Living word by word

Dinge

When our children were very small we taught them a few hymns as bedtime prayers, including a couple in German. “Nun danket alle Gott” (Now Thank We all our God) became a favorite, especially as our daughter started German immersion preschool and began to understand its references to mothers wombs and childrens'  legs – “der uns von Mutterleib und Kindesbeinen an.” She requested German hymns by abbreviation, so “Now Thank We all Our God” was simply “Dinge”  - things, as in “who wondrous things has done."   

I can't hear this hymn without thinking of my own children's chubby toddler legs, but the childlike syllables and domestic references belie the horrors of the hymnwriter's life. Martin Rinkhart had the kind of pastoral experience no one would ever willingly sign up for. Serving during the 30 Years War, he was the only clergyman in the  walled city of Eilenburg during a time of plague, and was said to have buried as many as forty parishioners in a day.  He himself fell ill but survived; his own wife died. What does it mean to be thankful in the midst of such incredible loss?

Knowing the story of Rinkhart’s life reminds me that gratitude is not so much an emotion as a practice. More and more scientists are proving what our ancestors knew – if you remember what you are grateful for and express that gratitude, your satisfaction in life – even more so in low times in your life – goes up. (If you haven’t already seen this lovely video  from SoulPancake detailing an experiment on happiness and gratitude, do watch it.)

            Over the years, my kids have dropped off in requesting that we sing hymns at bedtime, but there is still a lovely knowing glance to one another whenever this hymn appears in worship. And no matter what is going on in our lives at the time those chords begin, and I’m reminded to be thankful   -- Now, now.

The Spiritual Dangers of Alumni Magazines

            If you graduated from college,  you know the drill. Every so often a magazine arrives in your mailbox, full of glossy photos of happy, successful people. Some of them might be the professors who taught you oh so many years ago. Some of them might be silver-haired philanthropists who are leaving a legacy for their beloved alma mater. And some of them are younger than you . . . uncomfortably younger than you. Maybe you read an article or two. Maybe you just scan it for familiar faces. Maybe you turn to the back and look for names of people whom you haven’t heard from in years, not even on Facebook.

            I went to two institutions of higher learning that were large enough to have glossy full color magazines (and another that was not that big). My husband went to two other institutions whose magazines are so glossy you practically need sunglasses. All four publications have an uncanny knack for arriving just at those moments in my life when I am feeling most unaccomplished, most detached from my dreams of earlier years, most stuck in the midlife rock-and-a-hard-place rut between family and career.

            I’m pretty sure I’m not the only person who experiences Alumni Magazine Syndrome. I mean, we can’t all be tenured faculty at the places where we studied, start our own non-profits by the age of twenty-eight, or give a few millions dollars away. 

            As someone who now serves on the board of one of these institutions, I understand the editorial purposes that lead to alumni magazine syndrome. Your friendly development officers are not very interested in the middle. They are focused on alumni who can give enough money to support programs and buildings, and on parents who might consider sending their children to an institution that will launch them on a career more brilliant than mine. No one wants to read about people who dropped onto the ‘mommy track’  because they had a special needs child, or who doing “just fine” economically while they support their aging parents.

            But what bothers me most about the flavor of many of these stories is the impression that most worthy work is either publishable or highly profitable, when a lion’s share of what holds the world together is neither.  Some of the most brilliant people in the world are working on Apple patents that they simply can’t talk about, or formulating poems that will not make the Times bestseller list.  Some of our most gifted diplomats, counselors and chaplains are professionally bound to not talk  -- not even to their dearest friends -- about the most interesting parts of their work. And legions of managers throughout the world are taking care of their employees and their institutions instead of spending a lot of time blogging about it or accepting interviews.

            Our culture of self-promotion makes it all too easy to believe other people’s press and to compare our own very private work with what others choose to make public. Rob Bell became famous because he started a church, a very successful church – but in the end he found leading that church less interesting than the life of publishing, speaking, and being the kind of public figure who gets written up in the New Yorker.  Pastors don’t get that kind of press, usually, and if they do, it’s ofteyh n because they have begun to believe their own press a bit too much.

            Mid-life ruts are not the magazine’s  fault, however. Another part of grown-up life is knowing when to put down the glossy magazine get to work in the 3D messy world of caring for the people around you, doing the tasks no one will thank you for, and keeping one’s own counsel about whatever ways you might feel just a bit overlooked. For me, it helps sometimes to particularly “count my blessings” in the places where I am bound to be quiet about what I do.  I look back at my calendar at all the meaningful conversations that others have initiated because I do what I do. I tally up all the ways our small-time philanthropy has added up to some pretty sizeable numbers, when kept up consistently for fourteen years of marriage. And I pay more attention to how I love the people closest to me, the ones whose trust and respect  I most need.  That stuff doesn’t make for a great glossy article, or even a “noteworthy” update in the back of the magazine. But it is what grown-up life has taught me – the best education I’ve ever had.

In our bodies. . .

"9/11 lives on in our bodies. . ."

That was the line that struck me the most hearing Krista Tippett's broadcast near Ground Zero today.  Serene Jones, President of Union Theological Seminary, talked about the ways in which that day is still with us in unconscious ways, ways that we sense but can't articulate or even fully access.

It encapsulated for me why I haven't felt the need to go to 9/11 memorial events or even read very much about the anniversary this year. Partly, I'm weary of the political posturing and faux patriotism that always seems to hover around the media's coverage. Partly I am more concerned about the famine in Africa and the climate crisis. But mostly I feel that I don't need to re-visit that day in order to know how it has impacted my life or my country.

When 9/11 happened, I was 28 weeks pregnant with our first child. I knew instantly that her world would be irrevocably shaped by this event. I remember vividly the silence when commercial planes stopped flying overhead, and the fear I felt when I heard what must have been military planes in the succeeding days.

I know 9/11 impacted my body, and therefore the child in my womb. Katie was born month early, and I've heard that premature birth rates were up that year across the country. The day after she was born, a plane crashed in New York City, and the news frenzy started all over again.  But by then my horizon had changed. It was not about now, but about the future, about the kind of world we want our children to live in: a world of love or of fear, a world of wonder or of suspicion.  I still carry those tensions in my body, and pray that my life will work them out for her sake.

 

more wonder, fewer bullet points

When my kids were little – requiring spoon-feeding and twice-daily naps – I was dubious when grade-school parents told me that we would not be any less busy as the kids aged. It must get easier, I thought, looking at their enormous nine-year-olds who could zip their own jackets.

 

OK—is anyone surprised? – I get it now. With our second grader, we are getting glimpses of the complications that come with kids who are old enough to have homework but not old enough to track the assignments’ due dates very well. We are not hockey parents and never intend to be, but it’s amazing how a couple music or swim lessons a week can make a working parent’s schedule exponentially more complicated – especially when one working parent also works some evenings and the other frequently travels.

 

I get it. I know why people “sleep in” on Sunday mornings, even when “sleeping in”  only means staying in your jammies after your 4 year-old hauled you out of bed at 6 a.m.

 

People are busy -- sometimes by choice but often by sheer economic necessity. Church can feel like one more optional thing, the first one to fall off the schedule. What’s a congregation to do? The answers usually fall in one of two categories.

 

1.      Teach people what to do. If they’re not at church, it’s because they don’t understand how important it is.  Just hold your ground and keep reminding them how urgent the task at hand is.

2.      Add options. If one program is getting just OK results, two or three other options would strengthen the whole. More options means more face time, which means people might get to know one another better, and the vicious cycle of low-attendance-low-energy reverses. If you need to add staff to accomplish this, that’s fine.

 

As a pastor, I can see value in both of these approaches, but as a parent, I’m stymied. When I look at my  life, which I assume is neither much less nor more complicated than others, here’s what  I see

 

·        I don’t want another program to drive my kids to.

·        I don’t need another thing to track in my head or on a chart, like minutes of piano practice, servings of vegetables or time my child spends reading.

·        I don’t need even one more “hidden danger” to be aware of.

·        I don’t want one more damn bullet point list of how to parent better (“Oh! Now that you’ve put it simply, in a quick-to-read list, I’m sure I can follow all 12 ways to ensure perfect nutrition for my kid who only eats noodles!”)

·        I don’t need one more thing to feel inadequate about as a parent.

 

 

Here’s what I do need:

 

·        Gratitude and wonder for each and every day my children are alive, growing and learning

·        Reasons to get down on my knees and see the world through their eyes.

·        Confidence that I can be a good faith guide to them even when my own faith is shaky.

·        Friends who will ask how it’s going and to whom I can give a completely honest answer.

·        Adults who’ve gotten through this stage of life and encourage us even if they did it differently.

·        Faith that God loves my kids even more passionately than I do – as if that were possible.

 

How can the church provide the latter without creating more of the former? That’s my question, and I continue to ask it.

 

Dear Readers, what do you long for?

never post angry

My Saturday:

This post is actually from a couple weeks ago, only slightly revised. I let it cool for a few days. If you don't know Free Range Kids, check it out.

My Saturday:

Up at 5:30, run 11.5 miles with a 60 year-old woman who's faster than me.

Eat, shower, visit the ATM

Spend 3 hours garage saling in our neighborhood. Katie totally enjoys selecting her own items with her own allowance. Johann scores a Slinky and a magnadoodle board.

Visit the neighborhood park festival: hot dogs, neighborhood chamber orchestra, moonjump, goofy games, popcorn.

Go home. Kick the extremely squirrely kids outdoors for a bit while we put away our finds and figure out how to move the piano we just bought for 25 dollars at an estate sale. (Really! An upright for $25! And it plays beautifully!)

Retrieve children, get scolded by neighbor for "inadequately supervising" them (Note: no one was bruised, bloodied, or destructive of anyone else's property).

Stew all evening about said scolding. Think uncharitable thoughts about said neighbor.

Make myself feel better reading Free Range Kids.

Decide the best construction is that my neighbor and I have different parenting philosophies. I can live with that.

Toto, they're not in the U.S. . . .

It's been one of those ministry sprints lately, both practically and emotionally. Let's see. . .in one week we had a member lose her house to fire, a newborn infant requiring surgery and the death of a former staff member/ beloved member of the congregation. The congregation admirably marshaled their forces for a 400+ person funeral, and now we're re-grouping for Holy Week.

And there's plenty going on among friends and family too, from the difficult but surmountable -- my best friend broke her wrist -- to the near-miss scary -- my brother-in-law hit his head and is hospitalized -- to the truly unfair -- a seminary roommate has stage IV cancer.

I vacillate wildly between feeling extraordinarily blessed  -- I  have a healthy family and a job -- to being just plain exhausted by it all and dreading the next phone call.

Which brings me to Europe. There's been plenty of cultural comparisons going on in the press this week with Obama across the pond for the G-20. Here's our own.

One of our German relatives, feeling unusually run-down, goes to see her family practice doc. He hears out her list of symptoms and stressors, looks at her tongue, and proceeds to write a prescription: for two weeks off of work.  This is in addition to a week she was already planning to take off this month.

Can you freaking imagine such a thing in the U.S.? No, no, we heirs of the Puritans would be admonished to exercise to increase our energy. Or maybe given a sleeping aid.  Or maybe we'd be further evaluated for anxiety or depression so we could be medicated. But rest? NOT working?! The whole reason our employers pay for insurance is to KEEP us at work.

Maybe this is why, despite the staggering costs, many businesses still dread the single payer.

why we're busy

    I absolutely think a change of adminstrations will be good for the country, but it's also clear that it's going to make things very very busy for our family for awhile.

   Will's group is busy trying to make sure the stimulus package doesn't all go into paving over the universe and instead investing in clean energy and more transit choices.

  

Nate Silver at 538 rightly points out that this is not a narrow agenda, but one very fitting with the platform Obama ran on: energy independence, cleaner air, reducing greenhouse emissions, etc. Unfortunately, it still sometimes gets labeled in the press as a hopelessly granola-y dream. (We do make granola homemade at our house, but that's beside the point. . . ).

  My public apology: I've been a little grumpy about how much time this new effort is requiring of my beloved. When I had to leave the family to tend to a pastoral care crisis this afternoon, we were both thinking the same thing: "Don't complain about my work, and I won't complain about yours."

  Will and I regularly have to remind ourselves that meaningful jobs, left to their own devices, can quickly devour family life. We also have to remember that we're both serving the Lord.

Worship Wars part 2

I've blogged before about our home worship wars. My children, perhaps typical pastors' kids, happily sing Sunday School songs at the top of their lungs and can be counted on to ask theologically astute questions, but are perpetually resistant to any of MY attempts to instill piety at home. Mealtime prayers are one place they sitll show some enthusiasm, but not always the most helpful kind.

A not atypical scene:

Katie and Johann: Yea! Yea! (all join hands, Johann squints his eyes shut for a microsecond).

Johann: Tank you for the Lord OOOOOOOO! (Dips his finger in the syrup).

Will, removing said fingers: Wait Johann

Katie (at the same moment): NO JOHANN!

Katie: Thank you for the waffles and the syrup

Johann (breaking in, and putting fingers in syrup again): and for Sunday School

Katie:. . .and for Mommy and Daddy and Katie and Johann,

Will (simultaneously, removing fingers again): Johann I said no!

All (together now!): Amen!

Will: Now Johann, go sit on the stairs (our time out spot)

Johann: Why?

Will: Because I told you not to put your fingers in while we are praying. Now please go count.

Johann: Count to what?

Will: To 20, please.

Johann: I'm going to count to 30!

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.