Last night I went to the latest session of “Awakening Joy,” a monthly class I’m taking with the Buddhist meditation teacher James Baraz. He had invited a guest speaker, the author M.J. Ryan, to give a talk to the group. Ryan is the author of several books on creating happiness, a motivational speaker and organizational consultant.
She said lots of interesting things, but one thing in particular interested me because of its connection to parenting. She talked about the research of Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck. Dweck researched groups of children with learning problems to find out what could make some of them successful while others would give up.
What she found is that those who had a “fixed mindset” about their abilities would tend to give up more easily when they encountered setbacks. They had a fixed idea of themselves, like “I am bad at math” or “I am great at soccer.” These children had an underlying belief that talent was innate, that they were born a certain way and that experience was just going to continue to confirm those things they believed about themselves.
On the other hand, those students who had a “growth mindset” about themselves proved to be the ones who were able to excel. When encountered with setbacks, they were more apt to accept them as learning challenges along their developmental path. They understood themselves as individuals who are growing, and in this view, making “mistakes” is simply part of an overall process. These children handled criticism better and were inspired, rather than intimidated, by the successes of others.
Dweck’s recent book is Mindset: The New Psychology of Success.
Ryan drew some corollaries to parenting and made some suggestions about how to praise our children to underscore a growth mindset. If we make a global positive statement about our kids, like, “Sally, you are a fantastic kid!” the problem is that the child knows it’s not completely true. She knows there was that time she stole something or whacked her sister on the head. And now here’s mom saying she’s totally fantastic, so that creates cognitive dissonance. What’s better is to praise our children’s efforts, choices and strategies. We might say instead, “Sally, that was great how you kept on trying to make a basket even when it didn’t go in every time.” In this way we help the child to form an understanding of themselves as a being who is in process.
I was really excited by this idea because it lines up completely with the spiritual perspectives I have studied for many years. It has always seemed that the transformative element for a life of greater meaning is indeed, an understanding of the human journey as an opportunity to grow in love. Dweck doesn't mention the love part. But I do.
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Monday, July 28, 2008
Becoming Heaven
Over the years I’ve taught Sunday School many times, and I can tell you with certainty that there is one activity that is sure to elicit groans and rolled eyes from the kids: ask them to draw a picture of heaven. “Oh Gawwwd,” I’ve heard more than one of them complain. “Not again. Here’s the bright golden sunshine, here’s the rainbow, here are all the angels. We’ve done this a million times before.” (I learned early on to never assign this activity in my classes.)
Why do they hate it? Because it’s too facile, too simplistic, too goody-goody. And I would imagine that some of us might respond the same way. Trying to conjure up an image for heaven either descends into a hopelessly cheerful stereotype, or presents us with the maddening prospect of trying to give visual form to something that is inexpressible. Maybe we would be irritated or impatient with the very question. Is it perhaps that the notion of heaven itself seems hopelessly saccharine—naïve in the postmodern age, irrelevant to the scientific worldview, too Christian in a world of increasing religious pluralism? Does it feel as if it would be a lot easier to simply let the shimmering notions of the afterlife fade away, as relics of less evolved time? And since the notion of heaven necessarily invokes the choice between its opposite, hell, and thus also would seem to point to some kind of terrifying judgment day, doesn’t it feel that it would certainly be easier to leave behind the whole convoluted mess, and go sashaying off into a cleaner, vaguer, spiritual understanding?
Well, I’d like to suggest that we not give up on heaven quite yet. With a little help from the spiritual theologian Emanuel Swedenborg, we can come up with a new interpretation of heaven that can be very powerful for our lives. These ideas suggest that we might see heaven as a nuanced, psychological and social concept that is anything but simplistic.
I think that this concept of heaven can be applied to our family systems as well in some really powerful ways.
Basically, the idea is this: heaven starts within us. Heaven is not a place but a state of being. It is a state of being in community that is conscious, relational, dynamic, loving, compassionate and alive. This is how we are meant to live. This is how we have been designed. Swedenborg said that the purpose of creation was for human beings to form a heaven.
This is how we have been designed individually as well. Each of us has been created with the capacity to be really, fully, truly spiritually alive and healthy. It’s just as much a part of us as our DNA. The trick is, learning how to get there. And getting there is the purpose of our lives: learning how to love. Learning how to be in authentic, giving relationship with those around us. Learning how to be truly useful to the world. It’s a beautiful prospect.
But the trick is, we have to believe it for it to become real. We have to deeply, truly, authentically believe that wholeness has our name written all over it if we want to journey there. The belief has to be fully internalized into our minds first. And then slowly, bit by bit, we will start to notice changes in the people and situations around us. We will be building heaven, little by little, through our conscious choices in our lives. The only way to get there is through our real, everyday, mundane and fantastic lives.
And this is eminently applicable to families. Families are complicated systems. Oh, aren’t they ever. One individual is complicated enough, but then get three or four or five or more all growing and changing under the same household and yikes! There is all kinds of opportunity for suffering. People get hurt, people have struggles, grown-ups don’t unpack their childhood maps, and then other family members compensate in sometimes unhealthy ways, and that creates more problems. Pretty soon we can have quite a thicket of family dynamics.
I am sure that all of us want to have healthy families. I’d like to suggest that the first step to really building a healthy family is to believe that yours is fully capable of becoming one. You have the capacity within you to be a wonderfully fantastic parent. You have the resources within you to figure out loving solutions to problems, to welcome kindness and compassion into your family, to practice generosity to your community, to forgive the wounds of the past and to create joy. Now, don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that nothing bad will happen to your family. On the contrary, I’m sorry to say this, but it will. But heaven is not about perfection. Heaven is about love. Heavenly community is where struggle is taken on collectively and moved through with as much love and good spirit as possible, so that the bigger perspective is always held up—the bigger perspective being that all is held in a wider net of ultimate love.
So often, consciously and unconsciously, we carry around with us expectations of brokenness. We’ve all been wounded in one way or another, and often times our response has been to flee from that pain, and to put up a wall so that it doesn’t happen again. We start to feel like who we are is an incomplete person. And if that carries over into our family self-image, we start to feel like our family is incomplete. Maybe we wonder what is wrong with us, maybe we feel lonely and hopeless, maybe we start to feel like our family is screwed up. And if we start feeling that way, we might stop asking for help or being with other people, or we might simply avoid being present with our family members, and the whole thing gets more entrenched.
What we need to do is to shift our conception of what health is. Health—or heaven—includes the brokenness. It involves a discernment and a removal of that which does not serve our growth. A true vision of a healthy person or a heavenly community is one that has learned how to incorporate its pain and to move through it to embrace a wiser, more loving understanding of itself and others.
I know all this stuff because I’ve lived through it. I suppose that story will come out in pieces in this blog, but suffice to say for now that I am currently working on re-engineering my internal map of what my family can be. I believe now that we can be heavenly. I’m working on it these days, and being amazed at what happens when I bring out my new expectations. I’ve got great plans for us. I hope you do for your family too.
Can you believe that you are made for wholeness?
Can you believe that your family can be a slice of heaven?
I’d like to hear what happens if you try.
Why do they hate it? Because it’s too facile, too simplistic, too goody-goody. And I would imagine that some of us might respond the same way. Trying to conjure up an image for heaven either descends into a hopelessly cheerful stereotype, or presents us with the maddening prospect of trying to give visual form to something that is inexpressible. Maybe we would be irritated or impatient with the very question. Is it perhaps that the notion of heaven itself seems hopelessly saccharine—naïve in the postmodern age, irrelevant to the scientific worldview, too Christian in a world of increasing religious pluralism? Does it feel as if it would be a lot easier to simply let the shimmering notions of the afterlife fade away, as relics of less evolved time? And since the notion of heaven necessarily invokes the choice between its opposite, hell, and thus also would seem to point to some kind of terrifying judgment day, doesn’t it feel that it would certainly be easier to leave behind the whole convoluted mess, and go sashaying off into a cleaner, vaguer, spiritual understanding?
Well, I’d like to suggest that we not give up on heaven quite yet. With a little help from the spiritual theologian Emanuel Swedenborg, we can come up with a new interpretation of heaven that can be very powerful for our lives. These ideas suggest that we might see heaven as a nuanced, psychological and social concept that is anything but simplistic.
I think that this concept of heaven can be applied to our family systems as well in some really powerful ways.
Basically, the idea is this: heaven starts within us. Heaven is not a place but a state of being. It is a state of being in community that is conscious, relational, dynamic, loving, compassionate and alive. This is how we are meant to live. This is how we have been designed. Swedenborg said that the purpose of creation was for human beings to form a heaven.
This is how we have been designed individually as well. Each of us has been created with the capacity to be really, fully, truly spiritually alive and healthy. It’s just as much a part of us as our DNA. The trick is, learning how to get there. And getting there is the purpose of our lives: learning how to love. Learning how to be in authentic, giving relationship with those around us. Learning how to be truly useful to the world. It’s a beautiful prospect.
But the trick is, we have to believe it for it to become real. We have to deeply, truly, authentically believe that wholeness has our name written all over it if we want to journey there. The belief has to be fully internalized into our minds first. And then slowly, bit by bit, we will start to notice changes in the people and situations around us. We will be building heaven, little by little, through our conscious choices in our lives. The only way to get there is through our real, everyday, mundane and fantastic lives.
And this is eminently applicable to families. Families are complicated systems. Oh, aren’t they ever. One individual is complicated enough, but then get three or four or five or more all growing and changing under the same household and yikes! There is all kinds of opportunity for suffering. People get hurt, people have struggles, grown-ups don’t unpack their childhood maps, and then other family members compensate in sometimes unhealthy ways, and that creates more problems. Pretty soon we can have quite a thicket of family dynamics.
I am sure that all of us want to have healthy families. I’d like to suggest that the first step to really building a healthy family is to believe that yours is fully capable of becoming one. You have the capacity within you to be a wonderfully fantastic parent. You have the resources within you to figure out loving solutions to problems, to welcome kindness and compassion into your family, to practice generosity to your community, to forgive the wounds of the past and to create joy. Now, don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that nothing bad will happen to your family. On the contrary, I’m sorry to say this, but it will. But heaven is not about perfection. Heaven is about love. Heavenly community is where struggle is taken on collectively and moved through with as much love and good spirit as possible, so that the bigger perspective is always held up—the bigger perspective being that all is held in a wider net of ultimate love.
So often, consciously and unconsciously, we carry around with us expectations of brokenness. We’ve all been wounded in one way or another, and often times our response has been to flee from that pain, and to put up a wall so that it doesn’t happen again. We start to feel like who we are is an incomplete person. And if that carries over into our family self-image, we start to feel like our family is incomplete. Maybe we wonder what is wrong with us, maybe we feel lonely and hopeless, maybe we start to feel like our family is screwed up. And if we start feeling that way, we might stop asking for help or being with other people, or we might simply avoid being present with our family members, and the whole thing gets more entrenched.
What we need to do is to shift our conception of what health is. Health—or heaven—includes the brokenness. It involves a discernment and a removal of that which does not serve our growth. A true vision of a healthy person or a heavenly community is one that has learned how to incorporate its pain and to move through it to embrace a wiser, more loving understanding of itself and others.
I know all this stuff because I’ve lived through it. I suppose that story will come out in pieces in this blog, but suffice to say for now that I am currently working on re-engineering my internal map of what my family can be. I believe now that we can be heavenly. I’m working on it these days, and being amazed at what happens when I bring out my new expectations. I’ve got great plans for us. I hope you do for your family too.
Can you believe that you are made for wholeness?
Can you believe that your family can be a slice of heaven?
I’d like to hear what happens if you try.
Friday, July 18, 2008
Vacation
So there I was last Sunday night in seat 22E, flying high above the Pacific Ocean on Hawaiian Airlines toward San Francisco, trying to see through my stifled tears to open the stupid package of pretzels the flight attendant passed out. Molly, my four-year-old, was happily sitting next to me, pouring out her adulation on the new hula-dancing doll we had bought her in Kohala. It was outfitted with a green Hawaiian-print top and a plastic grass skirt, and instead of legs it had a plastic conical bottom which housed a battery-powered mechanism that made her move and swish her hips when you flip the switch. It was a cheap little thing bought in a tourist shop, but to Molly it was passionately enchanting. That morning, in a goofy mood in the car on the way to the airport, I had taken the doll and made an impromptu puppet show for the girls in the back seat. For once in my life I was funny, and it had set them off squealing and giggling. For the rest of the day and on into the airplane, Molly had kept asking me, “Mommy, will you make another show?” which I periodically obliged within the limits of the other passengers’ tolerance….
So why was I crying? Where the hell were these tears coming from? Was it just PMS, or was there something really moving me inside? It happened the next day again as I whooshed through Trader Joe’s getting groceries to refill our bare cupboards. Every time I saw a product from Hawaii or a Hawaiian print on an employee’s t-shirt, I got tears in my eyes.
Something happened during our vacation to the Big Island last week. I didn’t feel it when we touched down at the Kona airport the previous Sunday and looked out the windows to see barren chocolate-brown lava fields all around. The island felt strange and exotic, not postcard-perfect like the other islands, but mysterious, different. The sun was so hot and intense it felt dangerous to my pale skin. The posted signs for tsunami evacuation centers were oddly ominous. Strangest of all was the ubiquitous but silent presence of the Kilauea volcano, which a few months ago opened up a new vent and has been spewing sulphur dioxide into the air in enormous quantities every day. It made for a consistent white haze in the sky near Kona. They call it “vog,” and, as you might imagine, it’s a health hazard, though we couldn’t feel any tangible effects from it.
What moved me about the Big Island crept in slowly. It was the thrilling change of scenery as we drove from the hot and dry north into the wetter, coffee-growing south and into a rainstorm. It was visiting an ancient Hawaiian religious site that still so strongly held a sense of peace and sanctuary; a silent connection with a people who lived and breathed hundreds of years ago. It was tasting the native pineapple, mango, papaya, macadamia nuts, fish; feeling the fresh plumeria flowers around my neck in a white and violet lei; snorkeling with bright yellow and zebra-striped fish in the turquoise waters; and being quietly stunned by the abundance of the natural world in this spot on earth.
What moved me also was my family. Paige, who had been terrified of water as a two-year-old, now could not get enough of it. Her uncle and grandpa taught her to snorkel, and she loved it. Molly was inexhaustibly delighted with a pink inner tube and all the things she invented to do with it. Here, the two of them were freed from their everyday routines of home and school life and set forth into a giant, beautiful world that welcomed them with soft air and buoyant water.
I think it was the first vacation where the four of us actually had fun together. The girls are finally old enough to have some adventures without naps and diapers ruling our every decision. After surviving a near melt-down of our marriage last year, my husband Roland and I seemed like perplexed aliens set down on the beach, unsure of quite what to make of the overflowing abundance of beauty and harmony. The extended family who joined us on the trip gave our lodgings the feel of an ongoing block party. Molly delighted her grandparents by tottering off to their condo every morning to join them for breakfast (often unbeknownst to me). Paige played tug-of-war with palm fronds with her two teenage step-cousins, her giggles wafting over the lawn in the balmy night. I enjoyed a walk I took with my dad one morning to see some ancient Hawaiian petroglyphs baking in the unforgiving heat. I’m not sure which was more perplexing: the hundreds-year-old petroglyphs, or the fact that my dad had just turned 76.
I think my tears were simply sadness that all of this had ended. It was time for us to return to the Bay Area, to find our car in the parking garage of the San Francisco airport, to weave through the traffic on the Bay Bridge, in the middle of what now seemed an inordinately sprawling urban metropolis. It was time to check my email again, to put my watch back on, to send the girls to camp and preschool. It was time for the four of us to disengage and go our separate ways during the day and try to reconnect at night. It was time to re-accept the terms of the modern world. To re-enter the hurly-burly of it all.
But I didn’t want to. (I kept joking that “inowanu” is a real word in Hawaiian.) What I think I tasted in Hawaii was a few days of living in a more holistic way. And I think my tears were about my intense yearning for me and my family—and the whole world—to live a better life. How wonderful—and how right—it would be to live on land that is unspoiled, to swim in water that is clear, to taste the wonder of fresh food from the earth, to live in community with extended family and peaceful neighbors, to gaze at the stars and connect with the past, to be able to discern the most important parts of life and to give them our attention.
Yes, it sounds like a description of paradise. Is heaven a silly concept? Is the holy city just a dream? Or is there something in our yearning in itself, and in the yearnings of the scores of generations before us, that somehow makes that wholeness a little more possible?
So why was I crying? Where the hell were these tears coming from? Was it just PMS, or was there something really moving me inside? It happened the next day again as I whooshed through Trader Joe’s getting groceries to refill our bare cupboards. Every time I saw a product from Hawaii or a Hawaiian print on an employee’s t-shirt, I got tears in my eyes.
Something happened during our vacation to the Big Island last week. I didn’t feel it when we touched down at the Kona airport the previous Sunday and looked out the windows to see barren chocolate-brown lava fields all around. The island felt strange and exotic, not postcard-perfect like the other islands, but mysterious, different. The sun was so hot and intense it felt dangerous to my pale skin. The posted signs for tsunami evacuation centers were oddly ominous. Strangest of all was the ubiquitous but silent presence of the Kilauea volcano, which a few months ago opened up a new vent and has been spewing sulphur dioxide into the air in enormous quantities every day. It made for a consistent white haze in the sky near Kona. They call it “vog,” and, as you might imagine, it’s a health hazard, though we couldn’t feel any tangible effects from it.
What moved me about the Big Island crept in slowly. It was the thrilling change of scenery as we drove from the hot and dry north into the wetter, coffee-growing south and into a rainstorm. It was visiting an ancient Hawaiian religious site that still so strongly held a sense of peace and sanctuary; a silent connection with a people who lived and breathed hundreds of years ago. It was tasting the native pineapple, mango, papaya, macadamia nuts, fish; feeling the fresh plumeria flowers around my neck in a white and violet lei; snorkeling with bright yellow and zebra-striped fish in the turquoise waters; and being quietly stunned by the abundance of the natural world in this spot on earth.
What moved me also was my family. Paige, who had been terrified of water as a two-year-old, now could not get enough of it. Her uncle and grandpa taught her to snorkel, and she loved it. Molly was inexhaustibly delighted with a pink inner tube and all the things she invented to do with it. Here, the two of them were freed from their everyday routines of home and school life and set forth into a giant, beautiful world that welcomed them with soft air and buoyant water.
I think it was the first vacation where the four of us actually had fun together. The girls are finally old enough to have some adventures without naps and diapers ruling our every decision. After surviving a near melt-down of our marriage last year, my husband Roland and I seemed like perplexed aliens set down on the beach, unsure of quite what to make of the overflowing abundance of beauty and harmony. The extended family who joined us on the trip gave our lodgings the feel of an ongoing block party. Molly delighted her grandparents by tottering off to their condo every morning to join them for breakfast (often unbeknownst to me). Paige played tug-of-war with palm fronds with her two teenage step-cousins, her giggles wafting over the lawn in the balmy night. I enjoyed a walk I took with my dad one morning to see some ancient Hawaiian petroglyphs baking in the unforgiving heat. I’m not sure which was more perplexing: the hundreds-year-old petroglyphs, or the fact that my dad had just turned 76.
I think my tears were simply sadness that all of this had ended. It was time for us to return to the Bay Area, to find our car in the parking garage of the San Francisco airport, to weave through the traffic on the Bay Bridge, in the middle of what now seemed an inordinately sprawling urban metropolis. It was time to check my email again, to put my watch back on, to send the girls to camp and preschool. It was time for the four of us to disengage and go our separate ways during the day and try to reconnect at night. It was time to re-accept the terms of the modern world. To re-enter the hurly-burly of it all.
But I didn’t want to. (I kept joking that “inowanu” is a real word in Hawaiian.) What I think I tasted in Hawaii was a few days of living in a more holistic way. And I think my tears were about my intense yearning for me and my family—and the whole world—to live a better life. How wonderful—and how right—it would be to live on land that is unspoiled, to swim in water that is clear, to taste the wonder of fresh food from the earth, to live in community with extended family and peaceful neighbors, to gaze at the stars and connect with the past, to be able to discern the most important parts of life and to give them our attention.
Yes, it sounds like a description of paradise. Is heaven a silly concept? Is the holy city just a dream? Or is there something in our yearning in itself, and in the yearnings of the scores of generations before us, that somehow makes that wholeness a little more possible?
Thursday, July 3, 2008
Waking Up to the Miracle
When we bring a child into this world, we are participating in something extraordinary. From the moment they are conceived, babies bring with them questions of awe and mystery. If we are lucky, their unfathomable creation and the love they engender will help us awaken to the awesome creativity and potency of life all around us.
When I had a baby, I realized that I was living in the middle of a miracle. Now, I do not use the word “miracle” lightly. I mean it in the sense of an overflowing experience of the divine boldly breaking in to my life in such a way that it altered my previous understanding of reality itself. I could not ignore this miracle: it happened right in and through my own body! With only the slightest involvement from me and my husband, microscopic cells merged deep within by uterus. They multiplied by powers of magnitude within days, and before it could barely seem possible an entirely brand new human being was being formed within my body, complete with a spinal cord, a head, skin and eyeballs. For forty weeks this unfathomable process continued without me needing to so much as push a button, write a line of code or design a single hair. She was there, within me, getting perfectly formed by the awesome biology of human design.
The miracle continued when my baby was born. My body knew when it was time to go into labor. My body knew how to let go of the placenta, stop feeding an umbilical cord and start producing breast milk, basically all at the same moment. My baby knew how to nurse. But even more than all that, there she was: my daughter. She had ten fingers and ten toes. She had blond hair and blue eyes. A brand new human being had issued forth from my very body and was now living in the world with a soul and personality. And I experienced this twice.
Whether we have given birth to our children or received them through adoption, when we raise children we are living in the middle of a miracle. To witness the birth and growth of a human being is one of the most mysterious and awesome experiences of life. If we open our hearts and minds to this miracle, we will begin to see the divine all around us.
If my child came into being in such an awesome way, we might say, then every single other person in this world also came into being in a miraculous way. If there is something fantastically good about the human creation that is my child, there is something fantastically good about creation itself. This goodness, perfection and wonder that we witness as parents is an intrinsic aspect of life. This is the way we are created. The entirety of the whole divine-human-natural creation is nothing short of astonishing.
Parenting calls us to wake up to this miracle. It reminds us not to take things for granted, not to get in a rut, not to project our same old tired and defeated assumptions on the world. It calls us to awaken to the wonder that surrounds us, not only in our parenting, but everywhere in our lives.
Parenting brings up questions of who we are, where we are, what we are doing here and how we should love. And with these we enter the realm of spirituality. With an open and loving heart, we find that parenting can open the doors to contemplate and find clues to the whole mystery of God and humanity.
How do we wake up to the miracle? The links between parenting and divine mystery aren’t (usually) revealed by visions of angels or in email messages from God. We have to be alert to their subtlety. They come from being present, and from noticing. A little voice peeps up from the back seat of the car and asks a question that touches your heart. The after-bath routine devolves into an ebullient tickle session of giggly, squirming flesh, and you notice the fullness of your heart. A human body that a short time ago did not exist anywhere on earth is now enfolding you in its arms and loving you.
Let us remember to stay alert to the wonder of the divine that arcs its way through our everyday lives. Let us open our hearts and minds and see what our children and God might have to show us today.
How does your parenting call you to stay awake to God’s presence?
When I had a baby, I realized that I was living in the middle of a miracle. Now, I do not use the word “miracle” lightly. I mean it in the sense of an overflowing experience of the divine boldly breaking in to my life in such a way that it altered my previous understanding of reality itself. I could not ignore this miracle: it happened right in and through my own body! With only the slightest involvement from me and my husband, microscopic cells merged deep within by uterus. They multiplied by powers of magnitude within days, and before it could barely seem possible an entirely brand new human being was being formed within my body, complete with a spinal cord, a head, skin and eyeballs. For forty weeks this unfathomable process continued without me needing to so much as push a button, write a line of code or design a single hair. She was there, within me, getting perfectly formed by the awesome biology of human design.
The miracle continued when my baby was born. My body knew when it was time to go into labor. My body knew how to let go of the placenta, stop feeding an umbilical cord and start producing breast milk, basically all at the same moment. My baby knew how to nurse. But even more than all that, there she was: my daughter. She had ten fingers and ten toes. She had blond hair and blue eyes. A brand new human being had issued forth from my very body and was now living in the world with a soul and personality. And I experienced this twice.
Whether we have given birth to our children or received them through adoption, when we raise children we are living in the middle of a miracle. To witness the birth and growth of a human being is one of the most mysterious and awesome experiences of life. If we open our hearts and minds to this miracle, we will begin to see the divine all around us.
If my child came into being in such an awesome way, we might say, then every single other person in this world also came into being in a miraculous way. If there is something fantastically good about the human creation that is my child, there is something fantastically good about creation itself. This goodness, perfection and wonder that we witness as parents is an intrinsic aspect of life. This is the way we are created. The entirety of the whole divine-human-natural creation is nothing short of astonishing.
Parenting calls us to wake up to this miracle. It reminds us not to take things for granted, not to get in a rut, not to project our same old tired and defeated assumptions on the world. It calls us to awaken to the wonder that surrounds us, not only in our parenting, but everywhere in our lives.
Parenting brings up questions of who we are, where we are, what we are doing here and how we should love. And with these we enter the realm of spirituality. With an open and loving heart, we find that parenting can open the doors to contemplate and find clues to the whole mystery of God and humanity.
How do we wake up to the miracle? The links between parenting and divine mystery aren’t (usually) revealed by visions of angels or in email messages from God. We have to be alert to their subtlety. They come from being present, and from noticing. A little voice peeps up from the back seat of the car and asks a question that touches your heart. The after-bath routine devolves into an ebullient tickle session of giggly, squirming flesh, and you notice the fullness of your heart. A human body that a short time ago did not exist anywhere on earth is now enfolding you in its arms and loving you.
Let us remember to stay alert to the wonder of the divine that arcs its way through our everyday lives. Let us open our hearts and minds and see what our children and God might have to show us today.
How does your parenting call you to stay awake to God’s presence?
Sunday, June 29, 2008
A Birthday Outing
Yesterday was my older daughter Paige’s 8th birthday party. My husband, another mom and I took nine kids to the Chabot Space & Science Center in Oakland. Paige had said she wanted a NASA party. I think the idea had begun a few months ago. This past year in second grade she had to write a whole book—a long story with illustrations which the teacher later had sent away and hard-bound. It was such a cool assignment. Paige wrote a story called My Calling is NASA. It’s about a girl who has a vision from God when she is little that she is going to work for NASA, and then she grows up and does it. Curiously, the girl in the story has a little sister who grows up to be a princess, which has stirring reverberations with real life.
By the way, Paige is not my older daughter’s real name. I’m going to call my younger daughter, age four, Molly, though that’s not her real name either. I’ve decided to protect their privacy a little bit which also gives me greater freedom to unabashedly tell personal stories about them.
So anyway, Paige has become interested in outer space and NASA, and she planned out the whole party. A couple of weeks ago she and I sat down at the computer and whipped up some home-made invitations with clip art, a NASA logo, and a picture of the Mars lander. I heard later that some of the other girls who received the invitation were not too excited about space. But Paige is. If there is something conceptual and analytical and philosophical to think about, Paige will be fascinated.
Paige is a little unusual. She was born right after the summer solstice in the first year of the new millennium, 2000. Year of the dragon. Cancer sign. I think there must have been something about the alignment of the planets at that time because she and several of her girl classmates are uber-women. Strong, confident, active, self-assured. When she was a baby, she didn’t really fuss to be held. She wasn’t interested in nursing after the first few months. She didn’t cry much when she got shots, she didn’t freak out if she fell down. She never sucked her thumb, had a pacifier or a special blanket or stuffed animal. By age two she was speaking three-syllable words and marching next to me through an airport, pulling her rolling suitcase all by herself. By age four she was reading and adding fractions in preschool. Now, at age eight, she can play Beatles songs by ear on the piano and enjoys talking about quantum physics.
She is stronger than I ever was as a girl, and in some ways more self-assured than I am even now. This has created a huge personal challenge for me to assert myself over her as her mother. I have had to understand that there are times and places where I have to be the mom and she has to be the daughter. Sometimes she has to follow my instructions or requests because I know better than she does. We have had some tough times together, but we’ve been in a good space for a long time now. She has forced me to find my voice, literally. Forever soft-spoken, I have now found a deep and powerful range of my voice that will stop time.
I live in daily fear of her teenage years.
But the thing is that Paige and I love each other fantastically. We are more connected now than I think we ever were before. We delight in each other’s strengths. She knows she can tell me almost any thoughts on her mind, and if she’s contemplating infinity or liking a new outfit, I will hear her. I depend on her too, increasingly. She might help me carry in the groceries or answer the phone or jump out of the stopped car to mail a letter, and I appreciate her competence.
I feel this timeless sense of connection with Paige, as if I can feel what our connection is going to feel like when I am an old lady and she is middle-aged. I feel like I know her essence, what she has been and what she will become. I think it’s likely she will become a scientist for NASA. I also have a sense of what I need to help her learn. She will always need to be reminded to develop her emotional side, her compassion, her empathy and connection with other people.
Anyway, we had a great time at the space museum. I loved watching her with her long blond hair, white tank top, turquoise shorts and long legs, playing and laughing with her friends, and contemplating the universe. Happy Birthday, darlin'.
By the way, Paige is not my older daughter’s real name. I’m going to call my younger daughter, age four, Molly, though that’s not her real name either. I’ve decided to protect their privacy a little bit which also gives me greater freedom to unabashedly tell personal stories about them.
So anyway, Paige has become interested in outer space and NASA, and she planned out the whole party. A couple of weeks ago she and I sat down at the computer and whipped up some home-made invitations with clip art, a NASA logo, and a picture of the Mars lander. I heard later that some of the other girls who received the invitation were not too excited about space. But Paige is. If there is something conceptual and analytical and philosophical to think about, Paige will be fascinated.
Paige is a little unusual. She was born right after the summer solstice in the first year of the new millennium, 2000. Year of the dragon. Cancer sign. I think there must have been something about the alignment of the planets at that time because she and several of her girl classmates are uber-women. Strong, confident, active, self-assured. When she was a baby, she didn’t really fuss to be held. She wasn’t interested in nursing after the first few months. She didn’t cry much when she got shots, she didn’t freak out if she fell down. She never sucked her thumb, had a pacifier or a special blanket or stuffed animal. By age two she was speaking three-syllable words and marching next to me through an airport, pulling her rolling suitcase all by herself. By age four she was reading and adding fractions in preschool. Now, at age eight, she can play Beatles songs by ear on the piano and enjoys talking about quantum physics.
She is stronger than I ever was as a girl, and in some ways more self-assured than I am even now. This has created a huge personal challenge for me to assert myself over her as her mother. I have had to understand that there are times and places where I have to be the mom and she has to be the daughter. Sometimes she has to follow my instructions or requests because I know better than she does. We have had some tough times together, but we’ve been in a good space for a long time now. She has forced me to find my voice, literally. Forever soft-spoken, I have now found a deep and powerful range of my voice that will stop time.
I live in daily fear of her teenage years.
But the thing is that Paige and I love each other fantastically. We are more connected now than I think we ever were before. We delight in each other’s strengths. She knows she can tell me almost any thoughts on her mind, and if she’s contemplating infinity or liking a new outfit, I will hear her. I depend on her too, increasingly. She might help me carry in the groceries or answer the phone or jump out of the stopped car to mail a letter, and I appreciate her competence.
I feel this timeless sense of connection with Paige, as if I can feel what our connection is going to feel like when I am an old lady and she is middle-aged. I feel like I know her essence, what she has been and what she will become. I think it’s likely she will become a scientist for NASA. I also have a sense of what I need to help her learn. She will always need to be reminded to develop her emotional side, her compassion, her empathy and connection with other people.
Anyway, we had a great time at the space museum. I loved watching her with her long blond hair, white tank top, turquoise shorts and long legs, playing and laughing with her friends, and contemplating the universe. Happy Birthday, darlin'.
Saturday, June 28, 2008
How is Parenting Spiritual?
“Spirituality” and “parenting” used to feel like an oxymoron to me. Before having children, the kinds of spiritual practices I explored were the kinds amenable to silence and solitude. And believe me, I liked it that way. Walking through a cathedral in Europe was sublime. Listening to a dharma talk at a Zen Buddhist center was mind-expanding. Practicing silent meditation was deepening. Taking part in spiritual discussion groups at my church was delightful and fascinating. There were no crying babies in any of these places.
After my first child was born I was suddenly shut out of so many of these places and gatherings that are set up for spiritual reflection. At first, I took it to mean that my journey into baby-raising disqualified me from spiritual practice. I started to think that I was looking at a long, long time of being “benched” from spirituality. And I was not happy about this. Managing crying babies, dirty diapers, tantrums, picky feedings and nap schedules did not feel to me like an adequate substitute for deep spiritual connection.
And besides, after three years of seminary, I had never learned that mothering had anything to do with God or spirituality. More on that later.
As time went on, though, I began to question my assumptions. Was I really to believe that spiritual practice can only happen in silence? Was I really to believe that the millions of people on earth in my situation—parents yearning for some kind of spiritual vitality in the midst of a life filled to the brim with caretaking, errands, work and responsibility—were disqualified from being spiritual aspirants? That’s when I realized this was ridiculous. And that’s when I realized I needed to find a new way to define spiritual practice.
I needed to stop thinking that I had to set parenting aside in order to have a spiritual life. I needed to embrace a spiritual practice that was in motion. A practice that is loud and messy and has no boundaries or rules. A practice that is all about people and skin and togetherness and heart and a not necessarily focused mind. A practice that was broadly accepting of the entire dimension of my life.
So I started to look at parenting itself—even with all its volatility and mundane physicality—as a locus of my spiritual practice. And what I was then able to see is that raising human beings is an enormously potent pathway to God. It is actually one of the richest vehicles for doing so! Being fully present and engaged with the development of another human being simply cannot fail to lead us into expansive realms of understanding.
The mysterious force that makes this happen is love. As parents, we enter into a dynamic love relationship with our children that has the capacity to be transformative. We love them, and our love shapes who they are and how they grow, while at the same time their love for us puts us in touch with what is deep and true and vital. Loving them calls us into being better people, and so calls us to look within ourselves and to grow.
What’s more, if we’re awake, we might begin to realize that the quality of open-hearted love is actually who we are. It is the foundational nature of humans, as our little children will demonstrate to us on a daily basis.
And what’s more than that, if we really sit with this quality of love and let it sink in to us and notice how its dynamic, reciprocal nature transforms us and calls us forward into being bigger, fuller people… we realize that this kind of love is the nature of God. God itself is love. God is relational, conscious, alive, and calling us forth into our fullest selves.
In this way parenting is a spiritual practice that is multi-dimensional, embodied, fluid, and fully improvisational. What I realized later is that actually, religious communities throughout history have realized that community is central to living a spiritual life. Monasteries and convents were places to live one’s spiritual commitment in community—to work out the foibles and joys of human living with other people. The nun’s cell and the silent prayer were brief counterpoints to a daily schedule spent working and eating and having fellowship with a group to whom one had made a life-long commitment.
So I would like to invite us to consider how our families can be our monasteries. How can we approach our home and the people we are committed to as precisely the place where our spiritual growth needs to happen? God is right there in the middle of all of it. No incense required.
After my first child was born I was suddenly shut out of so many of these places and gatherings that are set up for spiritual reflection. At first, I took it to mean that my journey into baby-raising disqualified me from spiritual practice. I started to think that I was looking at a long, long time of being “benched” from spirituality. And I was not happy about this. Managing crying babies, dirty diapers, tantrums, picky feedings and nap schedules did not feel to me like an adequate substitute for deep spiritual connection.
And besides, after three years of seminary, I had never learned that mothering had anything to do with God or spirituality. More on that later.
As time went on, though, I began to question my assumptions. Was I really to believe that spiritual practice can only happen in silence? Was I really to believe that the millions of people on earth in my situation—parents yearning for some kind of spiritual vitality in the midst of a life filled to the brim with caretaking, errands, work and responsibility—were disqualified from being spiritual aspirants? That’s when I realized this was ridiculous. And that’s when I realized I needed to find a new way to define spiritual practice.
I needed to stop thinking that I had to set parenting aside in order to have a spiritual life. I needed to embrace a spiritual practice that was in motion. A practice that is loud and messy and has no boundaries or rules. A practice that is all about people and skin and togetherness and heart and a not necessarily focused mind. A practice that was broadly accepting of the entire dimension of my life.
So I started to look at parenting itself—even with all its volatility and mundane physicality—as a locus of my spiritual practice. And what I was then able to see is that raising human beings is an enormously potent pathway to God. It is actually one of the richest vehicles for doing so! Being fully present and engaged with the development of another human being simply cannot fail to lead us into expansive realms of understanding.
The mysterious force that makes this happen is love. As parents, we enter into a dynamic love relationship with our children that has the capacity to be transformative. We love them, and our love shapes who they are and how they grow, while at the same time their love for us puts us in touch with what is deep and true and vital. Loving them calls us into being better people, and so calls us to look within ourselves and to grow.
What’s more, if we’re awake, we might begin to realize that the quality of open-hearted love is actually who we are. It is the foundational nature of humans, as our little children will demonstrate to us on a daily basis.
And what’s more than that, if we really sit with this quality of love and let it sink in to us and notice how its dynamic, reciprocal nature transforms us and calls us forward into being bigger, fuller people… we realize that this kind of love is the nature of God. God itself is love. God is relational, conscious, alive, and calling us forth into our fullest selves.
In this way parenting is a spiritual practice that is multi-dimensional, embodied, fluid, and fully improvisational. What I realized later is that actually, religious communities throughout history have realized that community is central to living a spiritual life. Monasteries and convents were places to live one’s spiritual commitment in community—to work out the foibles and joys of human living with other people. The nun’s cell and the silent prayer were brief counterpoints to a daily schedule spent working and eating and having fellowship with a group to whom one had made a life-long commitment.
So I would like to invite us to consider how our families can be our monasteries. How can we approach our home and the people we are committed to as precisely the place where our spiritual growth needs to happen? God is right there in the middle of all of it. No incense required.
Friday, June 27, 2008
The Spirituality of Parenting
Welcome.
Welcome to a conversation about the spirituality of parenting. About the transformative capacity of relational love. About spirituality that has everything to do with our real, flesh-and-blood lives, and everything to do with God.
Every week I witness the ways in which parenting—mindful and open-hearted—is an ideal spiritual practice. My two daughters have turned me inside out in the ways their arrivals have challenged me to become a fuller, less self-centered person. The love we share has wiggled its way deep into the innermost core of my being and changed the way I understand the world. It has forced me to give up my small and limited notions of who I am and what the world is, and to make room for a much larger and more expansive vision than I had thought possible. Parenting has called me out of my safe little shell and beckoned me to love.
It hasn’t been easy. To my surprise, parenting has also given rise to feelings of anger and rage I never knew I had. Not necessarily anger at my kids, but the rage of my small self being annihilated. It’s like this for all the parents I witness, and more: parenting re-opens our own childhood situations, beckoning us to understand them anew. Parenting leads us into a raw space of intimacy and unpredictability that can be threatening. Parenting makes us wildly vulnerable, if we can even dare to think about how much we now have to lose. Parenting calls us, in a way that is really aggravating to our small selves, to give up everything that keeps us from being a full and healthy person.
Parenting can open the door to our own spiritual growth. And since it happens in the context of a family, and since we are an extremely important element of that family, the spiritual growth that parenting engenders is kind of three-dimensional. Or four-dimensional. Or five-dimensional, or however large your family is. And since we are talking about our effects on little growing humans whose psychological maps are being formed in real-time, the consequences of this multi-dimensional spiritual growth can be profound, if we consider their effects on the future. What kind of adults our children will become. How they will influence the society around them. What legacy we are already creating for our own grandchildren. This is where my brain starts to hurt.
It’s because of this depth of meaning that parenting can open to us that I believe it can be a profound spiritual practice. It is a regular, daily practice that calls us to integrate our beliefs about ultimate reality into our real-life choices. In that sense it’s top-down. But it works the other way, too, from the bottom up: our hands-on, daily engagement with our kids opens up doors that lead us to understand the nature of God.
All of this has rocked my world enough that I thought I might share some reflections in hopes of helping other parents in their own journeys of figuring out what life and family are all about. This blog is an aspect of my ministry. I also lead workshops on spirituality and parenting from time to time. My hope is to provide support and inspiration to parents, who are doing the most important job in the world.
I would love to hear your stories and reflections on parenting too. Please comment if you are so moved, and we’ll see what kind of wisdom we might find revealed among us!
Welcome to a conversation about the spirituality of parenting. About the transformative capacity of relational love. About spirituality that has everything to do with our real, flesh-and-blood lives, and everything to do with God.
Every week I witness the ways in which parenting—mindful and open-hearted—is an ideal spiritual practice. My two daughters have turned me inside out in the ways their arrivals have challenged me to become a fuller, less self-centered person. The love we share has wiggled its way deep into the innermost core of my being and changed the way I understand the world. It has forced me to give up my small and limited notions of who I am and what the world is, and to make room for a much larger and more expansive vision than I had thought possible. Parenting has called me out of my safe little shell and beckoned me to love.
It hasn’t been easy. To my surprise, parenting has also given rise to feelings of anger and rage I never knew I had. Not necessarily anger at my kids, but the rage of my small self being annihilated. It’s like this for all the parents I witness, and more: parenting re-opens our own childhood situations, beckoning us to understand them anew. Parenting leads us into a raw space of intimacy and unpredictability that can be threatening. Parenting makes us wildly vulnerable, if we can even dare to think about how much we now have to lose. Parenting calls us, in a way that is really aggravating to our small selves, to give up everything that keeps us from being a full and healthy person.
Parenting can open the door to our own spiritual growth. And since it happens in the context of a family, and since we are an extremely important element of that family, the spiritual growth that parenting engenders is kind of three-dimensional. Or four-dimensional. Or five-dimensional, or however large your family is. And since we are talking about our effects on little growing humans whose psychological maps are being formed in real-time, the consequences of this multi-dimensional spiritual growth can be profound, if we consider their effects on the future. What kind of adults our children will become. How they will influence the society around them. What legacy we are already creating for our own grandchildren. This is where my brain starts to hurt.
It’s because of this depth of meaning that parenting can open to us that I believe it can be a profound spiritual practice. It is a regular, daily practice that calls us to integrate our beliefs about ultimate reality into our real-life choices. In that sense it’s top-down. But it works the other way, too, from the bottom up: our hands-on, daily engagement with our kids opens up doors that lead us to understand the nature of God.
All of this has rocked my world enough that I thought I might share some reflections in hopes of helping other parents in their own journeys of figuring out what life and family are all about. This blog is an aspect of my ministry. I also lead workshops on spirituality and parenting from time to time. My hope is to provide support and inspiration to parents, who are doing the most important job in the world.
I would love to hear your stories and reflections on parenting too. Please comment if you are so moved, and we’ll see what kind of wisdom we might find revealed among us!
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