Living word by word

what I learned in my kids' swim school

 

I’m still developing a parental philosophy of extracurriculars, but generally speaking, one of our family rules is that if the Parks & Rec program near our home teaches something, there’s no need to pay more money or drive further to get it somewhere else.

 

 We made an exception, however, for swimming, mainly because my daughter was phobic about water until recently. Washing her hair could turn into an epic battle.  (Fortunately, she didn’t have much hair until recently either.)

 

 Swimming is a life skill, and a pretty important one for a normal social life in this Land of Lakes, so last year we decided to shell out for the expensive swimming lessons at a private swim school. The water is warm, the classes are small, and they more or less guaranteed that our kids would learn.

 

  I’m still a bit sheepish about this decision, particularly among our friends who’ve heard us go on about how we don’t want to become “that” kind of parent. But this swim school has taught me a lot about how to treat parents and kids in learning situations – lessons the church could stand to learn too. I have no idea what their actual company manual says, but here's what I imagine is in there:

 

1. Inspire confidence.  Even if I wasn’t spending lots of money on these lessons, I would be spending precious time and gas, so I sure want to feel like it’s worth it, from day one. Everything from the cleanness of the facility to the clearly laid out expectations of each class says, “We know what we’re doing, and this will be worth your time.”
2. Train the heck out of your teachers. Our kids have never had the same teacher twice, and no doubt there’s a good deal of turnover in a place where most of the staff are barely adults, but the quality of teaching is amazingly consistent. They all use the same methods, they all clearly love kids, and every single one is both courteous to the parents and respectful to the students.
3. Have a clearly laid out system, but treat every individual like, well, an individual. This school is a big operation – they must conduct thousands of classes a year in the metro area. And yet the registration process is clear and simple, and when you arrive in a class, you know that your child will get the attention they need.  My children are known by name and greeted enthusiastically – every single time.
4. Evaluate like crazy.  Every child is assessed by someone other than the teacher every term, and I have never been in a class when I was not asked to fill out an evaluation as a parent. The one and only time I wrote something out of the ordinary on an evaluation (and it wasn’t a criticism, just a “it would have been nice. . .”), it was responded to the next day, in person.
5. Failure is not an option. This summer my son had a sudden and inexplicable case of stranger anxiety. He refused to get in the water without me. He cried through most of the first three classes. His group instructor couldn’t persuade him and still treat the other students fairly, but in a flash another teacher was there to give Johann 1-1 attention. No one blamed us, ignored the problem, or shrugged and said, “he’s just not ready.” No questions asked (and at no extra charge), he was given undivided attention until his anxiety abated, and by lesson five he was right in there with his classmates, progressing rapidly. 
6. Believe that this is important – and really fun too.  The school reminds parents – before they register and during the course of a term – that swimming is serious business, a skill that can save lives and is worth teaching at a young age. They clearly know that there’s a huge responsibility when little ones are in the water. At the same time, every instructor knows how to calm nerves and make the hard work a whole lot of fun. There is tons of silliness, usually at the instructor’s expense.  My kids are allowed to forget that we’re doing this so they don’t die.

 

As Sunday School is about to start up, I’m pondering how the church can learn a few things from these people. Surely, we have the most important life skills of all to teach: prayer, life in community, stewardship, living with hope.   Parents need to feel it is  worth their time, and kids just want people who respect them and who will just plain have fun with them.  My church doesn't have the resources per student that the swim school has, but our mission is just as vital.

the integrated life

We like to think that work is the reason we are miserable. If only we had less of it, perhaps, we would be satisfied. We romanticize the places we visit and imagine that life there is slower, more peaceful.

 

For a month we’ve been on sabbatical (well, I have – Will has continued to work) at Weingut Landmann, a family-run winery and farm. As far back as anyone has been able to trace, both sides of this family have produced wine, in this corner of Baden. Twelve  years ago, the two sons of the family took over the business, one serving as the oenologist and the other as the business manager. They run a farm stand seven days a week during asparagus season (April – June), rent out five vacation apartments, offer wine tastings with food on arrangement, and produce 100,000 bottles of wine a year.

 

The irony for us is that this sabbatical on the farm in fact puts us right in the middle of a lot of very hard working people. With Spargel (asparagus) season in full swing, the tractors and work crews start heading out by at least 7 a.m. every morning, the farm stand is open by 8 and people do not shut down until sundown, which is 9  p.m. or later. Frequently there are people in the office, which is just outside our front door, until 10 or later. We are surrounded by people working very, very long hours, and mostly we feel its our duty  to stay out of their way. The lush green landscape that for us is a picture of peace and tranquility must look very different through their eyes, where a good portion of the year’s profit must be removed from the ground and gotten into saleable form in a relatively short time.

 

Is the rural life more peaceful? Certainly one couldn’t say that if you count work hours,  noise levels, or the numbers of people and vehicles coming and going. There is a sense, though, that life here is more integrated than the equivalent life would be for us back at home. When we work 60 hour weeks at home, we are away, in the office, and if at home, often barking at the children to keep their fingers off the computer. Here, three generations are all engaged in the common work, except when the children are in school.  The oldest child in the family is drafted into service washing and peeling asparagus. The youngest ones may not be working, but they are very much about the place as their parents work. Three generations plus a lot of neighbors and helpers are part of the effort, from dawn until dusk. Long days, no doubt, but days in which they are together -- or at least together in a common endeavor.

 

David Wood of the Fund for Theological Education has argued that the pastoral life (the ministerial kind) also offers some of that same integration, though it is limited to the degree that we operate the church like a business. My children have no idea what Will does for a living (even I have difficulty understanding it sometimes), even when he’s working from home, because the projects are abstract and the communities he serves are miles away. My work, at least a good part of it, is tangible and visible. My kids see me lead, preach, sing, preside. Katie insists on going with me at 7 every Sunday morning to church and knows many members of our community by name – and nearly everyone knows their names. I do not take them to the office much, because they would be as disruptive there as in any office setting, but the public element of my ministry and its communal nature offers them an access point that few children have to the work world in urban places. Every Sunday is Take Your Children to Work Day for me. That’s a gift.

fell in the drink

This afternoon I saw my son, three years old, do the "dead man's float" at Wood Lake Nature Center. He was fully clothed. It was not on purpose.

That image is seared in my brain at the moment, because I remember nothing between that and being waist-deep in muck, hauling him out. We had been walking along the marsh for half an hour on a wide path and some boardwalk. Johann's favorite activity was to break off a dead piece of cattail or marsh grass and throw it in the water, as if he were expecting it to float downstream as it would in the creek.  J kept doing it again and again, as if expecting a different result.

Somehow, he found the one place along the path where there was no railing, a steep drop-off to the water and nothing in the way. I was literally two steps and way and saw him lose his balance, but couldn't grab him. It was maybe three feet to the water's surface and another three-plus feet of water.

We're all fine. He didn't break his neck, hit his head, or harm any limbs. He didn't breathe or swallow enough marsh water to make him sick. It was warm enough that nobody got hypothermia walking back to the car. Johann did, however, get a little hysterical when I suggested he get in the warm bathtub to clean up (and this is a boy who LOVES baths).

We tried processing a bit verbally, but it's tough with a 3-year old.

"Did you lose your balance and fall in?"
"What's my balance?"

new models needed

    There has been much rich conversation today about upcoming sabbaticals, sabbath, and pastoral ministry. My favorite definition so far, from David Wood, one of our co-facilitators: " A sabbatical is a time when all that has been 'background' to your ministry -- your own spiritual life, your family, the origins of your call, your passions -- is given time to be foreground, while the foreground of ministry -- the tasks of preaching and pastoral care and administration -- drop away for a time." Exactly.

    On another, crankier note, I was reminded again how little we know about doing ministry in the era of co-parenting and new gender roles. Eugene Peterson is often held up as a model for how one can be in parish ministry while still doing serious reading and writing. Here's a man who served a congregation for 28 years, with only one sabbatical in the midst of it, and still wrote countless books. His secrets? Well, he clearly had a strong vision of the ministry of the laity and handed over many tasks to his members. But there's another thing -- he has a wife, one who clearly was happy to take the traditional role of pastor's wife and see that as a calling.

    Well, I don't have a wife. I have an active father to my children, but definitely no wife, and not one eager to be an upfront pastor's spouse either (not that anyone at my congregation expects that of him). It's really hard for me not to be resentful of the many men in generations past -- and quite a few still today -- whose careers benefit from the fact that their spouses have willingly picked up the slack.

    I have to constantly remind myself that our mission is together as a family, even though our work worlds tend to pit our careers against one another. Fortunately for Will and me, our passions and commitments are blessedly compatible, even when the reality of modern life makes us feel like we're competing for time.

Transfiguration

I'm actually taking this Transfiguration Sunday off, in order to participate in the City of Lakes Loppet on Sunday. For me it's an annual glimpse of the kingdom, being able to SKI from the suburbs into Uptown! This year we might have a kid skiing with us instead of being hauled behind us. . .another milestone.

Those of you looking for a preaching image or two, I'll refer you back to my essay from last year  at Journey with Jesus. Matthew's account is a little different, yes, but the larger image of the lights going on still holds true.

At ECLC, we're going to have a surprise transfiguration of a different kind. You'll just have to show up to see what it is.

my son the evangelist

The thing about having a toddler is that you teach them a few things just in the course of living, and -- look out -- you're stuck with it for good! It's true, of course, for those unguarded moments when you say something you wish you hadn't: "Where did he learn that word? Oh, yeah. From me."

But fortunately, it's also true of the better things. Johannes has become our family evangelist, both of his mother's vocation and his father's. As a one car family, we've slipped into the pattern that the "girls" go to church at the drack of cawn before the first service -- usually with the car. Johannes and Will follow later on the bus, which conveniently runs in a direct  line from our block to church. It works out well because Johann LOVES the bus.

Now, once in a great while, my DH would prefer to, shall we say, worship according to the First Article of the creed. Or, maybe, celebrate Sabbath with a truly long nap. But Johann will not stand for it. Skip church! God forbid!

I'm not sure, to be honest, whether it's the bus ride or church he is really insisting on. But a) he gets his father to worship and b) once there, he tells anyone who listens that he RODE THE 6B BUS!!  Good news all around!

let's be honest

Brain, Child this quarter featured a funny but ultimately unsatisfying piece by Moncia Crumback, who discovered that her son’s grandparents were plotting a secret baptism. Mother and father met at a Lutheran college and left that institution “a lot more liberal and a lot less Lutheran.” (I understand that those two “l’s” don’t go together in some people’s minds, but it irritates me that this sentence prompts no further explanation).

 As a pastor, I have seen all too often how grandparently zeal for “getting it done” can overhwhelm any meaningful conversation in the family about what baptism means, or the parents' religious intentions for their children. I applaud the Cumbacks' recognition that, given their own lack of commitment to Christianity, they have no business baptizing a child. We pastors really don’t want anyone to be put in the position of lying to themselves, their family, or to God.

On the other hand, I find the author’s description of their spiritual plans for their children less than honest. They will expose their children to the stories of a variety of faiths, they say, and when their children are grown “they can choose.” I have heard this approach defended many a time, often from people who are equally clear that they would be appalled if their child grew up to, say, drive a Hummer or join the Republican party.

Let’s be honest. To expose your child to a lot of “stories” and “philosophies,” but no living community of faith or ritual practice, is to instill in your child a quasi-religious philosophy, namely one of secular skepticism. While it’s entirely possible that such children will grow to some day commit themselves heart and soul to a traditional religious faith, they would not be following in their parents’ footsteps as they do so – and odds are good that such a conversion would cause family tension. Their children will indeed choose, but their parents have made a clear bid for what they hope that choice will be.

Religion, ultimately, is a very human endeavor, a bit like language. I know some very committed interfaith families, but they work very hard at teaching their children more than one language of faith – and that includes interaction with community, holiday celebration, Scriptures, and ritual practice like worship. It is the difference between raising a child bilingually and saying you will expose them to a half-dozen languages and let them pick one later on.

I appreciate the respect the church is granted when people are honest to God. Let’s just be completely honest that non-belief is also passed down to our children.

Advent 3A

Back on the subject of Mary, Sara Miles has made a similar point to my earlier one about the virgin birth:

It is, of course, profoundly unsettling news: Mary doesn’t need a man to have a baby. She isn’t going to follow worldly social norms. In fact, she prophesies the overturning of the whole social order, proclaiming that the lowly will be lifted up, the rich turned away empty. She doesn’t ask permission of kings or family to step off the precipice into unprecedented experience. Her proclamation that God is at work in her body shows us, even before Jesus does, what it means to truly submit––not to the world but to God.

I find it interesting that relative "outsider" women to the church -- adult converts like Sara Miles and Kathleen Norris, are the ones reminding American Christians that "submission" need not be a dirty word. I suppose it's partly a matter of experience; if you've spent your life in the secular culture of self-fulfillment and self-expression, submission to God sounds like a relief. If, on the other hand, you've been raised to equate submission to men with submission to God, the word would make an emerging feminist break out in hives. Either way, the point is to make a distinction between our ways and God's ways, as the Magnificat profoundly does.

position wanted

Wanted: Congregation that refrains from holding evening meetings.

Talented, committed clergywoman seeks lively, left-leaning, Christ-centered congregation to serve. Have gifts in preaching, faith formation, theological reflection; have knowledge of emerging generations, wide variety of worship styles and child devlopment.Willing to commit considerable energies, passion and time, as long as it doesn't involve meetings during or after dinnertime and bedtime for small children, phone calls which interrupt story time, or breakfast meetings before the school bus arrives.

Submitted by Katie, age 6.

the night before St. Nicholas

It's the night before St. Nicholas, so we'll be setting out the shoes by our kids' bedrooms tonight. My own mother used St. Nicholas as a way to "take the edge off" the gift anticipation that sets in this time of year. I'm not sure it's totally necessary in my children's case, since we have November and December birthdays in addition to Christmas. But our German roots call us, and it's great fun to have an excuse to buy a new Christmas book early in the month.

This year, I'm excited about a new book for the Feast of Stephen, Wenceslas. Our other book based on the popular carol has lovely illustrations and just the text of the carol. This one has lovely snowy illustrations but a re-telling of the story from the perspective of the page.

This time of year makes me so grateful to have children at home who still love to be read to.