Adventures in Parenting

Much to my surprise, Elisabeth enjoys doing word searches! (I didn't think she would have the stamina to search for the words.) She just plopped herself down on the couch with a Highlights word search and started finding and circling the words - and reading them aloud.

Clearly she gets all her intelligence from her mother.

Why are spiritual disciplines so crucial for parents? By them we set our eyes on Jesus, and are changed into his likeness by degree. Then, by discipline and practice, will we begin to respond reflexively in ways that honor Him.

Ninety-nine percent of the actions you perform that influence your children are unpremeditated actions. There are hundreds, perhaps thousands of them every day. Your facial expressions; your posture; your tone of voice; your gestures; your responses to the dog and the weather and the slipping clutch and the dripping faucet and the late spouse and the TV news; and a hundred other spontaneous expressions of who you really are. Ninety-nine percent of the behavior that influences your child is unpremeditated. (John Piper in Parenting for the Glory of God)

That is humbling, and manifests just how deeply we need to remain in Jesus.

HT: Mike

Yesterday Rebecca took her fourth set of board examinations, this time in pediatrics. Her endurance in work and study is truly amazing.

Jonathan Kozol asked a young man in the South Bronx what he means by "evil." He replied:

"Somebody has power. Pretending that they don't so they don't need to use it to help people - that is my idea of evil." (Amazing Grace p 23)

Two days ago, we read one of my favorite passages from The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe.

Mr. and Mrs. Beaver are telling the Pevensie children about Aslan:

    'Is - is he a man?' asked Lucy.
    'Aslan a man!' said Mr Beaver sternly. 'Certainly not. I tell you he is the King of the wood and the son of the great Emperor-beyond-the-sea. Don't you know who is the King of Beasts? Aslan is a lion - the Lion, the great Lion.'
    'Ooh!' said Susan, 'I'd thought he was a man. Is he - quite safe? I shall feel rather nervous about meeting a lion.'
    'That you will, dearie, and no mistake,' said Mrs Beaver; 'if there's anyone who can appear before Aslan without their knees knocking, they're either braver than most or else just silly.'
    'Then he isn't safe?' said Lucy.
    'Safe?' said Mr. Beaver; 'don't you hear what Mrs Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you.'

[Apparently Lewis didn't use periods after Mr and Mrs . . .]

"What if it were simply a fact that the one by whose will and purpose all things exist, from the galactic system to the electrons and neutrons, has acted and spoken in specific  events and words in order to reveal and effect his purpose and call us to respond in love and obedience? If this were a fact, we might still sit down coolly to consider it in relation to other facts. But by doing so we would be asserting our right to make the final decision, and we have no means of proving that we have that right. It might be that we do not, that the history of Western man in the past two hundred years has been shaped by an illusion. And it might be that the signs, manifest all around us, of the disintegration of this culture of ours are ultimately attributable to that illusion. . . . What would it mean if, instead of trying to explain the gospel in terms of our modern scientific culture, we tried to explain our culture in terms of the gospel?" (Foolishness to the Greeks p41)

This is precisely our challenge as the illusion becomes manifest through the disintegration of culture.

So do you want to make culture? Find a community, a small group who can lovingly fuel your dreams and puncture your illusions. Find friends and form a family who are willing to see grace at work in one another's lives, who can discern together which gifts and which crosses each of us has been called to bear. Find people who have a holy respect for power and a holy willingness to spend their power alongside the powerless. Find some partners in the wild and wonderful world beyond church doors. And then, together, make something of the world. (Culture Making p263)

I think precisely what makes my dear friends so precious is that loving ability to both fuel dreams and puncture illusions.

In culture making, size matters - in reverse. Only a small group can sustain the attention, energy and perseverance to create something that genuinely moves the horizons of possibility - because to create that good requires an ability to suspend, at least for a time, the very horizons within which everyone else is operating. Such "suspension of possibility" is tiring and taxing. The only thing strong enough to sustain it is a community of people. To create a new cultural good, a small group is essential. (Culture Making p243)

I experience this daily in the tumblon team, and in my family.

Stewardship means to consciously take up our cultural power, investing it intentionally among the seemingly powerless, putting our power at their disposal to enable them to cultivate and create. This is different from charity, which is simply the transfer of assests from rich to poor. It is closer to investment. Investors expect a return - indeed they expect their own resources to grow alongside the success of the enterprises they invest in. Investors begin from a position of wealth, but they also are aware of the capacities and gifts of those in whom they invest, capacities they themselves do not have. Stewards are simply those who invest with resources they know are not their own, in places where there will only be a return on investment if God is indeed at loose and at work in the world. (Culture Making p231)

This kind of stewardship implies risk and relationship. It cannot happen without real relationship with the powerless - and it cannot happen without giving them the freedom to use that cultural power.

Today Elisabeth played with wedgits today at a friend's house and raved about them. I can see why. They're a new twist on building blocks.

We have the privilege of being in a church with many families, some of whose children are in public schools, others in private schools, and still others who are homeschooled. For a relatively "small" church of about 300, the mix is exciting to me. There are families with 1, 2, 3, 4 and even 5 children who homeschool, which wins my admiration.

The family with four children is most remarkable to me in the quality of their education and the richness of their family life. This year the 10-year-old, Sarah Grace, began learning about child development. So as part of her course of study, she teaches a class on Tuesday mornings (with her mother's oversight) for 3-5 year-olds, including Elisabeth. It is remarkable to me what Sarah Grace already knows about child development, and how to structure a class for kids (albeit only 4 of them).

So this week when I picked Elisabeth up after her class, she showed me a coat that she had drawn after reading A New Coat for Anna. Sarah Grace was stunned that I wasn't familiar with the book, as if I had missed out on childhood itself. (I'm going to pick it up at the library today so I don't miss out too much.)

It struck me just how wonderful it is that Sarah Grace is learning while teaching Elisabeth - and indirectly me. A ten-year-old is enriching our learning experience on a weekly basis.

I finished reading Culture Making tonight, and thoroughly enjoyed it. Among Crouch's many insights which I will post in the days to come, his reflections on responsible, reciprocal relationship between the powerful and the powerless capture well what I see God doing.

When God acts in culture, he uses both the powerful and the powerless alongside one another rather than using one against the other. To mobilize the powerless against the powerful would be revolution; to mobilize the powerful against the powerless would simply confirm 'the way of the world.' But to bring them into partnership is the true sign of God's paradoxical and graceful intervention into the human story.

I believe this pattern - God working with the poor and the rich, the powerless and the powerful - serves as a kind of template for seeking out what God might be doing now in our human cultures. (Culture Making, p 209)

Elisabeth asked me today, "How do you make a book?"

We watched this video that tells a fascinating story of how books were made a long time ago.

Yesterday Elisabeth and I spent the day with Uncle Gordon (photos forthcoming) to celebrate his birthday. In the course of the day, Gordon challenged my way of thinking about communication - and convinced me to change. What a joy it is to learn from my little brother! (Those who know Gordon will contest that is I who am little, even though he is younger.)

First Things ran a recent article on a homeschoolers' memoir that captures well the essence of parenting:

To bring up children to see no real dividing line between “learning” and “everything else” is to reap adults—a whole family, in fact—for whom learning remains a lifelong journey and a habit of being.

While I think that there is validity to many forms of education, I see how homeschooling lends itself particularly to this end.

Today Elisabeth and I began reading The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (from the same copy my parents read to me as a child). As Lucy pushed through the wardrobe into Narnia, I paused to ask Elisabeth, "What do you think the cold, soft stuff is that she felt under her feet?" She replied, "Maybe snow or rain . . . but she's in a closet!"

We continued reading the account of Lucy wandering out to the lamp post and meeting Tumnus, the faun. Elisabeth listened with great interest to the description of Tumnus. She asked me repeatedly of this selection, "Is this real? Is Lucy pretending?" I said, "She's not pretending, she has really stepped into another world," at which Elisabeth's face lit up with excitement. However, she found a way to reframe her question about Tumnus. After asking, "Is he real?" and receiving the answer that he is, and is not just Lucy's imagination, she asked, "Is he real in our neighborhood?"

What a brilliant way for a child to embrace and understand fantasy - while distinguishing it from "our neighborhood."

As I have been reading and hearing the news, I recalled these words:

During his 1960 presidential campaign, John F. Kennedy often closed his speeches with the story of Colonel Davenport, the Speaker of the Connecticut House of Representatives.

One day in 1789, the sky of Hartford darkened ominously. Some of the representatives, glancing out the windows, feared the end was at hand. Quelling a clamor for immediate adjournment, Davenport rose and said, "The Day of Judgment is either approaching or it is not. If it is not, there is no cause for adjournment. If it is, I choose to be found doing my duty. Therefore, I ask that candles be brought so we can continue to work."

In our tumultuous times, we need courageous people like Davenport who don't succumb to panic, but are resolutely faithful in the charge that they have received.

 

This morning I put my backpack on the counter and knocked the coffee canister off the counter and onto the floor where the top broke off, spilling beans everywhere. I looked at it and said, "I don't think I can fix this, because the top broke right off."

Without missing a beat, Elisabeth suggested:

"How about Gorilla Glue?"

Clearly one of us is smarter than the other.

Last night's conversation:

Elisabeth: "Maybe I'll be taller than you when I'm six."

Mommy: "Probably not when you're six."

Elisabeth: "Then maybe when I'm seven or eight."

Over the last 3 weeks, I have returned to this passage in Daniel 9 more than any other:

"Then I turned my face to the Lord God, seeking him by prayer and pleas for mercy with fasting and sackcloth and ashes. I prayed to the LORD my God and made confession, saying, 'O Lord, the great and awesome God, who keeps covenant and steadfast love with those who love him and keep his commandments, we have sinned and done wrong and acted wickedly and rebelled, turning aside from your commandments and rules. . . To you, O Lord, belongs righteousness, but to us open shame, as at this day . . . To us, O Lord, belongs open shame, to our kings, to our princes, and to our fathers, because we have sinned against you. To the Lord our God belong mercy and forgiveness, for we have rebelled against him and have not obeyed the voice of the LORD our God by walking in his laws, which he set before us by his servants the prophets. . . As it is written in the Law of Moses, all this calamity has come upon us; yet we have not entreated the favor of the LORD our God, turning from our iniquities and gaining insight by your truth. Therefore the LORD has kept ready the calamity and has brought it upon us, for the LORD our God is righteous in all that he has done, and we have not obeyed his voice. . . Now therefore, O our God, listen to the prayer of yoru servant and to his pleas for mercy, and for your own sake, O Lord, make your face to shine upon your sanctuary, which is desolate. . . For we do not present our please before you because of our righteousness, but because of your great mercy. O Lord, hear; O Lord, forgive. O Lord, pay attention and act. Delay not, for your own sake, O my God!"

To You belongs righteousness, and to us open shame. We have sinned, and have not repented; our only plea is Your great mercy, and Your great name. Give us, please, the grace of repentance!

Tonight, lying in bed, Elisabeth said to me:

"My back likes to be scratched."

It is not unlike what she would say when she was only one year old (to try to keep us from leaving the room:

"Skatch my back!"

Since Mommy is a developmental pediatrician, sometimes it makes sense for her to bring her work home with her. On several occasions she has brought home assessments that she uses in the office with her patients.

With Elisabeth she frames them as "games," and Elisabeth loves Mommy's games because they challenge her. One of those "games" was to see how many steps of an instruction Elisabeth could remember. First was a single direction, then a two-step direction, and so on. If I remember correctly, Elisabeth could remember and sequence 5 directions!