Mother Knows Best
Barney McBryde is a member of the Auckland Sri Chinmoy Centre who is a graphic designer, artist, writer, musician and a long distance runner. He is also a vegetarian and a huge fan of his Mum! Read on…
Mother Knows Best
– by Barney McBryde
I have read quoted in this blog the words of great rishis, of august philosophers, of renowned scientists, of great men of thought and learning, but I would like to quote an authority greater than all these together – my mum.
OK, I will concede that perhaps your mum may be worth paying attention to as well, but beyond that I will not go. Sri Chinmoy once said,
“The dictionary houses thousands and millions of words, but without the least possible hesitation I wish to say that the word ‘mother’ remains unparalleled in terms of sweetness, love, concern, intimacy, closeness and oneness. There is no other word as significant as ‘mother’. It can only be felt and never described. The mother is affection, the mother is love, the mother is concern, the mother is closeness, the mother is inseparable oneness with the son. The mother and the son are the obverse and reverse of the same coin. If there is only one side of the coin, then nobody will see a coin. Both the sides are of paramount importance. In the life of the mother, the son is undoubtedly the dearest living being. And in the heart of the son, the same experience must always loom large, that the mother is all. To the son, the mother is sweet, sweeter, sweetest. To the mother, the son is sweeter than the sweetest.
Each mother embodies the highest God-reality in abundant, boundless measure. As you all know, I come from India. In India we have a great spiritual Master whose name was Ramakrishna. He taught us that each mother has to be respected, worshipped in the depths of the son’s heart, because she embodies the Divine Mother, God in His feminine aspect. To him each mother represented the highest, the deepest. This truth is undeniable to me and to those who love the Truth and want to grow into the Truth absolute.”
I received recently a letter from my mum, and it is part of this that I would quote to you.
Those of you who have spent an honest day in the garden will know the concept of ‘green manure’ – a crop grown specifically for the purpose of being dug in to provide nitrogen and structure-giving humus to the soil. 
When I was growing up in Christchurch and helping my father in the vegetable garden, we would sow a mixture of mustard and lupins as ‘green manure’ when the last of the autumn vegetables was harvested.
The relation of the seasons to the calendar in the southern half of the southern hemisphere is such, that I recall this as being a job I would sometimes do on Good Friday before we headed off for the afternoon ‘Service of the Passion and Death of Our Lord’. Like some biblical figure in gumboots, I would stride across the bare soil broadcasting the tiny, yellow mustard seeds and the larger spherical lupin seeds as evenly as possible. Later, when they had grown to a knee-high swathe of verdant foliage – foliage that the hens loved to raid, for hens have a passion for mustard leaves – we would dig it in to the soil leaving a clean, dark ocean of loam enriched by the plant matter rotting beneath it.
All this by way of explanation.
Mum wrote in her recent letter:
“Dad’s skin graft has completely healed, and he was told, on a recent check-up at Dunedin Hospital ‘Don’t come back’. He was very delighted to be able to get on his motor-bike again.
We seem to be at a few funerals lately and today we are going to First Church for the funeral of Keith Weatherall, the jeweller who worked such wonders on the cuckoo clock. He is an old Mosgiel native and was a prominent businessman.
Our mighty vegetable garden is now completely dug – all mustard safely buried – and soon the summer food supply will be planted. There is no doubt but that our plentiful variety of fresh vegetables (and the necessary activity that accompanies their production) all contribute to a state of blessed good health.”
She knows a thing or two, my mum – knows a thing or two about vegetables. 84 years she has been eating her vegies – most of that, been growing them and cooking them as well. 6 children, 15 grandchildren all eating their vegies.
You’d better too. Mum said.
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