New Testament, we run into the same kind of analogy but in Greek instead of Hebrew, and it starts at the very beginning of the book once again.  When the angel says to Mary that she will be with child, and she pushes back and says, “How can this be, for I am a virgin?” (Luke 1:34). , the angel answers that the Holy Spirit will come and overshadow Mary — hover over her.  But it doesn’t end as an analogy with the impregnation of Mary as the continuous birthing of the life of Christ into this world.  This happens, this hovering of the Holy Spirit to this day.  It affects our spiritual lives and help us to birth new zest into our lives.

This analogy of birth or new spiritual insights through the Holy Spirit is used in Romans 8. We are introduced here to the First Century thoughts of dualism.  There are two ways to be born it says a lot like John 3 tells us: there is flesh and there is Spirit.  Flesh is equated with mortality. But Spirit comes to bring people to spiritual life. To zesethe in Greek – where we get the word zest as in zest for life. It’s not just a normal good life, but an abundant life that can be fully lived spiritually. Romans 8 uses language like “waiting in expectation of children of God,” and “Groaning as in the pains of childbirth.” If you could imagine the Holy Spirit bringing about spiritual life and renewal – allowing God’s grace to come into the world again and again, to make love fully present and active. 

We can admit that spiritual change is very much like a process of birth with the way that transformation generally comes in waves as we are developed and birthed into new spiritual insights and ways of being.  Sometimes, it is a new understanding or a new .way of living this life. It can even seem rather painful at times. Change can be profound and takes a long time. Having the spirit come into your life to help takes openness to experience life in a completely different way.

There is a final way I want to talk about this Holy Spirit coming over us to bring about God’s grace and love, and that is in meeting for worship with something called a gathered or a covered meeting. We are often asked if we as Quakers take communion, and the answer to that is that we don’t take the outward sacrament but depend on Spirit to bring us through this process of communion with one another and each other within our souls. Some equate this act of communion with a gathered or covered meeting. But what do I mean by gathered or covered meeting for worship?

It is said that if a meeting for worship that is generally silent takes on a feeling of holiness that everyone in the meeting feels, it is a gathered meeting.  And you can see how this is a time of communion.  As we sit in silence and listen for Spirit, there are times when it can literally be felt like hairs raised on your arm after a time of calm, peaceful silence or moving vocal ministry. The air is filled with authenticity and trust.

Google AI says that a gathered meeting is  “a profound, often “covered” Quaker worship experience where participants feel a shared, intense sense of unity, spiritual communion, and divine presence. It is a state of deep collective silence and connection with the Light, often described as an “overshadowing presence” where individual wills align… While Quaker Meeting for Worship is generally a time of silent, expectant waiting for the Spirit, a gathered meeting is when this purpose is achieved in a particularly powerful, collective way. It often occurs as “increasingly rich vocal ministry” brings worshippers together. It is distinct from merely sharing thoughts; it is a shared experience of the Divine.” End quote.

And that is communion of our spirits on as deep a level as possible as we pass the sacred to one another in the meeting.  The silence during these rarely felt events can be intense and thick. People feel a sense of oneness with each other and with God. It is an unexpected feeling of grace and holiness that is deeply nourishing and refreshing. People led to speak during this time are typically centered and their words are unifying.

If you imagine the famous Quaker picture  — The Presence in the Midst. It is a famous 1916 painting by Irish Quaker James Doyle Penrose (1862–1932) depicting Jesus standing in the center of a silent 17th-century Quaker meeting for worship. This was James Doyle Penrose’s interpretation of a gathered meeting.  It is when you feel like you can feel that of God in the air over and around us. It is a mystical experience that is divine in nature.

In conclusion, God’s Spirit or the Holy Spirit is an agent of protection as a mother bird would harbor her chicks.  It is a way of being under the covering of a spiritual dimension.  It is God’s way of hover mothering us where we feel protected, inspired and refreshed.  It births new spiritual life into the world and gives us an opportunity to live in communion with one another.

• When have you felt chaotic, formless or in the dark?
• Have you ever felt the fluttering wings of Holy Spirit bringing order, life and light?
• How does this feel like God mothering you?