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The religious origins of Mother’s Day this Sunday are rather obscure, so for once I welcome its secularisation. Commercial pressures can be harmful but it is surely good that on this occasion the pressure to buy flowers and chocolates and cards has made Mother’s Day much more prominent than it ever used to be. It is reported that soldiers dying on the battlefield sometimes cry out “Mother” as their last words, and for most people it is through their mothers that they have experienced unconditional, nurturing love. But I think it is important to note that there are those who have experienced such love through others-through a father, because the mother was dead or no longer around-through a grandmother or someone who looked after them in residential care. Someone they remember from childhood, with whom they had a special relationship. But what about people who have never even had this-whose mothers were terrible and there was no one around who really cared for them? When I was a young priest a stranger suddenly started attending the stately choral mattins we had in those days, sitting quietly by himself. Later he told me his story. His earliest memories were watching his parents, both heroin addicts crawling round the floor. Eventually he got away, came to this country and became a male prostitute. At the end of his story he suddenly burst out on a note of triumph “Out of this mess has come me”. Despite everything he was glad to be who he was and alive. Over the years I have heard stories of terrible childhoods-and people remain scarred by them for the rest of their lives. But sometimes, as with my friend, something amazing can come. I love the ending of the book of Genesis when the brothers of Joseph ask him to forgive them for trying to kill him, and he replies. “You meant to do me harm; but God meant to bring good out of it”. Many things in life go terribly, tragically wrong but from the point of view of Christian faith, God is ceaselessly at work, seeking to draw some good out of the evil. I think of the Japanese art of Kintsugi in which a broken pot is mended using liquid gold. It is then viewed as more precious than it was originally. I will be very blessed this Sunday having a lunch in which mothers in our family are specially honoured. But I will also think of those who mended the broken pot of their childhood and, yes, made their life a work of art.