Mother of Men

The voice from the ground

Once in all scripture, the planet speaks — and the first thing she tells us is what she is. Enoch, mid-vision, "looked upon the earth; and he heard a voice from the bowels thereof, saying: Wo, wo is me, the mother of men; I am pained, I am weary, because of the wickedness of my children. When shall I rest, and be cleansed from the filthiness which is gone forth out of me? When will my Creator sanctify me, that I may rest, and righteousness for a season abide upon my face?" (Moses 7:48).

Hear every element: a voice from her bowels — the maternal anatomy, the same word the scriptures use for the seat of compassion; a self-identification — the mother of men: not our metaphor for her but her name for herself; a grief that is a mother's grief — pained and weary because of the wickedness of my children, the sorrow of the parent, not the fury of the victim; and one question — when shall I rest? — the question this essay exists to answer. Enoch's response models ours: he wept, and pleaded with the Lord on her behalf — the first recorded act of advocacy for the earth is a prophet's intercession for a weeping mother. That is the register the whole subject deserves, and the register this essay will keep.

The covenant-keeper

Because the revelations teach something about her that reframes everything: the earth is not scenery. She is a living, obedient, covenant-keeping being — and by the Lord's own assessment, a better one than her tenants. "The earth abideth the law of a celestial kingdom, for it filleth the measure of its creation, and transgresseth not the law — Wherefore, it shall be sanctified; yea, notwithstanding it shall die, it shall be quickened again... and the righteous shall inherit it" (D&C 88:25–26).

Read her résumé: she abides celestial law now — the only party in the whole mortal system already in full compliance; she fills the measure of her creation — the phrase the revelations use for perfect vocational faithfulness; she transgresses not; and she is on a mortal arc of her own — she shall die, and be quickened: a being with a birth, a life, a death, and a resurrection ahead of her, walking her own path to glory while carrying all of us on her back. The filthiness she groans under is, by her own testimony, not hers — "gone forth out of me" through her children's agency, the one variable her obedience cannot control. She is the innocent mother of a difficult family: perfectly faithful, comprehensively used, and asking only for the family to come right so she can rest.

She built us, and she absorbs us

Her motherhood, moreover, is not a figure of speech — it is an anatomy the record establishes on its second page. "The Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground" (Genesis 2:7) — and the Hebrew keeps the family resemblance in the names themselves: Adam, formed from adamah, the ground — mankind named after the mother's body he was built from. Every human frame ever assembled was assembled from her substance; every bone this series has honored was mineraled out of her; every meal any creature has eaten was a transfer of her body into her children's — the marrow-economy at planetary scale, the nursing mother of all flesh, her substance converted daily into ours from the first garden to this morning's table. And "dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return" is, in this light, not only a sentence but a return address: from the mother's body, back to the mother's body — every child of Adam cradled by the same ground at both ends of mortality.

And she does what this series keeps finding mothers doing: she takes her children's consequences into her own body. At the fall, hear where the curse actually lands: "cursed is the ground for thy sake" (Genesis 3:17) — not cursed art thou, Adam: cursed is the ground, for thy sake — the innocent absorbing the guilty's sentence, thorns and thistles worn as another's punishment: the hen's own defense, performed by a planet. At the first murder she is the receiver: "thy brother's blood crieth unto me from the ground... the earth... hath opened her mouth to receive thy brother's blood" (4:10–11) — Abel taken into her mouth like a mother catching what falls, the ground as first keeper of the murdered, holding the evidence and crying over it. And the law of Moses knows her body reacts to what is done upon her — the land "defiled" until she "vomiteth out her inhabitants" (Leviticus 18:25): a mother sickened by what the children do in her house. Built from her, fed by her, buried in her, our curses carried by her — the title from her bowels was never poetry. It was a birth certificate, and every name in the family is on it.

Her travail

And her suffering has a name in both hemispheres of scripture, and the name is a mother's: travail. Paul: "we know that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain together until now" (Romans 8:22) — creation's groan rendered in the vocabulary of labor: birth-pangs, not death-throes — Paul's whole point being that the groaning is productive: "the earnest expectation of the creature waiteth for the manifestation of the sons of God... the creature itself also shall be delivered" (8:19–21) — delivered: the labor-word again; the creation is not dying — she is in labor, and what she is laboring to bring forth is a redeemed family and her own renewed self. And the new song of the last days — the anthem the watchmen sing when they finally see eye to eye — records the delivery in exactly these terms: "The earth hath travailed and brought forth her strength; And truth is established in her bowels; And the heavens have smiled upon her; And she is clothed with the glory of her God; For he stands in the midst of her people" (D&C 84:101). Travailed — brought forth — her bowels — clothed: the mother of men, delivered at last, dressed in glory, with the whole family gathered on her and their God standing in the midst. The new song is, among everything else it is, her birth-announcement. And Isaiah welds her labor to the covenant city's own: "Shall the earth be made to bring forth in one day?... for as soon as Zion travailed, she brought forth her children" (Isaiah 66:8) — the mother-ground and the mother-city in labor together, delivering the same family on the same morning.

Her ordinances

For the mother of men is walking the covenant path — the planet's own ordinances, in order, on the record. Her baptism is behind her: the flood, which Peter names as baptism's own "like figure" — the earth immersed entire, the old corruption buried, the world born again through breaking waters (the third essay of this series told that labor whole). Her baptism of fire is scheduled: "the heavens and the earth, which are now... are kept in store, reserved unto fire... the elements shall melt with fervent heat" (2 Peter 3:7, 10) — not her destruction: her confirmation — the sanctifying fire that falls on every offered thing heaven accepts, falling at last on the greatest korban of all, the offered world. Then her sanctification: "it shall be sanctified from all unrighteousness, that it may be prepared for the celestial glory... that bodies who are of the celestial kingdom may possess it forever and ever" (88:18–20) — and her glorification: "this earth, in its sanctified and immortal state, will be made like unto crystal, and will be a Urim and Thummim to the inhabitants who dwell thereon" (130:9) — the sea of glass; the mother become the medium; the ground itself turned instrument of seeing, with her family as the function. Baptism, fire, sanctification, glory: the mother of men is mid-ordinances — further along the path, in fact, than most of her children — and the meek's great beatitude is simply her tenancy law: they "shall inherit the earth" — inherit her: the family that finally learned her manners gets to stay in the house.

Her sabbaths

And here is the tenderest statute in the law of Moses, hiding in Leviticus: God commanded rest for the land herself. "When ye come into the land which I give you, then shall the land keep a sabbath unto the Lord. Six years thou shalt sow thy field... But in the seventh year shall be a sabbath of rest unto the land" (Leviticus 25:2–4) — the shmita: every seventh year, the mother's own commanded rest — fields unplowed, vineyards unpruned, the ground given what her children are given, because the sabbath principle was never only for the tenants. And when Israel refused her sabbaths for centuries — extracting without ceasing — mark what God did, because it is one of the sternest and most maternal acts in the record: the captivity's length was set by her unpaid rest: the land lay desolate seventy years, "until the land had enjoyed her sabbaths: for as long as she lay desolate she kept sabbath, to fulfil threescore and ten years" (2 Chronicles 36:21). God enforced the mother's rest — collected her sabbaths in arrears, at the tenants' expense — the Father backing the mother's needs against the children's refusals, which every household eventually learns is what a good father does. And her final sabbath is on the calendar: the answer given to her one question — "for the space of a thousand years shall the earth rest" (Moses 7:64) — the millennium as her long-promised seventh day; and even the lineage answered her by name: into the very genealogy of Enoch's vision was born a child called Noah — rest — "this same shall comfort us": the family's reply to the mother's question, delivered as a baby.

Her table

Meanwhile — through every century of the labor — she has never once stopped setting the table. The Word of Wisdom's deep layer was her provision honored at her rhythm: "every herb in the season thereof, and every fruit in the season thereof" — receiving as the mother gives, on the mother's schedule. And Section 59 reveals the spirit of her table, including a clause that should astonish anyone who thinks God's economy is merely functional: "all things which come of the earth... are made for the benefit and the use of man, both to please the eye and to gladden the heart; Yea, for food and for raiment, for taste and for smell, to strengthen the body and to enliven the soul" (59:18–19) — to please the eye: the mother's provision is deliberately beautiful, aesthetic generosity written into the design spec — flavor and fragrance itemized in revelation, the table set not for survival but for gladness. "For the earth is full, and there is enough and to spare" (104:17) — her abundance is doctrinally certified: scarcity, wherever it exists among her children, is a distribution failure at the tenants' table, never a shortfall at hers. And the same revelation posts the one table-manner she is owed: "it pleaseth God that he hath given all these things unto man... to be used with judgment, not to excess, neither by extortion" (59:20). Extortion — the scriptures' own word for what must never be done to the mother's provision: taking by force beyond need, the strong stripping the source — hamas at the table, the violence-word aimed at the ground. Stewardship of the earth, in this frame, was never environmental fashion. It is filial piety: table manners toward the mother of men, whose sabbaths God himself enforces and whose extortion he has named.

When shall I rest?

So answer her question, because the whole series has been assembling the answer: she rests when her children do. Her sabbath is not scheduled by astronomy; it is gated on the family — "the wickedness of my children" is the stated cause of her weariness, so the children's righteousness is the stated cure: her thousand years of rest begin when the family is gathered, the wicked works burned at harvest, and "righteousness for a season abides upon her face" — her own requested condition. Which means every essay in this series, and every reconciliation in every ward, and every soul drawn home is, among everything else it is, labor relief for the mother of men: the family coming right is her epidural; Zion is her sabbath; and the new song's final image is the whole answer in one frame — the mother, travail finished, clothed in the glory of her God, with him standing in the midst of her people, on her, at rest.

Two mothers have carried every human who ever lived: Eve, the mother of all living, who chose the door — and the earth, the mother of men, who has borne the whole family through every consequence of the choice, faithfully, at her own expense, asking one question the entire time. Honor thy father and thy mother was never only about the house you grew up in. You are standing on her. Eat in season, take without extortion, keep her sabbaths where they are yours to keep — and hasten, by every gathered soul and every softened heart, the day the weary voice from the bowels of the world gets her answer, her garment of glory, and her rest.

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The earth hath travailed and brought forth her strength; and truth is established in her bowels; and she is clothed with the glory of her God; for he stands in the midst of her people.