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.