The folks at Seasons of the Spirit curriculum put together a meditation that ties the story together a little differently. It helps if you have a net handy or look at a picture.

Give it a try:

This week’s symbol ~ a net
Contemplation 1. Take time to be present to the net, letting other concerns fall away as you take time to centre in the reflective calm of this Season after the Epiphany. Then, read the following statements noticing which ones stand out for you.
■ ■Some things are so worn by use that you can see the discoloration left by the hands that trusted them.
■ ■The scruffy sacredness of objects can come from their having been left behind by someone who was ready to move on.
■ ■A net is a web of chance encounters – crossroads where there was at least one “no” and one “yes.”
■ ■Nets create little frames of reference: squares that create boundaries around life’s ordinary moments of wonder.
■ ■Safety net or source of entanglement: take your pick!
2. Notice other statements that come to your heart and mind as you look at the net. Write those down, if you wish.
3. Stay with the statement that is most attractive to you today. Meditate on that statement, returning to the net as is helpful.
4. When the time of contemplation is coming to an end, make note of anything you want to take away with you from this time: an insight, a resolution, a word or phrase on which you will continue to reflect, a new apprecia¬tion of the Epiphany journey. You will know if there is something you are to carry away with you.

Psalm 139: 1-6

O LORD, you have searched me and known me.

2          You know when I sit down and when I rise up;

you discern my thoughts from far away.

3          You search out my path and my lying down,

and are acquainted with all my ways.

4          Even before a word is on my tongue,

O LORD, you know it completely.

5          You hem me in, behind and before,

and lay your hand upon me.

6          Such knowledge is too wonderful for me;

it is so high that I cannot attain it.

Beautiful words used to put forth the idea of God’s surrounding presence and comfort.  Feasting on the Word commentator Timothy Beach-Verhey says about the passage, “Because God is at the farthest reaches of the universe and in the most secret depths of the human heart, God is the constant companion, who cannot be escaped, fooled, or ignored.”

I am reminded of my tennis boot camp instructor who has taken to asking me what my sermon is going to be about each week.  My answers are brief, because it’s kind of hard to talk when your chasing a ball around the tennis court.

Today he told me he had theories.

“Oh, yeah, what theories?”  I asked.

Be still.

Really?

How many times have you heard that this week?  Namely, that the way to approach Advent is by being still and waiting.  Seriously, it’s not an option for many of us.

For me, I put a few things into the hopper not knowing what might come to fruition when.  There is my thesis finalization, a capital campaign kickoff, and a Fairfax County grant application that has been in the works for over six months in addition to my “other” pastoral responsibilities.  Lately, I have begun to secretly hope the grant wouldn’t materialize.

What do you secretly hope will fall off the radar so you can be still this season?

This morning my reading took me to Adam Thomas’ book, Digital Disciple: Real Christianity in a Digital World (Abingdon, 2011).  Here’s an excerpt that makes me slightly revise be still and wait in my Advent world:

“This is how our human brains work: with so much information downloading every minute into our neural hard drives, we tune out the constant things in order to see clearly the things that change.  We perceive that changing things will affect us more immediately, and so we grant them more consideration…[Yet], like the ocean, God is a constant that we fail to notice most of the time.  When we do attend to God’s presence, however, we are surprised that we ever forgot to look. “ (34-35)

This week I’m going to practice brief periods of “be still and notice.”  I’m sure my Advent-ure will be better for it.  I hope the same for you.

I didn’t have a Damascus Road experience.  My children led me into the ministry.

This post is based upon the following premise:

“The idea of children actors in their own right is not new, but feminist theology gives it renewed meaning…First, feminist theology upholds children as persons created in God’s image and therefore deserving of basic human rights accorded all people of any age, color, or creed. Second, it celebrates children as a source of spiritual insight.” (Emphasis mine)

(Let the Children Come: Reimagining Childhood from a Christian Perspective, p. 138)

The description of children as “actors in their own right” is parallel to the idea that “Benjamin Franklin was a major actor in many of the events leading up to the founding of our nation.” (www.Merriam-Webster.com) Children have something of value to offer “in their being” apart from the adults that surround them.

As change agents…

My children led me into the ministry.  Their demands on my life and my time forced me to evaluate the time I spent away from them.  If I had to give up time to be with them to be employed, was that employment valuable to me?  Was working 45-60 hours a week worth the higher grade level and wooden office furniture?

Not for me.

I started evaluating my options; I decided to train for employment in the public school system. School psychologist seemed appropriate since I like to try to understand what motivates people.  After taking all the necessary undergrad requirements to enter a graduate degree program at Rochester Institute of Technology, and while I planned to study for my GRE, I took a part-time job as a youth director at my church.  I needed to ‘test’ whether I could make working with children my vocation.

That set me on the path to ministry.  The following are a few important reflections that also come to mind when I think about what my children have taught me.

That it is possible to love each one deeply for their uniqueness.  My own mother used to tell me she loved each of my siblings and me the same.  At the time I wondered how that could be possible and what that felt like. Now – I disagree with her.  I don’t love my children the same because I’ve learned that their unique personalities, quirks, and challenges make them who they are – and I love them for being who they are in their one-of-a-kindness. (Maybe that is what Mom meant.)  I’m quite confident it is a piece of how God feels about humanity.  My boys have taught me about how grace happens, how God continually loves us so much, even when we mess up.

What brother love looks like.  An image imprinted on my brain is the time Jesse and I returned home from a week away from the rest of the family.  We were in New York finalizing the sale of our home while the two older boys finished school in Baltimore, MD, the location of our new residence.   When we got off the plane, seven year old Dylan ran arms wide open to Jesse (not Mom) exclaiming, “Buddy!! I missed you!”

Fourteen years later, with home base now in Virginia, dinners together as a family are rare. At eighteen, twenty-one, and twenty-six years old, having dinner with Mom & Dad are not always on the top of one’s to-do list.  However, each son makes a special effort to eat with us when he knows his brothers will be present and vice versa.

There is an innate maleness that I will never truly comprehend. Raised in the 60s and 70s, I believed it was possible to raise “androgynous” children, sifting out the negative of both genders.  Crazy, I now know.

The first clues that my philosophy was not working are when 1. LEGOS became swords and guns because mom would not buy more realistic toys.  2. Baseball and football stats were memorized and recited with barely a prompt before multiplication tables were close to being learned. 3. Numerous quiet activities, crayons, chalk, coloring books, word games, went untouched because the preferred activity was wrestling until someone cried. One pediatrician chastised me because Jesse barely knew how to write his name before beginning kindergarten.  The same pediatrician was in awe of Jesse’s large motor coordination at the age of five.

My perfectionism is not their problem and I need to deal with it.

Perfectionism is “a propensity for being displeased with anything that is not perfect or does not meet extremely high standards.”  My guys didn’t share my view that I needed to “do it all” because the opportunity existed.  They taught me my limits.  The “paid” job and the pristine house didn’t matter.  After years of trying to mold them via my perfectionist imagery, I finally learned that they have their own schedules of maturity and even my “intervention” is not going to change them as much as I think I can.

That is their God gifted agency in my life.

Growing with my children, thus far, has been my most important spiritual discipline.  Jake, Dylan and Jesse continue to teach me how to “let go and trust God.”  I can’t be with them every moment of every day.  I have to trust God that they will come back home in one piece, whole and healthy.

Dylan, Jake & Jesse (clockwise from upper left)

“Letting go of children goes against the grain of self-preservation precisely because to let go means to admit one’s own finitude, limits, and fears.” (Let the Children Come, p. 157)

Now that the youngest is away at college and the nest is empty, I find myself “dying to oneself as previously known and being born anew.” (156)  Empty nests have perks but they are also lonely – and one has to deal with it.

I pray for God’s re-creation for another of God’s purposes.

Tendonitis was the preliminary diagnosis for the hot, tender pain in my wrist. For the umpteenth time my doctor prescribed physical therapy, a prescription I’ve always ignored due to a perceived lack of time.  But – this time I really wanted to continue playing; playing as in a break from responsibilities, playing as an outlet for my ‘competitiveness’, playing as in a team sport that my husband and I can do together (somewhat together since he’s stronger and has a harder swing).

So – I went to the physical therapist, who also was a chiropractor.

According to Dr. Chiropractor, the tendonitis was actually “referred pain.” In my PT sessions I came to understand how, in different situations, I was contributing to an old back and shoulder injury.

From my reading this week I learned that the word therapy comes from the Greek word therapeia, related to the Greek verb therapeuo, which means, “to wait upon.”  In different scenarios in society today we are “waited upon” in terms of physical therapy (to restore physical movement), drug therapy (to halt disease processes in the body), and psychotherapy (restore emotional health).

In the book “Grounded in the Living Word: The Old Testament and Pastoral Care Practices” Denise Hopkins and Michael Koppel make the point that there is much “referred pain” involved with living in a “me-centered” world, which is putting oneself at the center of existence.

The Bible, the Living Word of God, is therapeutic in that it invites us into a de-centering experience.  Through Scripture, God invites us into an expansion of our worldview as we envision new story possibilities for our lives.

We can’t do it alone.

In the words of Denise and Michael:

“When we read the biblical stories and share our stories in community, we engage in a healing process as we serve and wait upon the text and one another.  This process destabilizes and reorganizes our understanding of sick/healer; care giver/care receiver; and subject object…

Sharing our stories around biblical texts in a group provides a window as well as a mirror as we grow in faith. A group serves as a window, and the window lets in more light with the presence of theological, gender, ideological, economic, and ethnic diversity.”[1]

As August cycles into September and a new program year at JCPC, we commemorate and celebrate, and hope to open the window for more light.

A Global Phenomenon in Our Backyard

Modern-day slavery is a global phenomenon that manifests itself in the United States as well. From the fishing industry in Ghana, the brothels of Thailand, to domestic workers enslaved by a husband and wife in their Long Island home or farmworkers harvesting tomatoes in Florida fields, slavery is alive and well in a new form in the 21st century. Indeed, some of the products we wear or consume were produced using slave labor. Our whole society, from corporations to law enforcement, from the U.S. Justice Department to the church, must be involved if we are to put an end to human trafficking once and for all.

As well as this:

The International Labor Organization (ILO) — the United Nations agency charged with addressing labor standards, employment and social protection issues — estimates that there are 12.3 million people in forced labor, bonded labor, forced child labor and sexual servitude at any given time; other estimates range from 4 million to 27 million. (Trafficking in Persons Report, U.S. Department of State, 2008).

The situation is horrifying.  Statistics like this can numb us.  What little impact can we have on a problem of this magnitude?

In part, that’s what our study of Miller-McLemore’s book has been about – issues facing children and families in the 21st century.  That includes not only our own biological children, but also a concern for children around the world.

This week, our lectionary story for Sunday involves Shiphrah and Puah, two little known characters from the Bible who stood up to Pharaoh.  These midwives refused to kill newborn male Israelites.  Their one act of defiance allowed the birth of Moses.  Moses went on to lead the slaves to freedom.

Could there be one or two little acts that can help change conditions for modern-day slaves?  Check out the Take Action possibilities here.

So, we make different ones.

IF my memory serves me correctly, and that’s a big IF since we are all tainted by perspective, I grew up in a “children are to be seen and not heard household” with little to no voice in family decision-making.  I was going to do that differently when I grew up.  My children were going to be able to reason things out with their parents.

HA!

My mistake was giving my guys too much mutuality too early.  I won’t get into details for reasons of space and privacy.  Suffice to say that the conflicting opinions involved unequal reasoning capability, wisdom, and experience base. There were times I needed to say, “because I’m the parent!”  Even now, I find myself I playing the “not as long as you’re living under my roof” card more than I ever thought I would.  My belief is that I am warding off impulsive acts by young men who are still undergoing prefrontal lobe brain development.

Sorry guys, you’ll understand when you have kids of your own.

In chapter 5 of “Let the Children Come” (see earlier blog entries for observations from previous chapters) Bonnie J. Miller-McLemore spends a good deal of time on the idea of mutuality.  Introducing the idea, she talks about the often-misguided Christian ideal of self-sacrifice that can easily slip into self-diminishment by denying oneself for the sake of others.  More fundamental to the Christian message is caritas, a mutuality or equal regard that includes but does not idealize self-sacrifice.

While mutuality is a noble ideal, how does one put that into practice when dealing with children?  A family involved in mutuality inevitably consists of some combination of men, women, and children at different stages of development and relationship.

An illustration comes from Roman Catholic ethicist Christine Gudorf, who with her husband, adopted two medically handicapped children.  Gudorf was disturbed by an almost universal perception that she and her husband were exemplars of heroic, self-sacrificing Christian love.  Gudorf “found this a “very faulty” interpretation resulting not only from a gross misunderstanding of parenting but also from a distortion of the ethic of love upheld by Jesus.” (126-7)

Gudorf contends that this self-giving was never unconditional but “involved a necessary self-interest that actually enhanced their capacity to give.” The Gudorfs held on to the belief that eventually the “giving would become more mutual.” (127)

“Love involves sacrifice, but it aims at mutuality” according to Gudorf.

Next in the chapter, Miller-McLemore re-baptizes a forbidden word: “hierarchy”.  Narrowly defined, hierarchy conjures up images of authoritarianism or patriarchy.  However, the author urges us to think about transitional hierarchies that develop because of a temporary inequity between persons – whether of power, expertise, authority, responsibility or maturity.  Transitional hierarchy means persons are moving toward mutuality but have not yet arrived at the destination.  Miller-McLemore encourages us to ponder:

“Power-over relationships are thus not destructive by definition; they are harmful when they are unchanging and exploitative.” (130)

Caritas, when it comes to children, compels readers to recognize that conceptions of mutuality are age, expertise, and context dependent.

Tomorrow – looking at children’s agency.

Mom: Where are you guys?

Jesse: Just past exit 130, aka the exit for UMW

Mom: I had a loneliness moment when we drove by that exit.

My youngest son, Jesse, enters his freshman year at the University of Mary Washington on August 24th.  He’s happy about it.

I am dreading it.

Above is a text exchange between Jesse and I as we drove north on interstate 95 in two separate cars from an Outer Banks beach vacation. My “loneliness moment” was an understatement. I really had a mother meltdown as I envisioned what life will be like in two short weeks when John and I have an empty nest. For the first time in 26 years, I won’t have someone to rush home for, there won’t be practices to drive to, no orthodontist appointments to squeeze in before making dinner, and no more nighttime nagging about homework.

My sons suggest I get a puppy.

At this transition point in our family life I remember so clearly how unfathomable thoughts of motherhood were to me twenty-seven years ago.  How would I ever be able to take care of something as dependent as a baby?! I couldn’t even get myself ready and to work by 8:00 AM most mornings.

Somehow, somewhere along the way, I found the stamina and reserves to get up, out, and to work by 6:30 AM so that I could return home when the whistle blew at 4:00 PM.  Now – I can’t imagine not taking care of my sons on a daily basis.

But – I have to.

I now appreciate what historical theologian Elizabeth Dreyer meant when she named parenting the “ascetic opportunity par excellence.” As Dreyer says, “Huge chunks of life are laid down at the behest of infants. And then, later, parents must let go.”  Is this an explanation of the Christian life or what?

Based upon feedback from study groups, Chapters 5 and 6 of “Let the Children Come: Reimagining Childhood from a Christian Perspective” by Bonnie J. Miller–McLemore are the most engaging of the book.  So if you have made it thus far you won’t regret the time it took to get there.  Rather than try to recap the entire richness of “Children as the Labor of Love,” I’m listing my highlights with their page numbers for personal reference.  Hopefully, it will entice you to read the entire chapter.

Highlights

The organization of household labor is not merely a personal matter.  The personal is political and involves a major restructuring of human relations: women to men, wives to husbands, and ultimately, parents to children. (107-8)

Feminism has been the convenient lightening rod for anxiety about family change. (109) A multitude of forces disrupted families in the 21st century: birth control, modern technology, market capitalism, increased education and democratization, and the movement from an industrial to a service society.  Feminism was as much a reaction to these and other developments as a cause. (110)

Black feminist bell hooks claims that feminism was the first social movement to draw public attention to how our culture does not love children, commonly seeing them as mere property of parents to do with as they wish. (110)

Who cares for children if women no longer make it their complete aim in life? (111)

In contexts of social oppression and even genocide, children and child rearing offer a dramatic means for political resistance. (112) Remember Shiphrah and Puah in the Moses saga?

What do children really need?  What do they really need when the needs of children and parents conflict? (114)

Even the most liberal religious institutions are inherently conserving and conservative. (117)

Feminist theologians have taken a stronger position of advocacy of children than secular feminists have…Yet, there are still problems and limits…feminist theologians have worked harder to restructure adult relationships than to take the next step of restructuring the relationship between parents and children. (117-8)

Corresponding to the renewed interest in women’s unique maternal knowledge a second group thought about children as an offshoot of new understandings of God as mother and experiences of pregnancy, childbirth, nursing, and child care. Such maternal encounters spark spiritual growth and even epiphany about divine and human virtues.  (119)

That’s enough for one day’s blog entry.  More tomorrow…

The Child Question

Have you ever wished you could get your kids to do more around the house? My guys developed a one-task-per-day quota sometime in adolescence. Evaporating with out notice, gone were the days when one or all of them shadowed mommy or daddy trying to help. Now, any request to address a task outside of their bedroom initiates an immediate pause while they calculate what they perceive the other siblings contributions for the day have been.  More often than not, there is a verbal duel with a parent over whether it’s really their turn or responsibility.

I admit it.  I failed somewhere along the line in my parenting.

My own mother went into a raging rant if she came home and the house wasn’t spotless.  I wasn’t going to do that to my children (she said righteously).  So, I ended up not requiring much of them in terms of housework, which is a killer burden for a working mom.  The “wounded child” in me remembers that my mother did not work outside the home. Once she had children, it didn’t feel like she did much inside either.

Each historical period fashions its own unique attitude toward children says Bonnie Miller- McLemore in her book “Let the Children Come”.  She goes on to raise The Child Question after a brief survey of the far–reaching transformations in American family life over the last three centuries.

Back in the olden days, families lived mostly on farms or running small cottage businesses where everyone, including children, had a job supporting the family. Society transformed with the advent of industrialization and rapid technological changes.  This transformation altered household economic structures and displaced women and children’s roles as co-contributors in economic support.  Further transformation in society has occurred and is still occurring as women take their place as (near) equal partners in the political, economic and social areas of life.

With industrialization came Child Labor laws, which were crucially necessary.   But they had an underside according to Miller-McLemore: Children have developed attitudes that adults work and they don’t.  Generalized to home life, dislikable household chores are adult work, not the child’s. As time went on the more productively useless children became, the more emotionally priceless they have become within the home.  The ‘cult of childhood’ says that children are to be unconditionally and inordinately loved in the home (advocated by child rearing experts and aided by Christian theologians). “As a result, many parents today experience a sharp escalation of role expectations beyond anything ever imagined by their own parents.” (6)

Can I get an Amen?

As far as parental expectations are concerned, I know I have fallen short of society’s expectation of me to produce super-achieving children.  My shortcomings are long: They didn’t get a helicopter mom or dad, so their names went in the lottery for teacher and class selections year after year. My baked treats were simple rather than the latest idea from a parenting magazine. I volunteered for only one or two field trips.  I was never the room mom.  We took them out of sports when the grades suffered.  We made them go to church feeling that the spiritual side of life needs as much development as the rational side of their brains and the athletic part of their physical being.

They each have excelled and made us extremely proud.  They also have disappointed us at different times in life.  As much as we tried, our boys have followed in our footsteps and they attend the School of Hard Knocks.  In doing so, they have shown me that I am not always in control, that they come to me as individuals with unique mixes of good and bad (Miller-McLemore refers to this as a child’s agency) and that there is blessing in accepting them as they are because God’s revelation is still unfolding.

Which brings us to Jesus in “Let the Children Come.”  An oft-quoted Scripture regarding children is Jesus admonishing the disciples with: “But Jesus called for them and said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of God belongs.  17 Truly I tell you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it.” (Luke 18:16-17, NRSV)  Miller-McLemore claims that often our nostalgic yearning for simpler times (Little House on the Prairie times), we overlay the understanding of children as simple, pure, tender, and spontaneously joyful as models for the kingdom.

The author calls for a fresh hearing of the Word.  In the gospels of Luke and Matthew, the story of Jesus and the children refers to humbling oneself.  Over time we have sentimentalized the term humbleness to a meaning of meekness or modesty, stripping away the political and economic connotations of powerlessness and vulnerability.  Children in the first-century world were inferior and vulnerable in their social status as are many children around the world today.  Why else would we spend more on end-of-life care in the U.S. than we do the millions of children without health care?  Why, if, as it’s been said, there is enough food in the world – it’s simply a distribution problem – do children still starve in the two-thirds world?

Children are a GIFT.  They are also a RESPONSIBILITY.  And, a child is not a privatized responsibility. Children are communal responsibilities.  In the Jewish tradition children were signs of God’s covenant faithfulness, God’s desire for the covenant to continue.  What would it look like for the church to take covenant responsibility seriously based upon a fresh hearing of Scripture?

Our future depends on it.

I learned early on never to take pregnancy or my body for granted.  Especially when Jesse was born (without treatments or planning) in 1993.  We mistakenly took it for granted that we couldn’t conceive on our own, yet, we did.

After the first miscarriage, I considered each child a Divine gift.

In chapter four of her book, Let the Children Come, Bonnie Miller- McLemore writes, “If people knew what it really means in Christian terms to call a child a gift, they might hesitate to do so readily and blithely.” (83) Summarizing, she points to letters in the New Testament and a market-driven culture as dominating influences corrupting Jesus’ message of welcoming children as a gift.

Miller-McLemore traces back to the early Christian movement through an examination of epistles containing “household codes”.   Early Christians sought to legitimize their faith in a hostile environment by mimicking the “household codes” of Greco-Roman society.  (See Ephesians 5:22-6:9 and Colossians 3:17-4:1) The codes created a hierarchy within the family to mirror the power structure of society.  These codes are understood by some Christians to be a disruption of the egalitarian principles Jesus taught.  Especially in Colossians, heavy focus on the hierarchy seemed to pale the letter’s teaching to submit to one another in Christ (Col. 3:17) or for fathers not to provoke children into losing heart (Col. 3:21).

The author’s contention is that from the Reformation through the last century, the household codes have been used to give “supernatural sanction” to hierarchical power, usually male.  As a result, ideals of obedience and submission have, at times, been used to control, punish, or harm children. (88)

The Market Driven Eclipse of Children as Gift

For many parents, giving children opportunities they themselves never had is a distinct pleasure.  Often opportunities take the form of activities like sports, music or dance lessons, mind competitions and so on.  There is a line parents can cross between a child’s interest and the parent’s self-centered preoccupation.  The self-centered preoccupation manifests when a child’s success is not merely for the sake of the child but for the parent’s own self-affirmation, as a sort of proof of their own value.  Miller-McLemore likens this to treating children as “artifacts to be produced, owned, managed, cultivated, and invested.” (89) They are products.

Treat children as products negatively affects not only the child, it also creates a situation where disadvantaged children in the U.S. and around the world are neglected because parents with greater assets are obsessed with one’s own children.  The welfare of children in general is ignored.

The U.S. corporate world has turned children into consumers by marketing to them in as many ways possible.  They are a “retailer’s dream” where tweens have been identified as a $130 billion market. (90)  Children live in a “consumptive world of fads and products” developed for sole purpose of selling to children.  It is not that they are created for their well being, retailers simply want their business.  Children are consumers.

Finally, as a result of environments described above, some children are viewed as burdens.  Miller-McLemore calls this the acute “final unfolding of capitalism’s logic.”  In a two-tiered world, those who can consume and produce and those who cannot, at disadvantage are children who can neither produce nor consume.   People are considered “nonentities” when they can neither produce nor consume.  Children are often compared with the elderly and feeble in this regard. (91) Children are burdens.

The three uses of children as products, consumers, and burdens/nonentities, helps foster the extremism of child labor, child prostitution, and child military service around the world.

Concluding this disheartening portion of the chapter “Christian Faith: Children as Gift” Miller-McLemore writes: “A genuine Christian view of children as gift radically challenges social and economic complicity in such travesty.”

Personally, I know I veered into the product mentality with my sons.  Luckily, they gifted me with the wisdom that they came to teach and mold me as much as I would influence them.

I will summarize the remainder of the chapter in my next post.

I’d welcome any reader thoughts.

Lisa