Water-Wings

Everyday Miracles

2012-01-26T09:38:00.001-06:00

Over the past couple of weeks several young people in my circle have reached milestones, making me wonder where the time has gone, and look with wonder on the way that we are created and grow. My younger daughter is engaged to be married and overnight her daily vocabulary has expanded to include words like tulle and fondant and cummerbund. Oh lovely language, bringing order out of chaos!

Language is an important indicator of developmental progress. Children can learn to communicate with a single word as early as their first birthday. By the time they start kindergarten they may know as many as 5,000 words. That works out to 3 or 4 words a day after their first birthday. It is amazing to watch this evolution in a child. As communication grows the distress of the infant makes way for the malapropisms of the preschooler. This is something to celebrate! Young mothers recently shared these word stories with me:

A trip to the dentist with 4-year-old twins yielded this distortion of mom's regular warning that this is going to be a new experience: "C'mon Sissy, there's more experience here!"
Another young one, upon learning the word and concept "edible", spent an entire afternoon pointing to things and saying "well THAT's not edible!"

In the midst of this extraordinary growth we are often too tired or too distracted to enjoy it. We catch only the funniest word-meaning twists and those that are glaringly out of context. We don't realize that last week our little one didn't know the name for watermelon and this week she knows its name and that it's a fruit. We labor over spelling lists without realizing that there will probably be only 100 of them before they are gone forever.

Last night, in confirmation, we spent a great deal of time discussing what "holy" means. We hit on holy baptism, holy communion, and hallowed by your name . . . they all left that discussion capable of using holy correctly in a sentence, surrounded by good theology, and hopefully an internalized understanding - ready to pull out when something holy next crosses their paths.

The time you spend with your children is holy time. It is a time when miracles rain down almost daily. As I look back I wish I had kept a journal and recorded each day's miracle of growth: slept through the night, recognized Daddy from behind, buckled her own seat belt, discovered that chopsticks are different in different cultures, developed her first crush, jumped off the high dive. Two children, hundreds of days, thousands of miracles - it's no wonder that God feels closer than ever. Imagine if I had been paying attention!

May you wallow in your particular pond of miracles today.

Just Right

2012-01-12T15:53:00.000-06:00

In the well-known story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears, Goldilocks tries out the chairs, foods and beds of the bears who live in the cottage she finds in the woods. Suspending for a minute the various causes for parental concern that the story raises (unattended child wandering in the woods, home invasion, anthropomorphism, eating other people's food uninvited, crawling into a stranger's bed, etc.), the story repeats one theme three times: the theme of JUST RIGHT. Not too big or small, not too hot or cold, not too hard or soft - it was just right.

How much time do we spend trying to get things just right? Most of us are working hard at making things better than just right; it's part of our culture. This drive for better probably fuels many of the problems we have recently experienced: people bought houses they couldn't afford, companies promised pensions they didn't fund, CEOs collected paychecks that exceeded any rational standard of fair compensation, and people who could least afford it paid too much for their not quite enough.

My congregation is spending a lot of time learning about Care of Creation these days. We are being encouraged to start choosing the just right amounts instead of the excesses we have indulged in over the past decades. It's interesting to recognize how easily we know what the right amount is for someone else, and how hard it is for us to see our own patterns of consumption. It's easy to point out that our teenager is staying in the shower too long, or washing a less than full load of clothes. We're not so judgmental about our own indulgent consumption, whether that is drinking bottled water, driving a gas guzzler or heating/air conditioning more space than we really need.

I'm going to try and think about how much is JUST RIGHT, and aim at that. Like Goldilocks I will probably have to try out several different versions of things before I find the just right pattern, but it's worth the effort. Most of us know the ecosystems of our own bodies. We know how much food or exercise or sleep is just right; how much caffeine or salt or company we can tolerate. Can we apply that knowledge to our living, breathing planet?

As I write this I am looking at a calendar that has too many commitments on it. Today is not going to be a great day but if I aim for just right I just might hit it, especially if I invite God who is the author of JUST RIGHT to help me find that target. And may it be just right with you today as well.

Belief Bullies

2012-01-05T09:13:00.000-06:00

A 9-year-old girl in Austin is being bullied by two girls at school. They are telling her that her religion is wrong. She's a Christian, a Lutheran Christian. She's not sure how to respond, nor is her mother, because the tormentors are Muslims. The mom said to me, "We didn't have to deal with this when I was a kid." It's a new world. . . but not really.

In 1967, a Lutheran pastor in Minnesota got a phone call from an irate parent telling him that his 9-year-old daughter was picking on her daughter for being Catholic. The incident stemmed from a conversation on the school bus in which the little Catholic girl (who was quite possibly the only Catholic child on the bus) explained to her Lutheran friends that she went to the One True Church because Jesus said to Peter that he was a rock and on this rock he would build his church. And so Peter became the first pope. This was met with a snort of derision by the preacher’s kid whotold her, with the authority of a preacher, that she was wrong.

A gaggle of little girls, separated by 40-plus years, all religiously well-trained and attuned, encountered the differences in their beliefs before they developed the social skills to tread on such delicate ground. The situations aren't that different except for that fact that one is about denominational differences and the other is around religious differences. And then there is that terrorist thing. . . of course none of the children in the current incident had even been born when the events of 9-11 occurred.

How does a 9-year-old reconcile these kinds of issues? What should a parent do? I've been rolling this over in my mind since I heard about the incident. I think, if it were my child (after asking for details so that I'm sure she didn't provoke the incident, and mentally separating the words Muslim and terrorist) that I would respond with the one-size-fits-all answer: LOVE.

In matters of faith it is not possible to win an argument. People will judge your beliefs by how you act. So, if you are going to be a Christian, a Christ-follower, then you are required to love your neighbor. Not just your Christian neighbor, or American neighbor, but all your neighbors. Not merely tolerate them - LOVE THEM.
You have to respond in love even when you are bullied, reviled, mocked or persecuted. When they say you are wrong you have to say that you believe that God loves everyone and you want to love them and be their friends too. You might have to say it and live it for a long time.

These are the kinds of situations we dread as parents, but the times where we are most necessary to our children. This is why we have to continue to grow in faith and wisdom throughout our lives as well - because times change and what I learned in Sunday school as a child does not hold all the answers to all the questions I will encounter throughout life. This is why I float in my baptismal identity: because when times are hard, confusing, frustrating or frightening what I do is determined by who I am. This is how I am called to parent my child.

And yes, the obnoxious preacher's kid described above was me. Kathy B - if you ever stumble across this blog - please accept my deepest apologies. I know I apologized at the time, but I really didn't understand what I had done . . .

Living Fresh

2011-12-28T22:00:00.002-06:00

I don't make resolutions much any more, but I usually adopt a New Year "theme" that eventually becomes a series of resolutions. So, as the old year fades away, I am contemplating themes for 2012 and I think I have settled on Living Fresh.

Children, at least before they start school, start every day fresh. Yesterday is forgotten in sleep and by morning the new day is another adventure to be lived and loved. I don't operate that way much anymore. My first thought this morning was sad, "Today's the day the kids leave." The second was fretful, "and I have to write my blog before I take them to the airport." The third was self-critical, "Oh why didn't I do that yesterday?"

That little internal conversation pretty much summarizes what's wrong with a lot of adults: we can't stay in the moment because we think we should be in control of our days. It's not true. We control very little of what happens to us. Children don't believe they control anything so they just taste, and sometimes savor, the moment. Though I gave up believing I could control things a long time ago, I never really broke the habits that I formed when I thought I was in control.

So Living Fresh is going to be my my theme for 2012. I want to greet each day like the psalmist who says "Fill us each morning with your constant love, so that we may sing and be glad all our life." Psalm 90:14 (TEV) I want to begin each day with that great sense of possibility that I had as a child. I suspect that this will require changing many habits, and really re-booting my prayer life, but I think it will increase both my joy in life and my trust in God.

It will be an experiment, but my hypothesis is that if I turn the past over to God every night, and ask to be filled with God's constant love every morning, it should change the way I approach each new day. Fresh start, every day! I want to truly live as a child, a child of God who depends on God. A child reborn in my baptism every day, just as a child greets a new world after sleep. God can certainly order my life in ways far beyond my puny powers of organization or foresight or knowledge. The experiment may fail. Perhaps my planned method is not the right one. Still, I feel certain that I can entrust this year to God. God who is the same, yesterday, today and tomorrow. I'll keep you posted.

Happy New Year! Happy Fresh Start!

The Celebration Season

2011-12-20T14:36:00.000-06:00

It's getting close. The actual celebration is upon us in 48 hours or so (or already over, depending on when you read this.) I hope it's going to be a real celebration. There are any number of elements that make Christmas a celebratory occasion: gathering of family from far and near, repeating traditions handed down from generations past, the blessing of new family members, the rich blessings of the previous year, new toys, clothes, and treats of every variety delivered by a jolly old elf driving a sleigh pulled by reindeer.

And the baby! That wonderful baby who is God-with-us.

It's very hard to keep the baby at the center of the celebration. The preparations are so overwhelming that the baby is, well, like a baby! Tiny and helpless and easily moved from place to place; a treasure and a trial, all at the same time. Sometimes the baby gurgles and coos and calls you to come and play with him: Christmas programs, choir rehearsals, festive lights because the light of the world is coming. Other times the baby pierces the air with screams that indicate displeasure or discomfort, inciting you to action, making you want to help: Bell ringers stand outside of stores and restaurants incessantly clanging, reminding us of people in need. Our mailboxes are flooded with appeals from a myriad of good causes all tugging at our hearts, making us wish we could make it all better. And sometimes the baby sleeps and has almost no impact on life at all but is always there, in the background, a factor that must be considered when making decisions and preparations. How wise of God to come to earth in this fashion. It is much harder to dismiss a baby than a grown-up.

So, here are two final suggestions for the Extreme Season. First, bake a cake. Bake, or buy, a birthday cake for the Baby Jesus. Your littlest celebrants will immediately connect the dots - cake, baby, birthday. They know what that means! Serve your birthday cake, complete with candles, as dessert at your main Christmas Day meal. Sing "Happy birthday dear Jesus, happy birthday to you." This one simple project puts Jesus at the center of the Christmas celebration and makes him the Guest of Honor.

My second suggestion: Revive the ancient custom of celebrating Christmas for twelve days. Such a great event can't really be celebrated in one day. Christmas Day can be the first day of celebration. This year most of us will have Monday off, so celebrate again on Monday. In the "olden days" January 26 was Boxing Day - the day when things displaced by the newly received gifts were given to the poor. Celebrate by making room for all the new things that came into your home on Christmas. For many people, the day after Christmas is Visiting Day. Maybe you can celebrate by making plans to visit friends as the year wanes.

When the day has passed, hold the joy close to you. Cradle it, as if it were a new baby arriving in your home. Treasure the Child, not just this one day, but every day, and the next time the season arrives you'll be prepared to be less extreme, and more serene. Merry Christmas!

The Meeting Season

2011-12-15T10:56:00.001-06:00

Yesterday, as a bunch of little kids helped me put the Christmas story together in sequence, I got to thinking about Mary and all those strangers arriving unannounced to see the new baby. Can you imagine? First an angel shows up and announces her pregnancy. That would have been enough stranger for me already. Then, exhausted from giving birth, huddled in a stable without her mother or sisters to welcome them and usher them in to see the baby, a batch of filthy shepherds who hadn’t bathed in weeks shows up. Then the KINGS! Well-dressed in rich clothing and driving Rolls-Royces (OK, camels, but still, all the neighbors would surely notice them parked outside and start wagging their tongues!) Can you imagine?

I don’t expect all those visitors rattled the baby Jesus in the least. He was still blissfully unaware of the fact that He was no longer tethered to his mother’s body. Eating and sleeping were His primary concerns; the rest was just kind of a blur behind His mother’s face and voice. I’m guessing that was a little different by the time His first birthday arrived!

My sister tells of her husband’s grandmother who offended her deeply by asking about my niece, “Is she strange yet?” Turns out this is a German phrase meaning “Is she afraid of strangers yet?” I like it. Children go through periods of being fearful of strangers. It’s part of the developmental process. Are your children “strange” these days?

Who is coming to your house for Christmas? Or who is going to be at your parents, or in-laws, or wherever you’ll be gathering? Will there be strangers? Yep. They might even be named Grandma and Grandpa, or Aunt Laurie, or Uncle Greg. These people, whom you have loved and known all your life, may be strangers to your child. This point was driven home at my recent visit with my family. My niece said to one of my daughters, “I’ve only seen you like five times in my whole life.” Now, that’s not an exact count, but several of those visits WERE when she was too small to remember!

Meeting all these “strangers” can create a lot of stress for your child. Of course it’s more stressful for some children than others, but regardless of their personalities, it can take a lot of energy to deal with all these people. They may also resent that you are holding some strange baby cousin or that you are deep in conversation with some strange woman (like your sister), and not paying them sufficient attention. Stress then brings out the worst in your child - whining, clinging, melting down. . . and you are embarrassed.

When you take your children to church, the neighborhood pool, or your company Christmas party, you are very aware that all these people around you are strangers, and you monitor your child closely. Do the same with your loved ones, and your child will feel a lot more secure, and warm up to the relatives faster. It’s very hard to think of our families of origin as strangers to our children but, in reality, that may be what they are, especially if we don’t live close enough to come together regularly. Keep all this in mind and you can successfully introduce your past and present families to each other, even if a few smelly shepherds or kings on camels show up.

The Remembering Season

2011-12-07T16:51:00.001-06:00

How are your preparations coming along? I don't even have to specify what preparations I'm talking about - you know I mean holiday preparations. Are you having any fun making them? I'm just checking because it is so easy to miss the fun - and, to quote a song from an old movie "but it's the laughter, we will remember, whenever we remember, the way we were." This is the season of remembering.

I was at my sister's home for Thanksgiving and all the nieces and nephews were there and we made lefse. Now making lefse is a special holiday tradition for people whose forebears came from Norway. It's a labor intensive undertaking that yields what are essentially very thin potato tortillas. It is manna to some of us, tradition for others, and love, even to those who don't especially like it. My grandmothers and great-grandmothers (well 3 of them anyway) made lefse, and my mother is passing on the tradition to the next generation. It's messy and time-consuming and involves a lot of work and, especially when there are beginners, laughter. For the cousins, seven of them, and one recently added spouse, it was a great way to be together. They haven't grown up near each other so gatherings can be a bit awkward. Tackling this project was a way to pool their talents and splash around in the laughter. They will remember this day.

The next day, some of us filled up a couple of cars and visited the farmswhere my parents grew up. And we visited the churches and the graves. We feltsadness as we missed those no longer with us - but joy at all the wonderfulmemories. I have to say, on the whole, that it was fun to ramble through thememories. And new memories were being generated even as we waded through theold ones: the startling sight of a llama among the sheep, the fight overthe check at the restaurant, the wind, the Starbucks. There will be laughterfrom this day to remember as well.

This is the remembering season. Take time to share your memories with yourkids and to make some new ones. Play some cards, sing some songs, and visitsome relatives. Your kids won't remember most of the gifts they get thisChristmas, but they will remember your stories and traditions and what madethem laugh. Find the time, and the laughter – it will add joy to yourseason.

The Waiting Season

2011-11-30T09:33:00.001-06:00

When my girls were small we had afavorite waiting-for-Christmas tradition: a fabric “calendar”with a little stuffed mouse that moved forward one pocket eachnight. Even when they were old enough to have cell phones and dayplanners we hung up that calendar. It was a fun and meaningful wayfor them to mark the passage of time. The church has designated thiswaiting-for-Christmas period as the season of Advent, a season of waiting. Advent is filledwith texts about the coming of the Savior, and the coming-again ofthe Savior. It is not a passive sit back and wait – it is anactive, waiting-and-watching season of life.

I spent two Advent seasons “greatwith child.” Pregnancy is the epitome of active waiting:preparation for an unknown but beloved person to arrive, preparationfor the needs of the tiny guest and all those affected by her birth, and watching for signs of her imminent arrival. Evaluatingevery twitch, itch and tickle, watching for the labor pains thatwould deliver her to this world. Alert, watchful, makingpreparations, it was Advent come to life.

In the instant culture of the 21^stcentury, waiting is rare, and most of us don'tknow how to wait well. I have been driving a lot the last couple ofweeks and in at least 4 states I saw signs for hospital emergencyrooms with “approximate wait times” displayed in digitallights that changed with circumstances in the ER. More andmore babies are induced or delivered by C-section at a time mutuallyconvenient for doctor and mother. Kindles and Nooks make waiting forthe library to open, or for Amazon to ship, a thing of the past.Waiting has become so uncommon that last week's Facebook statusupdates featured a lot of comments about traffic, lines and waiting –because it was unusual.

In the end, we are all waiting for thegreat unknowable visitor - death, whose arrival cannot be predicted,but there is a more immediately relevant reason for deliberately teaching our children towait: it is good for them. Many years ago a study found that theability to wait, to delay gratification, was a significant predictorof future success (measured by normal, American standards such asgetting a job, finishing school, forming lasting relationships,etc.) Check out this clip from a recent repeat of TheMarshmallow Test.

Can your child wait? Can you help himlearn to wait? Since there is so much to wait for with Christmascoming, this is a natural time to practice. Practice the old swimming rule ofthumb - wait for 30 minutes after eating. Remember how endless thatseemed? Yet all the time it was helping us learn to wait. Try meeting a “Can I” question with “I have to think about it; Iwill tell you in 30 minutes” or, “we'll talk about it afteryou've finished your homework/chores/project.” If your children havehad very limited waiting experience, this may prove difficult forthem, but you will be blessing them for life.

Welcome to the Waiting Season, yourestimated wait time is 24 days. . .

The Gratitude Season

2011-11-22T06:00:00.000-06:00

Thanksgiving marks the beginning of the appreciation season.From now until the end of the year I will open my mailbox and find cards: fromcharities I've given to, my car dealership, and probably Groupons, all thankingme for the money I spent with them this year. And I will be making cards andbaking for people I appreciate: the woman who cuts my hair, the maintenanceguys where I live, friends who've done me special kindnesses this year. Therewill be a lot of appreciation flowing for the next five weeks. This is good.

Appreciation expresses who we are and what we like; whatmakes us happy. Gratitude, on the other hand, profoundly changes who we are andhow we see and, I guess, what we appreciate. This year I find myself gratefulfor something I have always merely appreciated: water.

My grandparents lived within the limits of their cistern. Ifthe cistern went dry they had to buy water and fill it. They didn't know theplentiful water that we take for granted until very near the ends of theirlives. Their gratitude for water, though never verbalized, was evident in theway they handled it. Water rarely went down the drain. It was used and laterreturned to the earth. Hand washing was accomplished in a basin of water thatgrew cold as the day went on, and when it became too dirty to clean your hands,was dumped on trees. Water was scarce; scarcity made it precious.

Water has been scarce in my part of the world this year. Weare experiencing a drought on par with the one during the dust bowl. Stage tworestrictions are in place: No water in restaurants unless requested. You can'twater your yard more than once a week. Cars can only be washed at car washesthat recycle a certain percentage of the water used. We are encouraged to turnoff the water when we brush our teeth, and to use our toilets more oftenwithout flushing. This is a far cry from the scarcity of my grandparent'ssituation, but a significant change for many of us.

Scarce as it is, water is also common. It is our first home –before we are even born water in a womb cushions us, cradles us, and nourishesus as we grow. The waters of baptism become our second home, marking us withthe cross of Christ and sealing our identity as children of God forever. Tearsallow us to release our deepest joys and sorrows. My body is more than 50%water. None of us can survive very long without it. In that, all of us are one.The need for water may be the most unifying of all human qualities.

Much has been written about the power of gratitude. Frommonks in the Middle Ages to Oprah Winfrey, thoughtful people have pointed outthat being grateful changes us. Gratitude shapes our attitudes and impacts ourchoices. It creates awareness and empathy. Moving from appreciation togratitude is movement toward God.

I am grateful for water this Thanksgiving; for its scarcityand its commonness. That gratitude allows me to encounter the sacred many timeseach day. Sacred water points me to the creator, provider, and redeemer of all.Thanks be to God.

The Serving Season

2011-11-17T09:30:00.000-06:00

Serving food, serving drinks, serving the hungry in soup kitchens, and serving our neighbors are regular hallmarks of the "extreme season." All around the church and community people are lining up volunteers and asking for donations of money, gift cards, time, and patience. At home, this may begin to take a toll if your heart is bigger than your available hours or dollars. I remember a lot of years where I was just plain mad all through the holidays because I felt like a failure on every front - everyone needed more from me than I had to give. I used to think this was because I was a single parent on a tight budget but I have since learned that almost everyone feels this way at some point during the holidays. Here are a few things I figured out along the way:

Start by deciding how much money you will give ahead of time and then, as a family, DECIDE where you'll give it. Some families pick one thing and stick with it year after year but others like to mix it up and give to a lot of places. Your family members may not all agree so you may have to divide the budgeted funds between several causes. That discussion will be almost as rewarding as the giving. Depending on the ages and temperaments of your children there may be spirited debates over the merits of buying dog food for the animal shelter or toys for children whose parents are in prison. People may get passionate but that's OK - it's for a good cause!
Choose ONE actual hands on service project. Giving money is very helpful to recipients but less valuable to your children who really won't fully grasp the giving of money until they have earned some themselves. If your children are very small, substitute for a Meals-On-Wheels driver and take them along. Take older kids to wrap gifts at Blue Santa, help an elderly neighbor put up a tree or some lights, or serve dinner at a soup kitchen. Wherever you serve, serve together.
Find a way to participate at church. Welcome guests, make cookies for the choir members who will sing multiple services on Christmas Eve, help carry all those poinsettias into the church - or offer to deliver them to shut-ins after the Christmas Day services. Check to see if someone could use a ride to church. Sing in the choir or play in the orchestra. Even offer to stay and lock up the building after the last service! Take some of your baking to a family who has had health issues or recently lost a loved one. Serving at church helps reinforce for your kids that it's really all about THE BABY.
Don't do things you, or your family, resent. If traveling to see relatives is more chore than joy - stay home! Go another time when you can enjoy it more. Hate sending Christmas cards but want to stay in touch? Send a New Year's letter or a valentine or write a generic letter that can be sent with birthday cards.

I think it's easy to feel like you're in a rubber raft about to go over a waterfall as the holidays approach but try not to lose sight of the countless blessings in your life and the baby in the manger. Holding those things at the center can help you float a little more gently down the holiday river.

The Extreme Season

2011-11-10T07:34:00.001-06:00

Not everything your child learns is taught. Much of what they learn is absorbed through their environment. We say it all the time - they are just little sponges! They soak up everything, good and bad alike. I bring this up now because we are about to enter the "extreme" season.

What we idealize as the season of love and joy can often be absorbed very differently by our children. For pre-schoolers it is the time of year when they are left with a babysitter more often, when they are told not to touch more often, when nap times and play times and mealtimes and bedtimes become erratic. Elementary-aged kids will be out of school, with no homework. Their schedule will be disrupted and they will see less of their friends. They may watch more television and get inundated with advertising, creating wants they didn't know they had. High school kids are similarly disrupted and may be saddled with errands, chores, or care of younger siblings. They may find you expecting them to be adults. Your college kids are coming home to find that their friends have changed, their favorite hang-out has been redecorated, and a younger sibling has moved into their room. They may be longing to tell you all about their life away from home but find you too tired to listen at 11pm, when they want to talk.

I will state the obvious here: As you approach the extreme season, begin with the end in mind. As with all things related to your children, you have to figure out what your desired outcome is. When Christmas comes again I want my children to remember ___________.

I wanted my kids to have church and the baby Jesus at the center of their memories. I wanted them to learn the joy of giving. And I was even clearer about what I didn't want them to remember: visits to a fake Santa at the mall, enough consumer goods to fill a yacht, disappointment because they didn't get this year's "must have" toy. Those desires ordered our days leading up to Christmas. (It was still never as calm and loving and gentle as my dreams but that probably has something to do with my overall approach to life, which is usually loving - but rarely calm or gentle.)

Before the extreme season sets in, take a little time and look over your master plan through the eyes of your children. Like getting down on the floor and looking at things from your baby's perspective, you might be startled at what you will discover. Sit down with your children, physically or electronically, and ask them what their favorite Christmas traditions and memories are. Listen, really listen, and then 'ponder these things in your heart' like a certain Christmas mother. You might even be able to upgrade the season from "extreme" to joyful!

Why, but why?

2011-11-03T11:00:00.000-05:00

One of my least admirable qualities is a tendency to answer the question I assume you are asking me, instead of the one you really asked. There are many factors that contributed to this bad habit, but I am making no excuses and trying to overcome it. As I struggle with this I have noticed something: I don't do this with kids, only with adults.

When I train adults to work with kids I repeat what someone taught me: that I can't read a child's mind. I always tell the same joke, because it completely exemplifies our tendency to do this:

“Daddy, where did I come from?” the seven-year-old asked. It was a moment for which her parents had carefully prepared. They took her into the living room, got out the encyclopedia and several other books, and explained all they thought she should know about sexual attraction, affection, love, and reproduction. Then they both sat back and smiled contentedly.
“Does that answer your question?” her father asked.
“Not really,” the little girl said. “Judy said she came from Detroit. I want to know where I came from.”

These parents clearly didn't answer the question being asked. I wonder how many times I have done that to adults!

Today I was reading a blog and a woman commented "When questions are asked, they need to be received in love and curiosity; otherwise it can shut one down." I loved this remark. We need to RECEIVE rather than anticipate questions. We need to receive them in LOVE AND CURIOSITY. I think this is easier for me to do with children because I respect the fact that they are still learning. Maybe I believe adults should already know, or be able to figure things out. I need to learn to listen to everyone's questions with love and curiosity. Otherwise it can SHUT THEM DOWN. I must confess that sometimes that's exactly what I am hoping to do.

Each week I lead chapel with 3- and 4-year-old preschool students. Their questions are endless. Why, but why? And they tell long rambling stories - sometimes provoked by my questions but sometimes provoked by a need for attention, or because something else (a fish in the stained glass window?) made them remember and they wanted to share it before they forgot. I try to receive them with love and curiosity, and usually I succeed. I'm going to try and transfer this to my adult interactions. So if you wonder why I'm answering your question with a question. . .

Those of you who still have children around your knees, receive their questions with love and curiosity. You will be blessed to see the world in a whole new way. And if, like me, you suffer with a tendency to not listen to adult questions, give it a shot. Love and curiosity will no doubt take you places you never dreamed you would go.

Doing Faith

2011-10-27T15:07:00.000-05:00

Last week I wrote about how practice is necessary for learning. This week I want to talk about doing FAITH. I'm guessing that you who are reading this want children to have faith, and want children to mature into faithful adults. In the Lutheran tradition, at a child's baptism, we promise to take on the following responsibilities:

to live with them among God's faithful people
to bring them to the word of God and the holy supper
to teach them the Lord's Prayer, the Creed, and the Ten Commandments,
and to nurture them in faith and prayer.

Regardless of your tradition or situation you need to demonstrate to your child what a faithful person looks like. Where better to demonstrate this than in the community of faith we call the church. The simplest element of faith “practice” is just showing up. Show up on Sunday morning and you will be among God’s faithful people. Even when you aren’t feeling faithful!

Help the children participate: fold hands, say amen, stand up, and sit down. Follow the words with your finger for beginning readers. Sit where they can see what’s going on. Point out acolytes helping lead the worship. Let them put the envelope in the plate.

The word of God and the Lord’s Supper will be present every week. Again, the first step is showing up. Before long your child will want to participate in the meal with you. One of my children indicated this by demanding “snack.” She felt left out in a place where she knew she belonged. She was already one of God’s faithful people.

Most churches provide religious education where your child will learn the great stories of the Bible and the Ten Commandments. They will also be nurtured in their faith by faithful teachers and practice faith together with friends who are learning beside them.

As I said at the start, doing faith requires practice. There are two things that can best be practiced by parents and children together. The first is faith itself. Daily trusting, and testifying to your trust in God, helps your child learn to trust as well. If you worry aloud, your child learns to worry. Practice trusting and your child will too.

The second is prayer. Pray with and for your child. Pray over important events or decisions in your family life. Pray your thanks for answered prayers, blessings, and life itself. Pray for the people you know, and in the face of public tragedy. Empower your children by giving them something to do when they encounter situations they are powerless to control or repair.

When your child leaves home she becomes responsible for managing her own faith life. Knowing how to participate in a faith community and its practices will serve her well when she faces the world without the protection of the home and family she’s always known. Going to church, if it has been a regular practice in her life, becomes a way of going home. It can be an extension of family, allowing her to find a family wherever she is. Trust and prayer go where she goes.

My daughter’s band director said (frequently!) that practice makes permanent. If that is true, then practicing faith with your children is one of the most important items on your to-do list today. Enjoy!

Do After Practicing

2011-10-20T11:33:00.001-05:00

A couple of years ago I went to a workshop and learned the term "Legitimate Peripheral Participation in Practices." In my mind it has become LPPP and I sometimes have to struggle to remember the actual words, but the powerful concept it describes is important. LPPP is shorthand for how children learn to do things. So, when your child learns to brush her teeth, it starts with the parent brushing the child's teeth and coaching the child: "Open your mouth wide so I can clean your teeth." Later, the child puts her hand on yours and "helps" move the toothbrush. Eventually the child brushes alone and you inspect. Still further down the road you let them squeeze out the toothpaste. By opening her mouth, she is LEGITIMATELY participating. That is, you can't brush her teeth if her mouth is closed. It is PERIPHERAL because you are starting with the simplest component of the task. It is PARTICIPATION because the child is actually involved and not just observing, and, of course, the PRACTICE is dental care. If you haven't yawned off yet, I'll move on to the reason I'm sharing this with you.

This week I have had a number of conversations about why kids can't or don't do things for themselves. The conversations have centered on kids aged 3-23. The list of things people are surprised that kids can't do is long: laundry, putting things away, making beds, tying shoes, telling time on a "regular" clock, writing a thank you note, cooking a meal, baking cookies, pumping gas, getting to school with everything they need, getting a job.

Helping your kids learn to DO things is an on-going process. The busy-ness of our 21st century lives has made it hard to take time to teach kids how to do things. Think about cooking dinner. If I make that Kraft Macaroni & Cheese and steam some green beans in the microwave we can have dinner on the table in 10 minutes. If I have "help" it will take at least twice as long. So I just do it so we can get to soccer practice or whatever the next thing is. The same thing goes for laundry, cleaning, mowing the grass or washing the car. Learning to do these tasks requires that you supervise while your child does it and give tips along the way. Maybe your kid will make enough money to not have to do these mundane household tasks, but what about filling out a college, loan or job application? What about going on interviews and getting along with other people?

Parents, I know that you are drowning in demands on your time. I don't want to sound critical but I do want to sound an alarm. Your job as a parent is to prepare your child to live on his or her own. You cannot care for your child forever so you have to prepare him for life without you. While learning to play soccer will teach him to be part of a team and to compete, help him burn calories and provide endless hours of entertainment for both of you, it is not a substitute for all the other skills he will need for life. What do you want your child to know when she leaves home? Is she practicing those skills now?

This entry serves as a lengthy introduction to talking about how we DO faith. Stay tuned - I'll address that next week.

Fair Trade

2011-10-13T13:45:00.000-05:00

As every parent knows, "that's not fair" is a regular refrain from most middle-school-aged members of the family. It tends to be an irritant for parents and teachers alike. In the midst of this refrain though, we get a small glimpse of the kingdom of God. Humans were created with a fairness meter inside of us; society spends years trying to dismantle it.

This finely tuned Fair-o-meter also knows a good thing when it sees it. Last night my confirmation class was treated to a lesson about fair trade chocolate. The presenter explained first how chocolate was made. Then she worked backwards to how cocoa is grown. The students were very surprised to learn that children were being forced to work for low pay in the cocoa business so they could enjoy low cost candy bars. Next she explained about the four conditions required to make something fair trade: No child labor, good stewardship of the land, democratic participation by members of the cooperative, and fair and just prices. All of this taken together helped them understand why fair trade chocolate products cost more. Then she suggested they use social media to challenge the big candy companies to use fair trade chocolate. The kids liked the fair-ness of this. Later in class we made fun foam turkeys which will be sold at exorbitant prices to provide turkeys to families in need for Thanksgiving. They understood again that it was a fair exchange.

Imagine my surprise when during my morning blog-surfing I came across another young person thinking about chocolate, but from a different faith and fairness perspective. Cindy McPeake is living and working in Kota Kinabalu, Malaysia, for a year through ELCA Young Adults in Global Mission. The following is excerpted from her blog entry Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. . . and Jesus:

At the beginning of the movie, after the Golden Ticket announcement has been made, Charlie receives his birthday present- a bar of chocolate. This will be the only bar of chocolate he gets all year. After opening the chocolate and NOT finding the Golden Ticket, he begins to share his chocolate bar with the rest of the family. His mom tells him not to, it's his only chocolate bar, it's his birthday and he should enjoy it for himself. Charlie says, “it’s my candy bar and I’ll do what I want with it.” He proceeds to break off a piece for each family member. And each one does something different with it. One inhales the delicious aroma of chocolate, one takes a large bite, and one savors the flavor slowly. For me it was obvious to make a parallel between this moment and our call as Christians. We have received a great gift and we are called to share that gift, the love of Christ, with those around us. We are Charlie.

The Kingdom of Heaven runs on a different economy. It is fair; actually it is beyond fair. It is generous as only a child knows how to be generous - sharing without worrying about tomorrow, having less so that others can have a share.

I think that's a fair trade - teaching our kids about the world while they teach us about the kingdom! I am guessing that God planned it this way.

Curb Your Enthusiasm

2011-10-06T11:47:00.000-05:00

Last Sunday I was visiting another congregation in another state. The choir sang to a respectful and appreciative congregation. At the end of the anthem, which was greeted with warm and polite silence, a small voice rang out: "Yaaaaaay!" The congregation burst into laughter. The choir looked pleased as punch while the parents, no doubt, hushed the little one. I've been thinking about that moment a lot this week.

One of the things I most adore about children is their uncensored reactions to events. They restore our ability to be "wow-ed" - because we all got the message that we are not allowed to be wow-ed, once we become adults. A child's sense of wonder is a gift to the world. It makes the world brighter and shinier. It makes the world true-er. One of my grandpas, who wasn't exactly child-friendly most of the time, loved to give a baby his or her first pickle. He never tired of seeing their faces squinch up as they encountered sour for the first time. True and uncensored reactions are gifts!

I'm wondering why we believe it's necessary to teach children to curb their delight. I'm sure I did it - shushing the girls with a finger to my lips and a not-now look. It must be related to the corresponding belief that it's not ok to stick out in a crowd. If your response doesn't match that of the people around you, you will stick out. And that is bad because?

I often wish I had studied sociology so I could find out why we do these things. I didn't, but I did study Jesus. Now this might not seem like something important enough to consult scripture over, but really, I kind of like to look to Jesus for everything. Nowhere in the books of the New Testament that tell Jesus' story do I find any wallflower tendencies in him. The closest thing that comes to mind is the wedding at Cana where Jesus says that his time has not yet come. Jesus often waded in and did things that were not socially acceptable: he talked to women and children, he argued with the priests and scribes, he ate with undesirables. I'm sure his mother was mortified more than once. I don't think we can argue that Jesus wasn't being who he was created to be.

Maybe we should consider doing a little less curbing of our children. Maybe we should cheer with them when they're enthusiastic and not push them to perform when they are shy. Maybe we should focus on actual bad behaviors like being selfish or unkind but let them encounter the world from their own natural place. Let the ones who hang back and watch until they are ready to join in do that. Let the ones who hurl themselves into things do it their own way.

Earlier this week I blessed our pre-school students with a little water to their foreheads. The children had a variety of responses. Some were very matter of fact and submitted to the water like a bedtime face-wash. Others were shy and looked down. Some were silly and made faces at me when I did it, and one little boy shivered like it was a holy moment for him - so many different responses to the same stimulus. No behavior had been prescribed and so the heart responded. That's what happened in church last Sunday. A child's heart responded, and the hearts of all the adults present responded to the heart of the child. I think Jesus would approve!

The Spirit showed up!

2011-09-29T11:47:00.000-05:00


In tradition and heritage!

I wrote last week of the stole handed down from grandmother to granddaughter. Here is the new pastor wearing this yoke!

The Spirit showed up on this day in the winds of creativity: banners and floral arrangements and music and photography. All flowing over the assembly and making us all one.

The Spirit showed up as people: bishop, pastors, friends, family, supporters, and congregational members. So many people contribute to the kingdom by leading, training, teaching, supporting and encouraging those who are chosen to serve in this way. It takes a village to raise a child. It takes a community to grow a pastor. From lifelong childhood friends to former Sunday School teachers and pastors, from fellow alums to parents-in-law, people came out to celebrate!

And the Spirit showed up as a celebration - a meal around the altar. Bread and wine for all who gathered. And later, as a room filled with food and friends and flowers and best of all, laughter: people brought food and set tables and washed dishes and created a space for all to gather and celebrate! The Spirit came as joy and infected everyone present!

To everyone who contributed to the making of this servant, in any way, well done! To everyone who contributed to the making of this event, thank you! And to the new pastor, the Spirit is with you, let the yoke lay lightly upon your shoulders and lead you to where you are needed!

Hand-me-downs

2011-09-22T14:38:00.000-05:00

This Sunday my eldest daughter will be ordained as a pastor of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. It has been a long time coming. . . about 20 years since she first announced her intentions back in second grade. She certainly had other aspirations over the years but God never really let loose of her, and here we are.

On Sunday the new pastor will be vested with a red stole. Her stole was handmade by her grandmother, for her grandfather, in 1961 and was worn by him at his ordination 50 years ago. Her grandmother, my mother, and I recently reflected on the creation of that stole. When my dad was ordained, I was 5 years old and my sister was 2-1/2. I asked Mom if she ever imagined, while she was embroidering that stole, that one day a child or grandchild would wear it. She reminded me that you can't even imagine grandchildren when your children are that young. And besides, she only had girl children then, and more than 10 years would pass before someone would ordain the first "lady pastor".

The red stole has probably been worn the fewest times of all the stoles she made for my dad. It has such specialized uses: only two Sundays each year - Pentecost and Reformation, and at ordinations which happen at unpredictable intervals. Still, each time that red stole is donned, something new comes to the church: the Holy Spirit appears, the Wind of Change blows, a New Energy arrives.

When a pastor puts on her stole she dons a yoke of service. That service is rendered to God in the form of service to God's people. Jesus says his "yoke is easy and his burden light," and so I hope it is for my daughter. In Jesus' day, in the best circumstances, yokes were custom made for oxen which allowed them to work very hard with little pain. I have experienced working under yokes that didn't fit well, where I worked very hard and was rubbed raw in the process, but more often, I have had the pleasure of wearing an easy yoke, work that fit me like a glove and that called to me almost every day. This is what I think Jesus is promising: hard work rendered with joy, and this is the blessing I wish for my daughter as she begins this chapter of life.

With only a few days left before she is ordained, I give thanks for the faith and work of my father and my mother, for the joy of mothering this child and her sister, for the people of this church who helped to form her, and for the work that will be accomplished by this new pastor. A lot has happened since we gathered at the font for her baptism. This Sunday we welcome her into the Lord's family in a new way, with no less joy and hope than we had the first time.

Go Bears!

2011-09-15T10:47:00.000-05:00

I read a great story today. It seems that a woman who works at Baylor University was watching news of the Bastrop wildfires and began worrying about the kids. Over 1,500 homes have burned leaving around 5,000 people without a place to live. So she started researching ways that the staff, faculty and students at Baylor could help. That's when she discovered that the Bastrop High School mascot was the Bears. Same as Baylor! So she organized the Bears2Bears drive which hopes to collect a teddy bear for every displaced kid in Bastrop. This kind of thing just makes my heart sing. When a whole bunch of people come together to offer what they can, big things can happen. I'll be watching to see how they come out, but I expect it will be successful. How could it fail with all those cuddly elements!

At my church, we're working with all the kids on a project we're calling Sock-It-To-Me. I rolled it out last week for the parents and they put it down on their to do list and I was sure we'd get some socks. Last night I rolled it out for my 8th grade confirmation class and was delighted to see how the challenge energized them. They were told that they could buy socks out of their allowance, beg socks from their friends, swap work for socks, or pretty much anything else they would like to do but that there were people without socks depending on them. "That's EASY!" one of them said. "Can we bring more than 12?" was another student's question. And, as I expected, "Who doesn't have SOCKS?"

No donor fatigue here. Generous hearts are dancing at the call. Maybe it's not as efficient to give socks or teddy bears as it is to give money but I think we miss something in the exchange when we just write a check. The kids most certainly do. Giving goods makes the recipient real. Knowing that some child's toys burned up in the fire is something a kid can imagine. Visualizing an empty sock drawer is easier than conceiving of a life without a sock drawer. This awareness sparks both generosity and gratitude in kids. It puts them on the path to being compassionate adults.

In the current economic climate we tend toward scarcity thinking, focusing on what we don't have or can't buy rather than on what we still have in abundance. We are in the midst of deep drought here in Central Texas, but our neighbors to the east are getting flooded. Maybe there IS enough, it's just not evenly distributed.

Whatever need cries out to you, find a way to respond. Take your kids along and let them help you help others. Tell them why something makes your heart hurt, or why you want to help in this particular situation. You will be helping people for generations to come. The Bible says that God loves a cheerful giver. What isn't explicitly said is that God loves the person in need too - and you're the "bear-er" of that love. Go Bears!

You never know. . .

2011-09-08T14:12:00.000-05:00

Most of us have touchstone points in our lives - moments when we knew nothing would ever be the same. Members of my generation can describe in detail what they were doing when JFK was assassinated or when Neil Armstrong walked on the moon. Many members of my children's generation can tell you what they remember about Columbine or when the planes flew into the World Trade Center and how it changed their world view. Big events. Shots heard round the world.

Today I'm thinking about how life will never be the same for hundreds of people in my part of the world. Wildfires are burning out of control all around us, particularly to the east, in Bastrop County. This 50-second video from TX Parks and Wildlife shows how quickly the landscape can change.

The landscape of our lives can change just as quickly. I think most of us plan for the future as if we can control it. Events local and global remind us of the futility of such thinking. I'm guessing that not one person woke up in Bastrop on Saturday morning thinking about where their important documents were and what they should grab if they had to evacuate. Yet nearly half of those people have had to leave their homes over the past 4 days. Some of them will return to those homes, some to ashes. You never know. . .

Those of us who are affected only by proximity will go on with our lives without much impact. People affected by the fires will never be the same. In a lifetime nearly everyone will experience at least one of these unexpected changes in the landscape. Maybe God allows these moments because these are the times where we see most clearly that we are mere humans, dependent on the Creator who is so much more than all of us combined. I wonder around in this territory regularly; and my list of maybes grows. In the meantime let us turn our faces to God and pray for rain, and for safety, and with thanksgiving for all who have been spared. Amen.

Calling All Mentors

2011-09-01T11:30:00.000-05:00

At one point in my life I asked God to send me a mentor to help me negotiate the rushing waters of being a single parent with teen-aged children. And one showed up. She wasn't around long, but she gave me lots of good tips, and also shared with me some of the things she wished she hadn't done, in retrospect. Mentors are important in life. Along the way we will need many mentors. In youth ministry we call them Triple-A adults: Authentic, Available and Affirming. Those are three big words, big charges.

Being Authentic means simply being who you actually are, not who you think you should be. Being real means a lot to kids. They will trust an authentic adult in ways they will never trust someone who only shows the best sides of his/her life. You can only mentor from your own true center. And you can only be mentored from someone else's authentic core. Like the mentor I described - you have to share your failures and your successes.

Being Available means making this relationship a priority. It means leaving space in your schedule for your relationships. You can't be available if you are booked solid every day. You aren't available if your mind is elsewhere. And, as I've previously written, being available on your schedule isn't really being available at all. If you're called to be someone's mentor, you will find joy in that relationship. It may be inconvenient to be available at times, but it will usually be rewarding
.
Affirming is the most habit-driven quality so perhaps it is the first thing to strive for if you want to be a mentor. Can you find the good in a person? Not in her clothing or his car - but in him or her? If you watch for it you will find it - the organizational talents, the care and concern for others, the ability to forgive, an endless list of possible gifts. The rest is easy; just remark on it. I love the way you are so _____________. We see ourselves, often most clearly, through the eyes of others.

Who were mentors to you? Along the way I have prayed often for mentors when I was facing a new challenge, and God always supplied. I am grateful to those good men and women. My life would have been very different without them! One taught me that it was a blessing to be passionate about motherhood. Another taught me about managing people by their strengths instead of their weaknesses. One time, someone gave me the perfect book for that stage in my life. Another continues to remind me to pray before proceeding. One wise woman gave me the courage to start putting thoughts to paper (and later to cyberspace). Some of these mentors were just heaven sent - I didn't even pray for them!

I have also mentored a person or two along the way and that has richly blessed me. The new school year is starting. Schools, churches, scout troops and teams are all looking for mentors. Are you being called?

The Year With No School Supplies

2011-08-25T11:29:00.000-05:00

School starts this week in my part of the world. In my entire lifetime, only six Augusts have not involved back-to-school preparations: five before my eldest daughter started kindergarten and this one. So while most years I have been wrapped up in the busyness and excitement of the first day of school, this year I'm looking back at many years of fresh fall starts. I am also more aware of the sadness some people are experiencing as school starts. Families sending a child off to school for the first time (especially if it is the first or last child in the family) are feeling some loss and a flutter of fear even as they enjoy the excitement of this big milestone. Other families face empty nests as they send their last "baby" off to college. Their homes feel empty and their calendars seem blank. And in between these two extremes are the fears and losses that crop up when a child is changing schools, moving up from elementary to middle or middle to high school and so forth.

Negotiating these feelings is the first "homework" of the new school year.

Here’s some more parental homework for those of you who are still buying school supplies:

Remember who's going to school. "We" will not get an A+ on "our" project. School is your child's job, not yours. You've already been to third grade; let your child tell you how it is for her. Think about yourself at her age and share your 3rd grade self with her. She will love hearing your stories and you will enjoy the memories.
Remember that the purpose of school is learning. Period. Everything else, sports, music, clubs, is just a side benefit. Family time is probably more important than many school activities. You can never get these days back, ever, so make sure to consider the true cost of the time required.
Decide what is really important to your family and rank those items. Then, try to build your schedule around that ranking. If eating together matters, make it happen! If traveling is important, take a trip! If church is a priority, go! If service is something you value, then make sure you serve together as a family; what he does with his family will stick in his memory longer than anything he does with his class.
Meet your child's friends' families. Chances are, especially when your child is in the lower grades, you will find people who are very compatible with your family. These people will be your friends for a long time if you make it a priority.

This brings us full circle, because when the year with no school supplies arrives, you will need friends who share your feelings. You won't have regrets because you didn't eat dinner once with your child during her whole senior year (yes, this is a true story - not mine but still painful). Your child's teacher will remember your child and not you, and your child will not have even dreamed of asking you to write a paper for his or her freshman English class (yes, this really happens!)

And if you really, really hate not buying school supplies, you have options: buy some and donate them to a school where kids need them, or dive in and take a class. Maybe it's your turn to get a new backpack. . .

Snakebit

2011-08-18T10:22:00.000-05:00

This week I heard a story that got me thinking. . .It involved a pair of moms, a gaggle of kids and a road trip to nowhere. The dad who told me about it said, in true Texas fashion, "It was already snakebit, might as well turn around and go home." I laughed and shook my head, because I knew exactly what he meant. We've all hit those places where we know without a doubt that it is time to throw in the towel, when nothing good can be wrung from a situation. We've looked for the lesson, the quick fix, the silver lining, the funny side and it's just not there. The cost-benefit analysis comes up with "snakebit."

Kids run into those situations too: the friend who doesn't reciprocate or respect, the skill that only more talent could improve, the grade that just isn't going to make it past a B or the SAT score that won't pass 2000, no matter how many times the test is taken. I see a lot of parents who are loathe to let their kids throw in the towel in these situations. They believe that with just a little more encouragement, their child can rise above the current adversity. In their cost-benefit analysis they forget to factor in wear-and-tear on the child's self-esteem.

In my competitive suburban environment, a lot of young people don't believe their best is good enough. They measure their worth by their achievements in physics or tennis. They don't understand that 93 and 99 are both A's and that after their first semester of college no one will ever care again what grade they got in high school algebra. And because they don't understand this, and because their sense of worth is attached to their achievements, they don't take time to try things for fun; things that could become grand passions for life: dancing, water-skiing, reading for pleasure, cooking, playing games or a new instrument. After all, in their world, failure is not an option. Throwing in the towel is not an acceptable choice.

Now I'm not advocating that you should just let your kids quit - perseverance does build skills for life. I fully support all you parents who refused to let your freshman quit band camp and hang out at the pool this week. It's hot and miserable and I'll bet they wanted to, but you knew they would regret that decision by the first football game. Your child made a commitment to the marching band and you held him to it. I just want to remind you that cost-benefit analysis matters in your kid's world too. Not every goal is worthy. Or reasonable. Sometimes close IS good enough. And some things ARE just "snakebit."

I worship a God of second chances. A God who desires abundant life, not needless sacrifice. One who stayed the course because I can't. A God who understood that creation was "snakebit" and imperfect and loved it anyway. I think that's a pretty good parental model to try and emulate!

Born in Another Time

2011-08-11T14:08:00.000-05:00

“Do not confine your children to your own learning for they were born in another time.”

I ran into this ancient wisdom from the Hebrews earlier this week and as I turn it over in my mind I find more and more to think about. There are so many implications in this simple sentence. The first phrase that resonated with me was “born in another time.” Every year Beloit College publishes a list that tells us about the “time” of this year’s graduates. I am always surprised at the assumptions that can no longer be made. Here are a few from the classes of 2011 and 2012:

“Off the hook” has never had anything to do with a telephone.
Women have always been police chiefs in major cities.
Jack Nicholson is “The Joker.”
MTV has never featured music videos.
Food packaging has always included nutritional labeling.
GPS satellite navigation systems have always been available.
WW has never stood for World Wide Wrestling.
Muscovites have always been able to buy Big Macs.

They are most surely born in another time.

Another thing that struck me was the juxtaposition of the words learning and confine – I always think that learning frees, but on further reflection I see that learning can confine. Any time I begin to think that there is only one way to approach something; I am confined by my learning. It doesn’t matter if the subject is gender roles, the temperature of the room or whether the toilet paper comes over the top or from underneath the roll; if I can’t see things another way, I am confined.

One “learning” that may confine us is what we believe our children need to know. How do we make sure our children learn what really matters? If we live a life that reflects what we value, they will “study” the things that matter to us because they care about those things. We can’t “teach” them; they will learn a different way, because they were born in another time. It’s important to remember that just because a child has never rolled down a car window doesn’t mean she has never ridden with the windows down.

I want my children to know God. I want them to understand that like a GPS satellite, God remains ever present. I want them to know that God is a steadfast God of all time, not just my time. God will look different to my children because their perspective is different; but they will see God as clearly, and as incompletely, as I do. And in their understanding, formed by their “time” I will also come to see God more completely than I do now.

Rather than staying confined within their courses, rivers change their route in response to changes in the environment – new dams, downed trees, droughts or floods. Learning happens the same way, continually making new channels that take us downstream by another route. May we be wise enough to change course to accommodate the “time” and understand that many of our ways no longer exist. May we help our children find their own ways, in their own time.

Counselors are NOT for Climbing!

2011-08-04T16:18:00.000-05:00

This is our third straight week of camp at church. I've had different counselors each week. Most of them are high school or college student volunteers with no special training in interacting with children so there's a lot of on-the-job training during camp. Still, the kids instantly adore these amateur leaders, regardless of their inexperience. And the counselors love them back.

Several times a day I will enter our fellowship hall to find a counselor looking like a monkey covered tree. "No climbing on the counselors", I say. "If you break the counselors we can't have camp." The campers dutifully let go and move on, only to do it again an hour later. When we head to Bible study they cluster around these heroes, touching, patting, snuggling, smiling. At the end of the day, they often give their counselor a quick hug before leaving with Mom or Dad.

Yesterday I encountered a child crying as though his heart would break. His biggest issue was probably that he hadn't eaten his breakfast, but in his distress he expressed his grief that his favorite counselor from last summer wasn't here this year. "I haven't seen Adam for two whole years!" I wanted to jump in my car and go retrieve Adam from the camp where he is a paid counselor this year, just to ease the little guy's pain. Another savvy adult suggested that we call Michael, his favorite counselor from last week and see if he could come. That suggestion, along with a bowl of Cheerios solved his problems. Michael did come and my dart prayer for the little camper was miraculously answered when his Grandpa appeared a full hour early to pick him up.

All of this has me thinking about the amazing ways of God. Most of my counselors aren't at camp because they love kids. They are there because they have fond memories of being campers themselves, or because their friends are there, or because their parents made them. Many of them need volunteer hours for school or scouts or NHS. Yet being loved so unabashedly by the campers gets to them. It's irresistible. It strengthens their ties to the family of God.

Campers and counselors soak in love all day long. That's the real power of it all. Bible study is good. Arts and crafts are fun. Sitting down together and eating lunch is a friendly event. Singing silly songs loud and fast helps us all mix it up together but love pours down over it all and that's the secret ingredient. Like family reunions with cousins, what you do isn't as important as the memories you make together. The common experiences and relationships bind you together and give you joy when you gather again.

There are whole theories of camping ministry. There are professionals in the field of summer camps who give us amazing ideas for games and community building activities that are rooted in Bible and early church interactions (or restyled from other genres and made to fit) but in the end, it is people, kids, teens, and adults coming together to soak in God's love that makes camp so special.

Thanks be to God for this fantastic gift!

Give us this day our Daily Bread

2011-07-21T17:02:00.000-05:00

I am up to my elbows in flour this week - Daily Bread Cooking Camp is underway and I'm feeling incredibly blessed to get to help kids connect with God through this experience. And to watch them grow in big and small ways is worth every minute of work. I have seen:

Campers looking out for each other and making sure that everyone gets a turn.
Campers rebuking one another for "labeling" during Bible Study.
Kids with special needs or circumstances finding a safe place in the group.
Jesus coming alive in story and conversation.
Campers discovering that they like a food they had previously rejected.
Counselors inspiring admiration in campers, and in each other.
Campers genuinely sharing themselves and their lives with each other.
Kids with special needs or circumstances bringing out compassion in others.
Counselors challenging campers and each other to reach a little further.
Kids riding a city bus for the first time and looking around in wide-eyed wonder.
Fierce negotiations about who gets to do what.
Families connecting around the camper's daily food connections.
Sharing and curiosity and joy and sadness and praise and rebuke - all rolled up into every day.

It is no wonder that Jesus comes to us at the table. There is such richness in that simple context. Grab your kids and head for the kitchen. There are miracles to be found and lessons about God to be learned there. And while you're at it, boil a little water, throw in a little pasta, chop up a little produce and then gather around the table, give thanks and tell stories as you eat. The kingdom of God is like a banquet!

Word Power

2011-07-07T16:13:00.000-05:00

Someone who recently retired shared with me that one of his ambitions in retirement was to 'read more poetry.' That got me to thinking about how long it's been since I actually read a little poetry, and about how some of the poetry that I've learned along the way flows through my thinking and attitudes. Some examples:

You are a child of the universe,

no less than the trees and the stars;

you have a right to be here.

And whether or not it is clear to you,

no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Desiderata

Max Ehrmann

I remember how that fell on my ears when I first heard it in 7^th grade or so. I was (and am!) a child of the universe – not just of the small town I inhabited at that time - but of the whole universe. Wherever I go, I belong – not only belong but have a right to be there, and everything is unfolding according to a plan. It seems a little trite now. I wasn't very worldly back then – but I embraced my place in the universe and it helped shape me.

A second poem also resonates throughout my life in a pattern that everyone who knows me will recognize:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I,
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

The Road Less Traveled

Robert Frost

Thank you Robert Frost for helping me understand that there are decision points along the way and sometimes all we can do is choose – we can't foresee how “way leads on to way” and we can't go back for a do-over. So I have followed the poet down the less traveled roads and indeed, it “has made all the difference.”

So parents – I challenge you to dig around in your memory banks and see if there is poetry that has shaped you. It may have come to you in song lyrics or bumper stickers but there are words that have shaped you into the parent you have become. And you are, probably, reading things to your children that are shaping them. If you think you aren't, may I suggest:

Listen to the Mustn'ts,child,
Listen to the Don'ts
Listen to the Shouldn'ts
The Impossibles, the Won'ts
Listen to the Never Haves,
Then listen close to me --
Anything can happen, child,
Anything can be.

Anything Can Happen

Shel Silverstein

Bless your children with the promise of the future, not the restraints of fear. Share your formative poetry and tell them how it has shaped you. And, by the way, read it aloud! That's the only way they can really recognize good poetry.

What is Church Anyway?

2011-06-30T09:41:00.000-05:00

Recently I watched a documentary on PBS about drive-in movie theaters. I was sentimentally remembering going to the movies in my pajamas with my mom and dad and a big paper sack full of popcorn when, just before the end of the program, they started talking about Robert Schuller conducting drive-in worship services out in California. It all came flooding back: going to drive-in church with my grandparents and my little sister in Watertown, SD in the early 1960s. We went to church in our summer shorts and tops instead of dresses and frilly socks, and Laurie and I thought it was the best idea ever! We sat in the back seat of Grandpa's giant car. There wasn't much to see, just some very small figures in front of a huge screen. The speaker hung on the driver side window and was scratchy sounding but plenty loud. I know we had coloring books and crayons and probably a few snacks in the back seat but we were in "church"! We knew we were in church because there were familiar words: "in the name of the Father, and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit" and there was music (Holy, Holy, Holy and other songs we could sing without hymnals). There were readings from the Bible. And every so often Grandma's hand would reach back from the front seat and gently settle us because it was time to pray. And we stopped what we were doing, bowed our heads, and waited for it to be time to say Amen.

There weren't any candles, stained glass windows, hymnals, altar, communion, organ, or flowers. There wasn't a baptismal font. We weren't dressed in our Sunday best. It didn't smell like church. (It smelled like Grandpa, like pipe tobacco and peppermints.) Still, it was "church."

So what makes something "church"? I've been to worship services where I left feeling like I had been to a concert, but not "church." I've been to churches where I've felt like I'd been at a political rally. I've also been to church at a campsite with kids wearing face paint and attended worship in a library where we sat on the floor and shared the Lord's Supper. Why was it church at the campsite but a political rally at the church building?

What makes church feel like "church"? Most of us probably define the "church" experience in fairly specific terms. For me, church is kind of like a birthday party. I go and gather with people I know, and people I don't know, to celebrate the One we all love. We say familiar things and sing familiar songs - sometimes in a park, sometimes in a restaurant. At the center is the One we all know (some of us have known the Guest of Honor all our lives and some have only recently met, some of us are hoping to curry favor, and some are just fans; but we are all gathered around the same table to eat the same food!)

What has to be there to make it "church" for you? This is a great question to explore with your kids. What did your kids say? Tell me your stories - I really want to know.

I've changed the settings to make it easier for people to comment. I hope you will - we can all learn from each other!

Efficiency

2011-06-23T10:15:00.003-05:00

This week, in some devotional reading, I came across a sentence that I have been rolling over in my mind for several days: "I realized that, when it comes to faith, I spend most of my energy trying to make God fit into my life, rather than making room in my life for God to take root and grow." (Jeremy Langford in Seeds of Faith)

AS IF!!! As if I could somehow shape and mold God into something that would fit into my helter-skelter-never-stopping-to-smell-the roses-life!Talk about wasted energy. God can morph into any shape God wishes but I have no power to control that whatsoever. Yet this is what we all try to do - we want to domesticate God . We want to reduce God to an item on our to-do list: “OK, said my prayers at bedtime and wrote a check to the church. I'm good to go and nice of you to stop by, Lord!”

This approach to God is akin to the "Quality Time" parenting myths that were so pervasive when my children were small. The theory was that if you made the time you spent with your child meaningful, a little bit would go a long way. The problem (well, ONE of the problems) was, children weren't always in the mood for meaningful activities when you had them in your Daytimer. The fact that a parent had scheduled a 4-hour block to take a child to the zoo didn't mean the child was going to be in the mood ,or feeling well, or that the weather would cooperate. Parenting by the calendar - the most efficient way raise your child. Are you laughing? I know you are - nothing is less efficient than hanging out with a child, except maybe hanging out with God. . .

God doesn't want your quality time either. Like your child, God wants all of you: the good, the bad, the inefficient. Efficiency is a human priority. God created plants that would be pollinated at the whim of bees and butterflies. Plants proliferated everywhere: vines climbing up the trees, birds pecking at the fruit, flowers and weeds indistinguishable. Humans created fields with straight rows of corn or cotton, carefully weeded and watered when the rain doesn't come.

God comes in like a child and fills up your life. You can try to limit the space you give to God, but if you share your space, you will find that faith and love expand and take root. Faith and love will last through all the bumps along the way; all the joys and sorrows of being a parent, a child, a person. . . I'm sure you had ideas of how you would fit a child into your life, or another child into your family. I am equally sure it didn't work quite the way you had planned. Along the way you let go of a lot of things to make space for your children – and I'll bet most of them seemed like small sacrifices, in retrospect. Look around for the not-so-important thing that is occupying space that God could use; as God grows in your life, you won't miss it!

Messy

2011-06-16T17:15:00.008-05:00

We’re having Vacation Bible School at my church this week. Around 240 kids and volunteers are in the building every day. We serve breakfast to about a third of them and snacks to all of them. Yesterday we made snow cones for every single one of them and the whole staff too. Things are getting a little messy. Some of our crafts are using sand, so there’s a little bit of gritty stuff here and there. One group was beading and left lots of little snips of string behind. Every glass door is festooned with fingerprints and on any flat surface you should be prepared to find a nametag, a newsletter, a used band-aid or an empty cup. All our regular weeknight meetings have been moved to different spaces to accommodate the fun. In short – it’s really messy.

It’s messy, and it’s real. Life is not something to be watched; it should be experienced. And experience is generally messy. Learning to ride a bike almost always draws a little blood. Getting experience in the kitchen means having to wash some dishes. Most new drivers have to have a fender bender. Real is messy.

Being a parent is messy too. I remember seeing a family getting their pictures taken for the church’s photo directory a few years ago. They were dressed to perfection and dad was wearing a white shirt so clean it nearly shimmered in the light. As they waited their turn with the photographer the youngest child, a boy of about 2, threw up over dad’s shoulder and down the back of the perfect white shirt. The photo turned out fine but I laugh every time I see it, knowing what the back of the shirt looked like.

Vomit over the shoulder is easily cleaned up. Another family might have two perfect children nearly ready to leave home when a surprise pregnancy delivers a child with Down’s syndrome. Still other families survive divorces, deaths, job losses, arrests, failing grades and a host of other unplanned events. These messes aren’t so easily cleaned up.

Today at Bible School we asked the big question: “How can Jesus help me when I mess up?” And we answered it: “Jesus forgives me and helps me make a fresh start.” So parents, when you mess up (and you will), take it to the Lord. Let forgiveness clean up the mess between you and your child. Recognize the lessons in the mess. When your child messes up, do the same: forgive and make a fresh start. Like riding that bike or cooking that meal, you’ll probably have both blood and laundry messes as you experience parenthood. It’s ok – love is messy.

Surf's Up!

2011-06-09T16:15:00.000-05:00

At church we’re getting ready for that time-worn summer tradition: Vacation Bible School. This year’s theme is Son Surf and we are learning a whole new lingo of surfing words and lots of stuff we didn’t know about surfing. It occurred to me that being a parent is a lot like surfing. Once you bring that little one home from the hospital, you suddenly start to acquire a whole new vocabulary:

Baby sign
Vaccination protocol
Preschool accreditation
Fifth’s Disease
Licenex

And you are forced to learn a whole new balancing routine:

Who stays home from work if the child is sick?
How many ice packs are required to keep breast milk cool all day?
How far apart in age can they be and still share a bedroom?
How are you supposed to be at open house at two schools on the same night?
Should you buy them a car or make them earn it?

Like a surfer riding the waves, every parent will be forced to contort into a wide variety of poses just to stay on the board. And every one of us will fall off from time to time, get thoroughly soaked, and even fear that we may drown. And like surfing, no two days will ever be the same. No two kids will ever be the same. Some kids will hardly make a ripple in the routine of your life. Other kids will enter your life like tsunamis, and you will have no power to prevail against them. Most kids will roll in and out like waves, some big, some small. You will have to crouch low or lean into the wave and continuously adjust to keep your balance.

Some surfing advice: Don’t forget to breath. Get back on the board if you fall off. Remember that little adjustments can have big results. It’s supposed to be fun – don’t miss the fun of surfing today because you are worrying about tomorrow’s waves. This is the only time you will ever get to surf these particular waves.

God has called you for this child and will equip you for this task. You will find help in places you least expect and allies among people you might have avoided in other chapters of your life. You will respond to your children in inspired ways. You have the capacity to keep adjusting your balance for the rest of your life. You are made of stuff that can get wet without melting. And every now and then you will catch a bodacious wave and ride it for what seems like a year. There’s nothing like it – and when the waves get rough you can remember that!

Love in the Questions

2011-06-02T10:05:00.000-05:00

This week an acquaintance posted to Facebook "So today I had my first negative comment about my son's behavior. I was putting him in the carseat and he was screaming bloody murder and a woman next to me in the parking lot says: 'Oh is that you abusing that child?' to which I said 'I'm not abusing my child, he is autistic and he doesn't wants to sit in his carseat!'"

You can't imagine the Facebook dialogue that followed. . . The mother in question is a native Spanish speaker and the conversation continued, passionately, in both Spanish and English. I had to use Google translate to keep up.

I couldn't help myself. I had to comment. So I added my two cents: "[Friend] this woman was advocating for your son, just as you do every day. People like this are your friends, not enemies. She is passionate about his welfare just like you. Does that make sense?" To which she responded "Not really! Why would she come to me and say that? I don't think she is my enemy or hate her, I just think she needed to mind her own business!"

"I don't think she is my enemy or hate her" - but she certainly didn't think the woman was her friend either. My heart breaks for the people in this little vignette. My friend carries a heavy burden with this child. He is deeply locked away within the confines of his condition. The other woman must also have a story, an experience that makes her protective even of children she doesn't know. She was so brave to speak up for the child; I'm sure she second-guessed that decision many times after it happened.

This is a classic love-your-neighbor moment. Sometimes we know what our neighbor needs because we've walked the same path. Sometimes we recognize the feelings and think we know what is needed. Often, like the woman in the parking lot and yours-truly on the Facebook wall, we don't recognize the feelings or know what is needed; we only know that there is a need.

How differently this incident might have played out had the neighbor-lover simply said "Do you need any help?" or "Can I help you?" My friend might still have told her to mind her own business, but she wouldn't have felt her motherhood attacked. My friend might have burst into tears; I don't know. I think it's a safe bet that had the neighbor-lover asked this question, she would have left knowing that the child was autistic and the mother was stretched to the breaking point. She might have even been able to help. Instead, two good women parted, both feeling savaged by the encounter.

How differently the Facebook conversation might have gone had I understood that my neighbor needed to be reassured of her skill as a mother instead of thinking I needed to help her understand the other woman. My neighbor blessed me by continuing the conversation until we understood one another. On Sundays, people of my tradition confess that "we have not loved our neighbors as ourselves." Building on the lesson learned in this encounter, I want to try to be a better neighbor-lover. I want to ask more questions, and truly listen for the answers. What's going on with you, my friend, my neighbor? And what's going on with you, my child?

Summer Wonder

2011-05-26T16:39:00.000-05:00

Somewhere along the line we lose our sense of wonder. Actual wonder is replaced by "I wonder". It's a classic step on the way to adulthood, one that parents seem to want to hurry, defer or ignore. You won't be surprised to hear that I think it is something to be cherished.

A couple of months ago I was on a cruise ship and witnessed a delightful example of childish wonder. There was an automatic door between two eating areas and an adorable little boy of about four walked to the door wanting to pass from one area to the other. He wasn't tall enough to trigger the automatic door opening. I watched him for a long time. He was quite scientific in his attempts to open the door. He tried approaching slowly, then fast, then at an angle. Even backwards. Finally in frustration he stepped toward the door and yelled abracadabra. At that moment, some caring adult stepped forward from the other side and caused the door to open. The wonder and delight on the child's face was worth the price of the cruise.

The world is full of wondrous things. Our Creator has endowed this earth with amazing creatures, characteristics and conditions. As the school year draws to a close and opportunities for lazier times with children approach I hope you will consider making it a summer of wonder; along with roller-coasters, water-slides or special-effects movies, look for God-given wonders: fireflies, jellyfish, and shooting stars. Your child will be delighted and filled with wonder. And as you share these simple wonders with your child you will also come away with a sense of wonder as everything old becomes new again through the eyes of the child you love.

Grow Up!

2011-05-19T14:26:00.000-05:00

The governor of California has an illegitimate child. A mother from Texas kills, then abandons the body of her 6-year-old son. Legislators all over the country are trying to balance their budgets by cutting school funding. Every 32 seconds a child is born into poverty in America. These are all news stories involving American children. Which one is most important? Why are they all bad news? Who is watching out for our kids?

I am going to spare you a rant about the rest of the children of the world (for today) but I am going to rant! Adults, it is time to step up to the plate and be grown-ups. It is time for us to make the hard choices. We need to put kids first in ways that matter to their future. It is not OK that some kids will not have enough to eat this summer. It is not OK that we are increasing class sizes and cutting teacher pay when we have not made any sacrifices at all. It is not OK that we are playing our children so hard in sports for our own entertainment that we are damaging their growth plates and leaving them with pain for life.

Children are a gift to us from a loving God. Our job is to help them discover the person God created them to be and to teach them what they need to know when they have to manage their own lives. How many talents will a child discover when he is distracted by hunger? How well will she do in school when she goes to bed hungry and then tries to concentrate in a room with thirty children clamoring for attention? What will constant pain do to his ability to maintain strong and healthy relationships?

All of the news items I listed are a result of someone's selfishness. A man commits adultery and 5 children are harmed by it. A woman wants a good night's sleep so she overdoses her kid on cough syrup. People are so worried about their pensions that they will vote against improving (or even maintaining) our schools. Some CEO makes $5,000,000 a year while the person on bottom works for $15,000.

We expect children to take as much candy as they can grab. Theoretically that is because they haven't learned self-control or altruism yet. Adults, it's time for us to step up and exercise some self-control and altruism. No child is hungry because of her own actions. No child fails in school in spite of adequate resources for his needs. Children are hungry or fail in school because adults failed to choose what is best for the children. This is something that can be fixed. Not overnight. Not painlessly, but one of the privileges of being an adult is getting to choose. Let's practice a little adult restraint and choose to do something for the kids instead of ourselves.

What can we do? Start small! Make a donation at the cash register. Bring a jar of peanut butter to your church. Walk or take the bus or ride your bike somewhere. Quit smoking. Reduce the amount of medical care you consume. Donate some diapers. It all adds up like raindrops to a river. If you can't spare another dollar or minute - smile or wave at a kid - you'll make someone's day. Flex those adult muscles. The future depends on it!

New wind in the sails

2011-05-12T07:32:00.000-05:00

A primarily personal post today. . . On Sunday afternoon at 2:30 the Lutheran School of Theology in Chicago will graduate the class of 2011. A wonderful group of idealistic, hopeful, well-trained, savvy and mostly young people will move into place as leaders of this ship we call church. As the mother of one of these graduates I feel a prickle of pride and I share her joy in the completion of the task. As a person who devotes most of her workweek to the maintenance of this ship I am thrilled to see this fresh wind filling the sails of our vessel. I praise God for their energy and hope.

I will be leaving for Chicago momentarily but wanted to offer my thanks to everyone who has supported my daughter or her classmates on this journey - whether with prayers, encouragement, or funding. In doing so you have supported the good ship 'Body of Christ', and perhaps lived out your own vocation.

The spirit is blowing new wind. . .

Real life or reel life?

2011-05-05T16:35:00.001-05:00

Last week tornadoes roared through about a quarter of the country leaving chaos in their wake. On Friday William, heir to the British throne, married his true love, Kate. Late Sunday night our president took the podium to announce that public enemy #1 had been killed in Pakistan by the good guys. The news coverage of the wedding and the killing were exhaustive and exhausting. With the media coverage of the wedding we were subjected to replays of the wedding that began the disastrous marriage of William's parents, and media coverage of the untimely death of his mother, complete with scenes from her memorial service. The death of bin Laden was accompanied by the too familiar images of the towers coming down,and the grief of the survivors. Footage from 2001 was interspersed with innumerable current interviews about "closure" with survivors of those lost on 9/11. Finally, bin Laden's burial at sea. It was truly overwhelming.

The tornadoes got the least coverage. No regular programming was interrupted to share the news of the death and destruction left in the wake of the tornadoes. Nobody important was much affected by it.

Yesterday I sat and chatted with a young man who is a student at the University of Alabama. He saw the tornado, he saw the destruction, and most of all, he saw the people. He described what remains of Tuscaloosa, (not much, by the way). And he told me about crossing the river to another town where there was still power but returning to sleep in a dormitory with no electricity and taking a shower in the pitch black of that dorm. He said he and his friends wanted to help, but they didn't really know what to do. So as he walked around and looked at what the storm had done, he helped people, mostly elderly, make calls from his cell phone to let their 'folks' know they had survived. Then, he packed up his dorm room, loaded his vehicle and made the 12-hour drive home.

He's young, and his thoughts rambled all over the place:

He has a lot of questions about what will happen to the people of Tuscaloosa.
He could see the silver lining of a week's head start competing for summer jobs in a bad economy.
He's not having any nightmares, but life is a little more precious - at least 8 fellow students died in the tornadoes.

My thoughts are rambling all over the place too. I wonder about:

the media obsession with celebrity;
our lack of regard for "ordinary" victims,
revenge.

And I have a lot of gratitude:

for the resilience of people, especially young people;
for the people who were spared;
for all those who have reached out a hand to help someone else;
and that my young friend is safely in the bosom of his family.

Lord in Your mercy:

Hear our prayer.

True Gift

2011-04-28T13:37:00.001-05:00

Have you ever met someone trying really hard to be someone they're not? It's painful to watch - especially if you know the person well enough to see their true gifts.

Each of us has a unique mix of gifts and talents. Sometimes it is hard for parents to see their child's true gifts. So many things get in the way. We have expectations: musical families expect musical children; athletic families expect athletic children. We aren't necessarily seeing this gift in the child; we are expecting to see this gift in the child. Another thing that blinds us to our child's true gifts is the child's behavior. It's often hard to see past constant wiggling or incessant talking to a child's creative or leadership abilities. We are distracted by what the child does, especially when the behavior irritates or embarrasses us. Our own dreams for the future or failure from the past can also color the way we see the child. We've probably all known someone who wanted to "go pro" in some field but didn't, for whatever reason, who is now pushing a child to "go pro". It's obvious - in other people. One more thing that can get in the way is the hectic pace of daily life. When children have no time to experiment, they miss out on a lot of self-discovery. Downtime is a child's laboratory.

Here's the good news. Failure to recognize the gift doesn't kill the gift, and parents are not solely responsible for helping a child find his or her gifts. When researchers at the Youth and Family Institute started looking at what factors were present for children who "succeeded" (stayed in school, stayed off drugs, had healthy relationships, etc.) they found 40 common factors among successful kids. One of them was especially pertinent to this topic; they found that successful kids had at least five caring adults in their lives. Every caring adult will see different things in the child - gifts that they recognize because they share them, or because it's something they prize in a person or simply because they are seeing the child through fewer layers of emotion.

So where do you find these caring adults? Like so many things with your children, it's simply a matter of paying attention. There are people all around your child cheering him or her on through life - teachers, coaches, scout leaders, choir and band directors, your friends, grandparents aunts and uncles or step-parents, even the person who sits behind you in church and plays peek-a-boo with your toddler. Make time for your child to be with these people. Listen to what they have to say about your child. Notice what they notice and learn to encourage those qualities in your child.

You can help your children be who they are created to be. Trust that their unique gifts will serve the world and support them in finding and using those gifts. They may wind up in a different pond from you but, with the help of other caring adults, you can still teach them to swim in their own baptismal waters.

Laying down your life

2011-04-21T11:12:00.001-05:00

What would I be willing to die for? As news trickles in about the death of journalists Hondros and Hetherington, my mind turns to this question. My child, of course, is the automatic response. Like most parents, I believe that I would ungrudgingly lay down my life for my child. Stories abound of parents throwing themselves on top of a child to protect him or her from falling objects, gunfire or storms. Parents starve so their children can live. Parents will do wonderful and terrible things to ensure that a child is protected. Surely this parental impulse is the purest love a human is capable of feeling and acting.

As I considered this question over the past couple of days, it occurred to me that I have never heard of a parent offering to go to the electric chair or the firing squad for their child. Parents of innocent children in concentration camps would certainly try to exchange their own life for the life of their child, but this impulse doesn’t seem to apply when we are talking about a child who has committed a heinous crime.

Another step down this road and another thought barges in: for what would I exchange my child’s life? This is not a new question for me. I believe strongly that schools should be supported but when my child was sent to a sub-par school, I didn’t hesitate to move her to a better one. I know that my presence as a volunteer, and her presence as a role model might have had a salutary effect on that school but I wasn’t willing to sacrifice her education for that goal. Obviously, since I won’t even sacrifice her education, I’m not going to sacrifice her life, no matter how just the cause.

Tomorrow is Good Friday. In the context of this question the story of Jesus’ death takes my breath away. I cannot conceive of a love that would willingly set aside all Godly powers and take on human form. I cannot imagine a love that would send the extension of self that is child to be helpless in this vile world. And even if I could somehow assimilate all of that, I cannot get past the idea that it was an exchange for someone else’s sin. It was done for my benefit – before I had even committed the first of my daily acts of selfishness.

Watergate conspirator Chuck Colson once wrote that the thing that persuaded him of the truth of the resurrection was that if it was a conspiracy it would have fallen apart. The perpetrators would have had a jolly time saving their own skins and pointing fingers at each other – probably even before the first head rolled.

This unfathomable, unimaginable, un-replicate-able love is what persuades me that Jesus was God come to earth. Only the Being with the power to create life out of nothing could possibly commit so great an act of love. There are no words of thanks that can suffice; I am left with only tears of humility in spite of the fact I know the end of the story. . . Blessed Easter my friends.

Everybody's doing it!

2011-04-13T13:36:00.000-05:00

From the Egyptian Revolution to March Madness to the Save Our Schools protests it seems that everyone has been jumping on one bandwagon or another this year. The bandwagon effect, where people do and believe things merely because many other people do and believe the same things, is also called herd instinct. I have spent many hours, both as a parent and as a Christian, contemplating this phenomenon. I've never met a child who hasn't said "everybody's doing it" to justify doing something; and I've never met a parent who hasn't said, or at least thought, "and if your friends decided to jump off a cliff would you do that too?" It's a human tendency.

This tendency to jump on the bandwagon comes to mind for me every year as we approach Holy Week. On Sunday a crowd is saluting Jesus with palms and covering the ground with their cloaks and on Thursday they are screaming for his crucifixion. How did the tide turn, and who turned it? Unlike a fall from grace suffered by people like Tiger Woods or Bernie Madoff, Jesus hadn't committed some scandalous act that was the breaking news story. Jesus was going about his business, being the same preaching-teaching-healing person he'd been all along. So why did the crowd change its mind? Why does someone who never even watches college basketball care who wins the NCAA Basketball Championship? The herd called.

As a parent, I feel like I should prepare my kids to evaluate what the herd is saying before becoming part of it. Yet I know how easily you can be sucked in. Remember Y2K? I resolutely refused to jump on board the panic-mongers wagon. I didn't stock up on food, fill my gas cans or lay in cases of bottled water. Still, on December 31, 1999, I found myself at the ATM machine pulling out cash and filling my car with gas. Neither precaution would have made much difference, but my resolve against the bandwagon only extended so far. Deep down inside was a small spark of fear that made me doubt my own convictions. I expect this is what happened to that Jerusalem crowd. Doubts kicked in making them question their own judgment. And those doubts allowed them to be swept away.

Here’s what I want to tell my children: There is only one safe place in the midst of madness: Love. Love at its fullest and most perfect casts out fear and doubt. It considers the cost of an action to everyone, not just to self. Love would not allow crucifying an innocent man. Loving rulers do not inspire revolutions. If jumping on a bandwagon is an act of love, by all means do it. Otherwise, step back, evaluate carefully lest you be swept away by a wave of fear with no basis in reality or a stream of excitement about something irrelevant.

Would I have screamed for crucifixion? I hope not, but I don't know for sure. I can only return to the fountain of love once more, asking the One who is Love to cast out my doubt.

Sticks and Carrots

2011-04-07T16:07:00.000-05:00

Sticks and carrots - also known as punishments and incentives - are standard issue in your parenting toolbox. Like really good tools, sticks and carrots do far more than one simple task.

Sticks: A stick, used well, prods gently to help guide small directional changes. The best stick creates or points out the consequence of the child's action. The consequence needs to be related to the change, comprehensible to the child and enforceable by you. Early in my parenting years I was determined to use only carrots and never sticks but, after a weeks-long battle about staying at the tables, I turned to my 2-year-old and said, firmly, "If you leave the table again I will give your food to the dog and you will have to wait for supper to eat again." When she left the table, I scraped her plate into the dog dish and then watched her thunderstruck expression as she comprehended what had just happened. I felt like the worst mother in the world. But guess what! I never had to do it again. She had learned that I meant what I said. She maybe didn't understand why I thought she needed to stay at the table until she'd finished eating, but she knew what would happen if she didn't. And she didn't like it. She changed direction.

You have to mean it! We've all seen the parents who use the stick to no avail: "If you don't come right now I'm just going to leave you here!" I've never actually seen a parent leave their child and drive away, have you? Only use sticks you are prepared to actually poke with!

Carrots: Carrots are definitely multi-functional. You can use them as if-then incentives: "If you clean your room first, then you may go to the movies with your friends." (The benefit here is obvious.) You can also use them to reward desired behaviors: "Wow - thanks for bringing in the trash cans! Why don't you call Lisa and see if she wants to go to the movies tonight? I'll drive!" Even the most recalcitrant child will internalize the idea that good behavior reaps good rewards. Catching kids being good rewards you too - you spend your time being delighted by your child. Contrast that with time spent trying to catch them doing something wrong!

Still, beware the carrot's dark side. A smart child can turn the tables on you and begin to use incentives that cause you to reward them. Obviously, this is more like hitting your thumb with the hammer!

Our great parent God is beyond carrots and sticks and other tools. God simply delights in us. We have been given the clearest and most difficult instruction for life and then turned loose: love God and love neighbor. Regardless of how well or badly I carry out those instructions, God continues to shower me with love; giving me tools and wisdom when I ask, and unconditional love all the time. I'm starting to think this is what parenting adult children may look like, but I'm just getting started down that branch of the parenting river so I'll have to wait a while to give "expert" opinion there. Good luck with your sticks and carrots this week!

Really Left Behind

2011-03-24T11:25:00.000-05:00

I think I can pinpoint the day my biological clock started ticking. I wasn't very old - perhaps 25 - and I certainly didn't understand what was behind it all, but suddenly, one morning, as I watched the Today Show before work I saw a story about the near extinction of the Kemp's ridley sea turtles. And as I watched hundreds of motherless baby turtles hatch and make their way toward the ocean, I started to cry.

I think I started preparing for motherhood in that moment - I knew that any children I ever had would never really be mine. They would be independent creatures with a calling and destiny all their own. And, weird as it sounds, I began to grieve their departure before they were ever born.

These sea turtles, for those of you who don't know them, are still the most endangered turtle species in the world, with only an estimated 1,000 females of nesting age left. These sea turtles mainly live in the Gulf of Mexico, and though much has been done to protect them over the last 30 years, they simply aren't rebounding. Still, with the dogged will to survive of most living things, the mother turtles, approximately 2 feet in diameter, drag their 100 pounds ashore, dig a nest and lay about 140 eggs every third year or so. Then, they bury the eggs in the sand and return to the sea, leaving behind their future offspring. About 60 days later, the babies emerge from their shells and instinctively begin making their way toward the water with their very first uncertain steps.

I am still not sure whether I wept for mother turtles who never saw their babies or for baby turtles left to face life alone from their very first breath. I recognized that it was sacred. Parenthood is a sacred gift, whatever its form. Some of us are conventional parents - birthing children and raising them to adulthood. Some of us are birth parents, loving our children enough to give them a better life than we can offer. Others of us are adoptive parents, shaping life for a child we love as fiercely as any we might ever birth. And some of us parent children who will be, forever, children. There are as many ways to parent as there are nesting mothers turtles. No matter the form, sooner or later we will all have to let go.

At the Padre Island National Seashore you can pay for the privilege of escorting the baby turtles safely to the water. That's what you do, dear parents. You pay, in love, in fear, in tears, for the privilege of escorting your children to the water. Sacred water. Where they can be marked with the cross of Christ and sealed by the Holy Spirit. Forever.

Making Space for God

2011-03-08T14:31:00.000-06:00

I recently read an article that explained Lenten fasting to children. The author called it "Making space for God." I really love this description. What a positive spin on fasting. It's like turning down a third helping of mashed potatoes at Thanksgiving so you will have room for pie. Skipping one good thing in favor of another.

In my childhood home, we didn't give things up for Lent, we added them. We added Wednesday night church and it seems like evening devotions went on a little longer during Lent. At some point in my 20s I decided to try giving things up instead. I can't really come down on either side of this debate - adding or subtracting things works equally well for me. Over the past decades I've experimented with a lot of things. I've given up sweets, sodas, cigarettes, meat, reading fiction and eating out. I've added a special devotional time to my day or a specific service to others. I've studied books and learned hymn verses and kept journals using prescribed scripture prompts. They have all served me well at making space for God. Some of them, like cigarettes, have become permanent fasts. Others, like learning hymn verses, are woven into my unconscious being, only to surface when I most need them.

This year I've decided to turn off the television. I don't really watch it anyway. Most of the time it's on for background noise, so the sacrifice isn't huge, but the potential space it creates for God to enter is enormous. Six weeks isn't that long but perhaps God will come into that space and rearrange my mental furniture a bit. It could really use a change. And maybe then I can vacuum under some of those assumptions that have been cluttering up my thinking, and discard a few broken ideas I keep meaning to mend but never do. . . God may have other plans for the space. I'll have to wait and see.

Families can fast collectively if they want. It's a wonderful opportunity for creating teachable moments. Maybe your fast can be a weekly choice, like fish on Fridays, or giving up your pizza night and donating the unspent money to a food pantry. Or it can be a small daily change like giving up dessert or bottled water. You may want to try walking more or making your own bread.

Whatever you choose, try it until Easter. Look for the faith moments created by your change. You may not even see them now, but they will show up someday. Give God an inch and you'll get a mile in return.

Blessings on your Lenten journey. I hope these 40 days will bring you a greater awareness of God at work in you and in the life of your family. Feel free to share your stories here!

Time Marches On

2011-03-03T15:13:00.000-06:00

The last few weeks have been crammed with anniversaries:

This is my 52nd entry in this blog. That means a whole year has gone by. I'm not sure how that happened - I still feel like a total newcomer to this endeavor. I feel like I should have something profound to say about it but no exquisitely meaningful phrases come to mind.
Monday was my birthday - another indicator of the passage of time. I can now order off the senior menu at IHOP and take advantage of those smaller portion sizes. I guess that’s a good excuse to keep marking the passage of time.
Over the weekend I participated in a women's retreat and spent a good part of Saturday evening with a guitar in my hands (something I had not done in a long time) playing and singing songs from my formative years. Lots of John Denver and the Beatles and Bob Dylan. It was a shock to realize that the copyrights to most of these songs are over 40 years old; and equally shocking that I have played the guitar badly for over 40 years. How good would I be today if I had practiced every day of those 40 years?
Ten years ago this week I quit smoking. And I haven't cheated even once, but I can still remember the last one clearly.
Twenty-one Februarys ago I had the chicken pox on Valentine's Day. I really thought I might die.

What all of these things have in common is that they feel like they happened last week. Time rushes by me like a stream running downhill, and I have absolutely no power to stop it. It runs through my fingers like water, no matter how carefully I cup my hands.

A friend of mine is fond of saying "you can give someone their money back but you can't ever give their time back." I can't give you back the time you've spent reading my blog, but I hope I have used that time to help you remember that these days with your children are short. Think about it. The days from birth to age 18 number less than 7,000. Subtract time spent sleeping and you are left with fewer than 5,000. Take away the school days and you have them for about 3,500 - only half of the time they've been alive. And that is the most time you'll get with nearly any of your children. Once they leave home you'll get very few of the 365 days in each year. Waste no time dreading the future; treasure the minutes, the hours, the days you have with them now and be fully present with them whenever possible. You can enjoy the memories later.

Time marches on. Only God who was and is and is to come has unlimited days. Each one you get is precious; savor it!

Imitation is. . .

2011-02-24T11:22:00.000-06:00

I saw it again yesterday: a mom who imitated her child so perfectly that it made me laugh. A child who has a parent who loves them enough to mimic them is a blessed child. Uninvolved parents can't do this - parents who are totally fascinated with their children and immersed in their role of parent can. It's really lovely to see.

Children, on the other hand, always imitate their parents. That is grace, pure and simple. Children adore their parents whether the parents deserve it or not. Watch any group of children and you will see their parents emerge. Most preschool teachers will tell you they are rarely surprised when meeting a child's parents - they can already recognize them by their mannerisms.

True love between a parent and a child may be the closest vision of God's love that we will ever see. Adoring parents watch every move their child makes, and interpret, and re-interpret the meaning behind it. This week a mother pointed to her small child and said "he always rubs his head when he's worried". The child, barely old enough to comprehend "worried." was indeed, at that moment, worried. Children can be equally perceptive of their parents. "My Mommy doesn't feel good. She's got those lines between her eyes" was an unsolicited observation by a very sharp five-year-old. And, sure enough, they soon excused themselves, Mommy citing an impending migraine.

We've all seen a brother torture his sister by aping every move she makes: "Mom, he's copying me" immediately echoed, usually in unflattering squeaky tones by, "Mom, he's copying me." And whether it's brother/sister, brother/brother, sister/sister imitation - it's a connection born of relationship, a natural expression of sincere affection. With my girls, I noticed that I could always tell when one of them made a new friend because suddenly, a new catch phrase, attitude or habit would invade our home, with no apparent source. Some of these imitations were short-lived; others moved in and became part of the family.

Imitation may be the sincerest form of flattery, but it is also one of the truest indicators of love. We can imitate those we love because we watch them with great intensity, and we spend as much time as possible together. We are fully immersed in the relationship.

You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your mind, and with all your strength, and you shall love your neighbor as yourself. Familiar words. If I look to God with the eyes of a child and, in total adoration, imitate what I see, how will I look? Will I, like the preschool children described above, adopt enough God mannerisms that you will learn to recognize God from watching me? Which God mannerisms will your child pick up from watching you?

Being a parent is a large calling. Don't be afraid; you're never alone in this. The Parent of us all is available as a model. You just have to imitate.

Glue

2011-02-17T14:05:00.000-06:00

Rituals and traditions are part of the glue that holds families together. As President's Day approaches, I find myself thinking about my mom's Cherry Pizza. I don't know what its real name is but basically, it's a pie crust spread on a pizza pan, slivered almonds pushed into the crust, cream cheese spread over that and topped with cherry pie filling. In my mind it's George Washington Cherry Pie because we always ate it on February 22nd, Washington's Birthday. There were other pie traditions too: the first rhubarb pie of the summer came on my parents' anniversary in June. The ONLY Lemon Meringue Pie of the year came on Dad's Birthday in August. It was our family ritual - created by my mom.

So special pie for special occasions was a ritual that held us together. Not being the pastry chef my mom is, I had to look outside the kitchen for some glue for my own family. And I found it on one of the numerous book cases that fill my dwelling. We had seasonal book themes. Bunnicula, The Celery Stalks at Midnight and other silly tales by James Howe were re-read in October every year. The Best Christmas Pageant Ever by Barbara Robinson filled up our December bedtimes. Ellen Tebbits by Beverly Cleary was handy before dance recitals. As I've probably mentioned, we read aloud together long past the ages most kids quit getting bedtime stories. So books were a glue that held us together.

Over the years, some traditions grow more treasured, while others are outgrown, only to be revived when the child becomes a parent. My mom baked pies, but she, and my dad, read to us every night too. I say bedtime prayers (and mealtime prayers) and so do my kids. These are traditions, passed down through generations.

The birth of some rituals is carefully planned and executed, sometimes by blending traditions from two families. Other rituals happen completely by accident - like my family's annual ritual of going to the last matinee on the day before school started. Though it originated as a bribe, it grew to become a ritual everyone looked forward to doing every year. And when the theater failed to provide an appropriate movie, we rented one. I hope my girls will do this with their own children some day.

There is a lot of literature about the value of ritual and tradition. I think sometimes we throw things away too soon - before they've had a chance to become meaningful. And sometimes, we may let traditions from the past get in the way of a more meaningful new ritual. Whether they are simple (lighting candles before a meal), heirloom (baptizing each child in the same gown) or complex (five course Christmas Eve dinner sandwiched between three separate worship services) your rituals and traditions bind you together. Discard with care, and don't neglect creating new ones that are special for your own family.

What's your favorite family ritual or tradition?

Whose rules = Who rules?

2011-02-10T14:11:00.000-06:00

Parents - you should be proud! Last night at confirmation I asked the students to break up into pairs and write rules associated with a photo they received in an envelope. Knowing these students, and the nature of middle school students in general, I expected to have lots of silliness with it. To my surprise, they took the exercise quite seriously and wrote some very good lists. Most groups came up with 8-10 rules in three minutes. One group had a picture of a car. Rules included "wear a seatbelt", "no drinking and driving" and "no one under 16 drives a car." Another group had a picture of a trophy. Their rules included "No cheating" and "good sportsmanship" and "be a team player." The most amazing thing about this exercise was how well they all understood rules as something good. At their age I think I found most rules to be quite confining, but, for this group of kids, teaching the commandments as GIFT was an easy task. They have clearly been taught that rules are for their own good.

The only downside to this was that last night's lesson was about Jesus the rule-breaker. And I never really got the point across. In the lesson, Jesus heals a bent-over woman on the Sabbath (Luke 13). The leaders of the synagogue were indignant that Jesus should do this "work" on the Sabbath. Jesus says the rules should free us, not bind us, so he freed the woman from her condition. And this is where the wheels fell off: the kids didn't think the Sabbath rules should apply to anything. They don't believe in Sabbath. They don't believe in rest. They are 14 year old workaholics. When I asked them how they spend their free time the most relaxing response I got was reading.

This is particularly striking because last Sunday I subbed in an adult class where I ran into a similar lack of concern for Sabbath. Most people, in both groups, think that Sabbath is no longer applicable to their lives. Yet, it is one of the ten (only TEN) Commandments God gives us for living together peaceably or, as Jerome Berryman puts it, "the ten best ways to live." My kiddos last night collectively came up with 62 rules around 8 photos. A couple of them were thrown out (no kicking sand on your sister was deemed too specific) but by and large they could all agree to probably 55 rules without hesitation. Yet they couldn't agree with God's ten rules. I suspect the adults would have gone exactly the same way.

I have to confess that I'm really uncomfortable with this. I embrace Jesus and grace ahead of mindless following of rules. I recognize that rules from Leviticus about hand washing don't apply to me. I can vigorously defend the idea that Sabbath looks different today than in the time of Moses or Jesus. Still, when I can get 100% agreement that good sportsmanship or wearing a seatbelt is more important than Sabbath rest, I am left to wonder what God we are serving.

Thoughts?

Warning: Label

2011-02-03T16:15:00.000-06:00

I read labels. This is a habit learned through bitter disappointment: the sweater that should have been dry-cleaned but instead was shrunk to 25% of its original size in the laundry; the suit that looked so great in the store but wrinkled beyond belief when worn; the calcium pills containing oyster shell that caused my neck to break out in itchy and uncomfortable (not to mention unattractive) hives; the soup that turned out to have 500 calories per serving. Labels can save us a lot of grief.

Labels, when applied to children, can have a variety of outcomes. Some are helpful; some are detrimental. We need to be extremely careful with the labels we throw around in our families because we run the risk of creating destinies that might not be God-intended. Most of us have had obviously negative labeling knocked out of us by the self-esteem studies of the 1980s and 90s. We don't say, in reference to one of our children, he's the fat one or she's the dumb one. We all know better than that. What we can easily do though, is label by omission: applying positive labels to one child but not another. "We call him our little genius" tells all the other kids in the family "we call them our little dummies." We can also send our child an unintended message because of a neutral or even positive label: "She's the serious one" or "he's our artist" might be construed in a number of ways, depending on the context and the people involved. The medical community has fought against labels, e.g. "the gall bladder" in room 502, for years because they found that labeling a patient by disease instead of by name changed the quality of care. Labels must be used with extreme caution.

Jesus mastered the art of the label. This week I have gathered with groups of people to examine the meaning of "You are the salt of the earth." What is Jesus saying? Are we seasoning? Healing agents? Preservatives? This is an ambiguous yet inspiring label. I don't know for sure what it means, but I can't find a negative connotation. Ordinary? Sure, salt is the cheapest and most universal seasoning, but to be a seasoning, to improve the soup of the world is a wonderful label! We turned this over, and over, adults and children, and just kept finding new and enriching qualities to this declaration. Salt water freezes slower and boils faster. Salt melts ice but can allow water to reach a higher temperature. Salt preserves fish and destroys roads. Things float better in salt water. Salt can serve as money in some parts of the world. We are salt! If you've ever tasted sweat, blood, or tears you know that you are, indeed, salt.

The you, in "you are salt," is plural. That means that here, in Texas, all y'all are salt. Embrace this label and go out with your little "saltines" to heal, flavor, and keep the world. Whatever that may mean for you.

Reality Check

2011-01-27T11:37:00.000-06:00

One of the biggest dilemmas parents face is the "reality check" issue. When is it appropriate to share reality in the face of your child's dreams? Do you help them confront reality, or merely distract them with a more realistic option? Does reality checking kill your child's spirit? Most parents have encountered the wild dream with absolutely no realistic hope of attainment and wondered how to respond. Here are some examples gleaned from tales told over a cup of coffee with other mothers:

She's already 5'6", but she's still clinging to the idea she can be a jockey.
He thinks he can go to the [Airforce] Academy and be a pilot, but his asthma will probably keep him out of the military altogether.
He wants to be a veterinarian, but with his grades he'll be lucky to get into college ANYWHERE. Never mind vet school.
She thinks she'll be the next Crystal Bowersox (or Carrie Underwood, whatever), and her voice just isn't that distinctive.

This is one of those really tough places for parents. You want to support your kids as they follow their dreams, but at the same time, you want to let them down easy when it's apparent that they're headed for failure. Still, you know that many of these things just run their course. And, to further muddy the waters, we all know the stories of the one who succeeded against all odds. Plus, there is always opportunity cost - what must be given up to support this unrealistic dream? Not to mention honesty issues: can you honestly tell your daughter you think she is the best?

I think it's important to nurture our children's passions because those passions represent who God created that child to be. I also know that every passion can lead down a hundred different paths, but all most children can see is the most familiar one - I love football so I want to be an NFL player - when, in reality, there are literally hundreds of jobs related to football that aren't being a player.

I also think that we need to guard our children against people who want to live out their dreams through our kids. They are out there - people who will USE your child for their personal gain. They will tell your child she can "go all the way" (whether she's a singer or a gymnast) with no basis in reality. Whether it's to squeeze more money for lessons out of you or from their own frustrated past - they are exploiting your child.

God has given you a special role: you are a parent. You are charged with caring for the WHOLE child. Teachers are responsible for their learning, coaches are responsible for their athletic performance, and dentists are responsible for their teeth. You, mom or dad, are responsible for your whole child. That means physical, emotional, educational, spiritual, social and moral. Is your child's unrealistic dream hurting any other part of his or her life? Is it hurting the rest of the family in any way? Then it's probably time for a reality check. Is their passion bringing them joy without harming any other part of their well-being, or the family's well-being? Then you should probably support it. Not fool proof, but certainly a useful place to start.

Oh, and let me splash a little cold water in your face with one more reality check: you can only do your best; God will have to do the rest.

Generation to generation

2011-01-20T14:39:00.001-06:00

This morning I was treated to an exercise class for seniors and people who are generally out of shape (read ME) and the leader introduced a concept of intergenerational “movement” which appealed to me a great deal. She brought back a memory: Long ago, when I was in high school, I was taught to do the polka by my date’s father, while his mother taught him. This was kind of an amazing experience since I had never been to any kind of dance where there were people who weren’t my peers. Later, as my date and I tried out our newly acquired skills, I was enthralled to watch his parents, who had probably been dancing together at least 25 years, tear up the dance floor. That long ago date’s mother passed away last year and this was the first memory of her that came to me when I heard the news.

Another memory in the same thread: In my freshman year of college I was totally engrossed in the college experience when a professor asked if anyone in the class babysat. Chronically in need of cash, and a very experienced babysitter, I raised my hand. After an evening with his small children I became achingly aware of the absence of children on the campus. I realized that it truly was a place apart, and on some level I don’t think I really wanted to be there anymore.

One other thought: My eldest daughter is in her 4th year of seminary. Except for the year away at internship, she has been an integral part of a family who lives close to her school. While she is technically their employee, they treat her as part of their family. This relationship has been tremendously enriching to her, and, I would wager, to them as well. In the course of her duties she has met four generations of that family and they have met her, and her husband.

We are built for community. In families it may be blood, or it may be love that binds us together. In the church it is water that makes us family. In the nation, it is history that binds us one to the other. We belong, whether we choose to participate or not.

Family is a powerful binding, but it’s not always practical or even healthy to live near one another. Community IS family – only bigger. And real communities and real families are intergenerational. I believe that everyone needs to know people of more than two generations (their own and their parents.) My children didn’t grow up near either set of grandparents but through telephone and e-mail and summer vacations they still know the love so generously given. And, when they come to visit me, they have many surrogate grandparents who are interested in their lives, in their stories. This is community. This is family.

It’s a win-win to make an effort to reach out to other generations and include them in our lives. Let’s listen to their stories and tell them ours. And, in the words of Steven Stills, (from about the time I learned to polka) “If you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with!”

I have a dream. . .

2011-01-13T14:48:00.001-06:00

Growing up in the rural Midwest I was mostly a passive observer to the civil rights movement. Still, in 1972 someone in South Dakota commissioned, for the all-state chorus, a choral work based on the words of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech. I don't remember who wrote the music but I clearly remember how it inspired my 16-year-old heart. It was nuanced to the cadence of Dr. King's oratory, but classical enough for a bunch of white Lutherans, Catholics and Methodists from the prairies to execute. It was fitting music for a beautiful vision of the future.

Now I live in the South, and as I watch old video of Dr. King and all the momentous events of those days I have a context for it. And I know people who grew up in the places where the reality of those flickering images occurred. And I have spent a lot of time in Chicago recently. There, I stood in a museum just blocks from the actual site of the 1968 Democratic Convention and watched black and white video of Chet Huntley and David Brinkley and a very young Ted Koppel report from the confusion and fear of that moment. I remember it well; it seemed the world had gone mad. And this time, no longer young and living on the prairie, isolated and insulated from such events, I watched it again with new eyes.

Dr. King's speech is beautiful. The picture he paints of his dream is like Isaiah's pictures of lions laying with lambs and children playing with venomous snakes. So much better than reality. . . so much to wish for! Of all the dreams he recounts in his speech, the one that gives me the most pause is this:

"I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."

Can we make, at least, this dream come true? Can we look at all little children and see only their character? Can we look at our children, and the children of Haiti and Central America and Canada, and see only their character and not the color of their skin?

Last week a pre-school teacher told of her sadness about teaching the concept of "different" to children. Until they are taught that some people are different, they are unaware of the difference, or, if they notice, entirely matter of fact about it. I have blue eyes and you have green eyes, period. Bias is a learned behavior; it becomes so internalized that we don't even notice it. We've probably all had the experience of having a child bring a friend home from school who we know a lot about (in my French class, plays flute in the band, dad works at IBM, lives in XYZ subdivision, needs help with math) only to be unexpectedly confronted with a child of a race different from our own. Unless we teach them differently, most kids only notice the HUMAN race.

I believe, along with Dr. King, that this is the way God sees us: as the human race. And as individuals. We are each unique, yet all God's children. Let's treat each other that way - and let our kids keep doing what comes naturally!

Seeking the Win-Win Solution

2011-01-06T14:03:00.000-06:00

I don't know exactly when I first encountered the concept of the win-win solution but I know I was an adult before I gave it a label. I was thinking about win-win this morning as I read that a local community college just purchased a building soon to be vacated by Macy's. The building is an anchor of a rapidly declining shopping mall in, you guessed it, an economically declining neighborhood. The absence of decent shopping is going to cause further decline in this neighborhood, and so the downward spiral continues.

Into this depressing situation comes this lovely win-win solution. The community college already has a number of offices, and quite a bit of job skills training, bursting at the seams of a site just down the street. The college will obviously benefit from this purchase! Since public transportation here is anchored by shopping malls and college campuses this deal will also likely prevent the reduction of public transit to the neighborhood. Might the presence of students in the mall result in increased sales at the food court? I wouldn't be surprised. And, if there's still a bookstore in that mall, this may breathe some new life into it as well. But the absolute clincher is that the single most effective way to increase income is to increase education levels. A win-win is a lovely thing.

I think we should try to improve at this win-win thing. Culturally we are adapted to the win-lose culture of sports. We are taught to compete at school, at games and at work. We rarely remember that it's possible for everyone to win. There's a board game on the market right now that I found difficult to learn because it's built around the win-win principle. The game is called Pandemic and the players, while operating independently, are effectively a team fighting a common adversary: an epidemic. The only way to win the game is to defeat the disease through cooperative behavior. If I play in such a way that my token advances farther or faster, we all die in the end. If I cooperate with the other players, we all win and the true adversary, the epidemic, is defeated.

I think this is the root of the problems in the world today - we have misidentified the enemy. We are competing in a win-lose fashion with the very people who should be our allies against the true enemy. The poor guy using Medicaid to go to dialysis is not my enemy. Poverty is the enemy. The woman competing with me for the same job is not my enemy; the lack of jobs is the enemy. If I spend my energy trying to eliminate the poor guy's Medicaid I win nothing, and he loses everything. If all my energy goes to proving I am the better candidate for this lone job, then I win and she loses; and I don't know the true consequences of my win. Her kids my go hungry, where mine might have only had to buy off-brand sneakers. If I spend my energy trying to eliminate poverty or create jobs the poor guy, the woman and I will all win.

You may be thinking that I've wandered far from parenting today. I don't think so. Parents are the first teachers about winning; you are the one who encourages your kid to seek the win-win or the win-lose. Most kids, left to their own devices, will instinctively seek the win-win. The most ready example of cooperative play (the kid version of win-win) is jumping rope. Every kid gets it that to play jump rope games it takes at least 3 people, 2 to turn the rope and one to jump. And they also understand that if they want to jump in the middle, then they have to take a turn at the end, swinging the rope. (And, we all know what happens to the kid who doesn't get it.) Teach your kids to value the win-win over the win-lose. Model it for them, inside and outside the family. I think our very future may depend on it!

There are resolutions and there are RESOLUTIONS

2010-12-30T14:49:00.000-06:00

It's the second to the last day of the year and time to start committing to whatever resolutions we make for the new year. I just stumbled on a story about a FAMILY RESOLUTION that is absolutely fascinating to me, and also embodies some good, intentional parenting stuff.

Since last Jan. 1, Jessica and Jaime Gabriel and their three sons – Andrew, 9, Ben, 5, and Will, 3 – have embarked on a challenge to buy nothing new for a full year. They explain: "[W]e are making a conscious decision to go to the other end of the buying spectrum so that next year when we start buying again, we will be able to know where the middle is for OUR family." With the exception of food, hygiene and safety products (like new brakes for their truck), almost every material item they’ve purchased this year has been sourced second-hand. Jessica made a random mention of this on her Facebook account early in the challenge, and it drew so much attention that she started a blog about it in March. As the year draws to a close she remarks on a number of things they've learned from their experiment. Quotes from the blog:

Our main focus is to teach not only ourselves, but more importantly our children, the value of a dollar, delayed gratification and reevaluating our needs and wants as well as how to meet them.
[W]hen we DO go back to buying, we will be making more informed choices, where the bottom dollar isn't always the guiding force. Sometimes you can't get more for less. Sometimes you have to spend more to get more.
We are going to start thinking of some great decorations that we can make once and use for all our birthday celebrations and start a tradition of our own, a tradition of longevity, items with memory and family time while doing it.
LOVE the library!

So many different lessons, obstacles and challenges encountered, simply by choosing to make one change.

What do you think of making a family resolution? Trying something new just to see what would happen? What if we turned off the television for a year? What if we embraced the radical Sabbath Manifesto? How would our thinking change? What would we learn? What would we embrace in the time freed by changed practice?

I hope the coming year will be one of life and growth and joy and family. Let me know if you decide to make any changes!

A Child is Born

2010-12-22T09:56:00.000-06:00

For unto us a child is born , unto us a son is given : and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor , The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. Isaiah 9:6 KJV

Even as I read these words I hum various parts of Handel's For Unto Us a Child is Born and the Hallelujah Chorus. Thank you George Frederich Handel. You have corralled the overwhelming news of God come down from heaven into a measured yet full response. You give voice to the magnitude of this event.

For unto us a child is born. . . those of us who are parents recognize the depth and beauty of this statement. Yet Isaiah's "us" refers not to parents, but to a people. "The people who walked in darkness", that is, all of us, were all blessed by the arrival of this child. I believe in the Child. I also believe that every child among us is heaven sent. And, like Handel's Messiah, raising this child is not a work that can be performed alone. One lone rock star is not sufficient. It takes a large number of people doing their part: parents, yes, and teachers and preachers, and politicians and pundits, and farmers and grocers, and neighbors and friends to give full measure to this life. If one group doesn't show up, the show may go on, but the magnificence of the work will be diminished.

It takes a village, a chorus, an orchestra, to raise a child. It takes all of these doing their utmost, to make an environment that will allow this child to be all that he or she was created to be. It is necessary that we show up. That we perform our part in the work of this life. That we, the us to whom the children are born, make sure that they have clean water and food and shelter and education and loving, caring adults around them. That we continually strive to make the world safe and hospitable for them.

I've heard it every day since Thanksgiving: "Christmas is for children". Let it be so! And let's show up AFTER Christmas day for the children, in whatever ways we can.

Making Memories

2010-12-16T14:09:00.000-06:00

There's a scene in the movie "The Parent Trap" where one of the twins, pretending to be her sister, hugs her grandfather tightly and kind of sniffs at him. When he asks what she's doing she replies: "Making a memory! Years from now, when I'm all grown up, I'll always remember my grandfather and how he always smelled of peppermint and pipe tobacco." Since my own grandpa also smelled of peppermint and pipe tobacco, this idea charmed me the very first time I heard it. And it contained an idea that has stuck with me ever since: We can deliberately choose to remember certain moments.

As I work at holiday preparations I often muse about what will make this Christmas memorable. It's not always possible to predict - some of the best memories are completely unplanned, but not all. As I look back over my Christmas memories it seems like it's about half and half. Half of my favorite memories were created by someone's intention: carefully chosen gifts, invited guests, inspired worship. Others were happenstance: blizzards, random encounters, life-stages. Either way, memories shape both our anticipation and our definition of Christmas.

I have many memories of Christmases past. Most of them make me smile. Two have shaped my Christmas perceptions more than any of the others. The first is probably from around age six. That was the year my mom introduced the tradition of Jesus' birthday cake. I can remember singing Happy Birthday to Jesus on Christmas day. There were even candles. It made the central point of the whole celebration so clear to me. The second was my last Christmas before becoming a parent. I was, as they say in the Bible, great with child. There would be no traveling to parents or in-laws that year. I remember hearing the Christmas story that year as if for the first time: a young couple, far from home, a child about to be born. . . it was God's story and it was my story.

Like Mary, I have pondered these, and many other memories, in my heart for years. Some of them may bear little resemblance to the "facts" of the event or to someone else's memory of it. They are my memories, and they are part of who I am. Like a river running through the hills, my memories have shaped the landscape of my life. They have rounded the sharp places and created new routes in my thoughts. Looking for things worth remembering is a useful habit, especially if you choose well.

I know, and we all know, people who seem to remember all the slights, the hurts and the disappointments of their lives. While they may truly never have had a happy moment to remember, I think it's more likely that their constant focus on past hurt has blinded them to the good things in the present. Others are constantly comparing this year to their "perfect" memories of Christmas past and always feeling that the present falls short. This is equally blinding. We can't really focus on two things at the same time. This is where looking for things worth remembering can be helpful. If we are looking for things to happily remember in the future, we will not be busy remembering unhappy things from the past or finding fault with the present. (I'm not advocating for pretending things never happened or that everything is perfect when it's not.) I am just choosing to make memories in the present. To BE PRESENT in the present and not lost in the past.

Have yourself a merry little Christmas and please, make some wonderful memories!

A Sign of the Times

2010-12-09T08:02:00.009-06:00

I don't shop much. I developed a real aversion to shopping when I was a single mother living at the very edge of my means or beyond. Time spent at the mall seemed to bring out bitterness and anger that I wanted to keep in check - so I just quit going there. Since then, I have narrowed my habits to the point where I visit only a handful of stores on a regular basis. Lately though, I've had occasion to go to a bunch of stores and I feel a little bit like a tourist.

One thing has caught my eye that I think is clearly a sign of the times. In every store there are piggy banks of every conceivable shape and size. Big piggies, little piggies, pastel piggies and bold piggies. Piggies with polka dots, stripes and the logo of every major league team and most of the popular college teams. There are piggy banks for kids, and piggy banks clearly for adults. And there are lots of other kinds of banks too - the ones that keep a running total of your deposits with an electronic display. The ones that will sort your change for easy rolling. Banks that talk to you when you put money in them. It's phenomenal. And telling.

If I were actually a tourist, I might interpret this as a sign of American self-reliance; that America is so rich because even its children are taught to save for a rainy day from a very early age. In reality, it is a clear indication of the current economic conditions. For me, it is also nostalgic. I had several piggy banks during my childhood years. The most favored one wasn't a pig at all, but rather a spaniel that bore a striking resemblance to my Grandpa's dog Frisky. And that bank came from my Grandpa, who I believe got it free from some bank vying for his business. Does this mean we will start getting toasters for opening accounts again? I'm guessing my twenty-something readers don't even know what I'm talking about here.

People who came through the depression knew the true value of a dime. And we are beginning to realize it too. Money is a tool. Everyone knows the value of a good tool: writers like certain kinds of pens, gardeners like certain kinds of rakes, cooks like certain kinds of knives. I wonder if we quit seeing money as a tool when we quit seeing money and started swiping cards for everything. It would appear that money is real again, in the eyes of the American shopper anyway.

These piggy banks give me a flutter of hope. People are figuring out what they need to teach their kids about money. And, they are teaching them to wait for what they want. And that, in the end, is the truest value of a piggy bank. Learning to wait for what you want. Learning to work toward it, one dime at a time. Because anything that is worth having requires this. Getting an education requires mastering one thing at a time. Growing a garden requires waiting for the produce to ripen. Raising competent children requires daily investments of time and love. Life is not like the lottery - it's like the piggy bank - and children who learn this are way ahead when they reach adulthood.

Always drive a car big enough to carry a cello. . .

2010-12-02T13:52:00.000-06:00

Yesterday I saw one of the early signs of the holidays: the car with the wreath on its grille. That got me to thinking about all the bits of wisdom related to cars that I have collected from other parents and from my own experience. The advice about the cello obviously came from a parent with musical children and it was very good advice. Driving your kids, and their friends, where they need to go is a great way to stay connected in the midst of your crazy schedule. As the driver, you become invisible to everyone behind the front seat. And, if you can keep your mouth shut, you can find out a lot about what your kids are really thinking and doing. (If you decide to talk about something you overheard - don't blow your own cover! Find another reason to introduce the topic so you can continue eavesdropping!)

Another useful item from my collection: Road trips are a great way to bond during the silent years. Even the most remote teen cannot bear two days in the car without conversation. Eventually they will make some kind of overture and you can probably have some meaningful discussions, if you are willing to wait in silence for a while.

Also, driving in the dark can provide great opportunities for embarrassing discussions. If you can bring your self to open the discussion by remarking on a XXX-video store or billboard for a "gentlemen's club" you can find yourself addressing a lot of questions your teens may be carrying around with them. I once, in the dark, explained the actual meaning of every forbidden word my kids had ever seen written on a bathroom wall (and why we obviously shouldn't use them). Definitely a discussion that would not have happened face to face in the light of day!

From another friend: when your kid drives someplace alone for the first time, find someone to wait with until the "I have safely arrived phone call comes." This is a multi-phase kind of rule. First they drive to the grocery store or church or school by themselves. Later they drive to the suburbs. Then, it's the next big town over and eventually it's an interstate trip. Finally, they will take trips and tell you AFTER the fact. And you'll be relieved you didn't have to worry the whole time they were driving from college to Canada just because they'd never left the country before. . .

And a few don'ts from the same sources:

Don't ever give them a brand new car.
Don't be afraid to make them earn their car: I know someone who successfully raised three fine young men by forcing them to drive the family minivan until they finished their Eagle Scout requirements.
Don't make them bear all the expense of having a car. 1) Because they will have to have a job during the school year and then quit all their extra-curriculars to find the time to work. And instead of hanging with high-achieiving band members or athletes or school newspaper reporters, they'll be hanging with high-school dropouts at minimum wage jobs. 2) You can't really take it away if they bought it themselves.
Don't assume they are going where they say they are going.
Don't hesitate to make them responsible for washing and gassing it or for driving their younger sibs to things.

Cars are kind of like an extension of our homes. Your family life can happen in them if you are intentional about it. I love the people who put antlers or wreaths on their cars at Christmas time! They clearly know that their car is part of their home. Forget the Christmas sleigh rides - just go for a jaunt in the family car.

Counting Blessings

2010-11-23T09:24:00.001-06:00

Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. When I was a kid, it was the only major holiday we had away from home because, for pastor's families, Christmas and Easter are always spent at home. But every Thanksgiving, we would go to church on Wednesday night and then leave for the grandparents' immediately after the service. It seemed to take forever (Google maps says that it was only about 3 hours) and we inevitably fell asleep in the car and awoke in our familiar room at Grandma's house with wonderful smells wafting up from the kitchen on Thanksgiving morning. In my little girl memories it snowed every year; this is probably incorrect but it is how I remember it. We would leave home in cold, wet, brown fall and wake up to untouched winter white splendor.

Before we fell asleep we always played the Thanksgiving version of the Alphabet Game in the car. Instead of I'm going on a trip and I'm taking a ___________ we would scramble to find something to be thankful for starting with each letter of the alphabet. (I know - this was sooooo little house on the prairie!) Thirty years later I became the driver and we played the same game over many long Thanksgiving road trips. And this year, on the night before Thanksgiving, I plan to fall asleep chanting "I am thankful for Austin's weirdness, I am thankful for books, I am thankful for church, and dogs, and Emily, and friends, and Gracie, and holidays, and", well, you get the idea. I could repeat this litany many times, changing every item - I am blessed beyond any deserving.

Most of us are blessed beyond measure and, as we barrel toward the ultimate consumer holiday, it is fitting that we stop and count up what we already have. It is the season of Thanks, and it's immediately followed by the season of Giving. Giving, not Getting.

I think it's easier for children to turn their attention toward giving if they are mindful of what they already have. So, after you have given Thanks, eaten turkey and dressing and cranberries and watched some football, I have a suggestion. Count your blessings. Then consider joining the Advent Conspiracy. You can check it out here:

Let your kids help you figure out who really could use a gift. Then, let them help pick it out. Or let them help figure out what to skip so that you can give more away. The video says it all - $10 Billion could solve the world's water issues. I am thankful that I can walk into my kitchen, turn on the tap and find clean water flowing out of it. Hot or cold - whatever I want! Next year, wouldn't it be awesome if we could be thankful that people all over the world have clean water?