Don’t flay the sheep.

Talking Ashes with the Baby: Theoretically

I’m still going ahead with plans to take the kiddos to Ash Wednesday worship, even if it’s late, even if it’ll be a hassle (even though Erik realized, after my last post, that he’d committed to a professional engagement on Wednesday night, meaning I’ll be flying solo).

My friend Meika (who has three beautiful daughters) asked how I talk about things like Ash Wednesday and death and sin with my kids. Good question. This post is about the “theoretical” aspect of this. If you want a list of how I’m thinking about presenting this to my five year old this week, that’s in the next post.

I’m not always sure. It’s really hard. (And, I suppose, after 5 years as a pastor for children and youth and 2 years as a high school religion teacher, I say that it’s hard even if I am a “professional.”)

This is also not me speaking so much as a professional, but as a parent. (Given, I know, as a parent with an advanced degree in theology.) I’d do this a little differently if I was working with a group of children who were not my own.

Because this list is about theory rather than practice, it should be helpful even if you disagree with my theology. (I’m a huge Calvinist. But even if you are incredibly Baptist, these theoretical ways of thinking about how to to talk theology with kids ought to work for you in formulating your own ways of talking to your kids.)

I try to put any talk about those things through several filters.

1. Above all, I want to be honest. I don’t want to have to re-explain something later because I told it a different way when my kids were younger. The extreme example: glossing over the reality of death with kids.

2. I try to explain things so that they fit with what I believe. As a Christian parent, and as part of my baptismal vows to my babies, I feel called to guide them toward what I believe. I don’t feel that this call means I present them with choices, and then let them choose. Especially when they are young. As a theological nerd, I actually think about some of the intricacies of what I believe. Then I try to make sure what I say to a child fits with this. So, while I’m not going to explain all the details, I might want to make sure what I do explain isn’t contradictory.

As a caveat to this, I also try to teach my kids to respect what other people believe. Right now, this means I’m often explaining to Zora what I know about Judaism when she brings home questions about her Jewish classmates. As my kids get older, I also am committed to explaining to them that there are a variety of ways that Christians believe, but we’re still all Christians, even with those differences.

3. I try to find a way to talk about it that works with where my child is developmentally. This is a biggie, and I don’t claim to be an expert. I find James Fowler on faith development helpful, if a little academic (although, if you’re really motivated to learn about this for the sake of your own kids, it might be worth the work to read up on this!). I also, more simplistically, try to keep in mind that younger kids are concrete thinkers. (Example: when I say to my 5 year old, “Jump up on this stool so I can do your hair, she climbs up onto the stool and jumps up and down.) Abstract concepts don’t work for them unless they have a concrete illustration. So, if you want to talk about sin, you have to give them examples that they can get their heads around. And none of these parallel, analogous illustrations. It’ll be a while before they get to the “this is like that” stage.

Don’t forget, too, that part of development is experience. I don’t care that Zora doesn’t get all the intricacies of sacramental theology. I do care that, by age 3, she knew that communion bread dipped in juice or wine was sweet to her tongue. Taste and see that the Lord is good, right?

4. I try to explain things so that they are hopeful, so that there is a soft, grace-filled place to land. (I try to do that with adults, too. The gospel is good news. You can be honest with people about the hard stuff, but you don’t leave them in the darkness.)

Coming up: some examples of this put into practice.

[ Filed under Uncategorized | 0 Comments ]

Putting Ashes on the Baby

My efforts to find an area church with AshWednesday worship at a reasonable hour for children are coming up dry. The church we attend has a noontime and a 7:30 pm option. Which is great for my husband, and other people who work near there: he can pick between lunch-break ashes or stop in if he’s had a crazy long workday.

I could take Abram along for a daytime service. But Zora would miss it because she’s in school. And by 7:30, Abram’s getting a little pooped.

Is there no, say, 5:00pm option?

Thing is: I think putting ashes on the kids is important.

I realize that I’m in the minority on this for a number of reasons. First off, of course, because I go to church alot (I’m kind of a monk…). Second, I know, because I think Ash Wednesday is good for kids.

Yes, there is something counter-cultural and a little freaky about smearing ashes on the forehead of a baby and saying, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” Yes, I could be accused of being morbid for subjecting my children to this ritual.

But I am choosing to raise my kids in the church. In my list of things I hope for them, being members of a community that follows Jesus is tops.

We’ve had to talk to Zora about death often in the last year. I don’t want to shelter my kids from this. I want them to know that Jesus loves them even when life is not all sunshine and rainbows. I want them to know that Jesus loves them especially then…

I also want them to know that they are mortal. Created by God. Good, but now imperfect. But that they had water spilled on their heads as babies, and oil smeared in the shape of the cross. And that anointing calls them out to live examined lives. And that the Spirit works in them.

I want them to have early memories of those ashes and those words.

Early bedtimes for everyone for the next few days, I guess. Because we’ll be in the back of some church at 7:30 on Wednesday, trying to keep it all together long enough to get our foreheads smeared in ash.

[ Filed under Uncategorized | 3 Comments ]

Timely Boy

A year ago tonight, Erik and I were headed to the hospital (first for a false alarm: turns out I’m a little dense at telling when I’m in labor; in the wee hours of the morning for the real thing).

Abram pulled off the rare feat of being born on his due date.

Which has Erik and I wondering: if he was timely in that, what will happen tomorrow?

We think it would make perfect sense if, around 6:00am, he stood up in his crib and said,

“Mama! Dada!”

(His first words)

If we came into his room to discover him trying to climb out of the crib onto the dresser.

And if, when we took him out of the crib, we set him down and he took his first steps.

I suppose it’s too much to wish that he’d also learn to change his diaper by himself.

[ Filed under Uncategorized | 0 Comments ]

Sowing with Abandon

There’s something about the last few days of being pregnant, where you are bursting with possibility (OK, there’s something about reflecting on the last days of pregnancy: at the time, you just feel like you’re bursting…).

A year ago, I hugely pregnant. Abram’s birth was only 3 days away (my grandmother had a massive stroke the day before he was born, too…and died 5 weeks later). I knew (sort of) where I would be a year from then. We’d already made the decision that I would be leaving Fox Valley and that we would move back to the city. I was fairly certain that, a year from then, I’d be spending my time in an apartment in the city with a toddler, and a child in kindergarten. I thought I might be working, but I wasn’t sure.

Overall, a year later, things are about as I expected. I’m home with this lovely boy-child, and in a few minutes I’ll wake him up from his nap so that we can walk a couple blocks in the snow to pick his sister up from school. Erik will come home from work while the kids and I are working toward bedtime. We’ll have a luxurious expanse of family time together over the weekend.

But I sometimes feel like this new life has become a hermitage for me. I do love it, the quiet. I love the long walks and runs I take during the day. I love the deep quiet of Abram’s naptimes. Sometimes (like yesterday afternoon, when Zora and Abram happily played kazoos together for a few minutes) I love the afternoons. (Sometimes the afternoons and evenings are the witching hour for my kids…)

I am very isolated. A few months ago, a friend pointed out to me that I’ve gone from a job where I saw a steady stream of a variety of people every day to a life where I mostly see Zora, and Abram, and Erik. I don’t know that I mind that all the time. Often it feels like a sabbath. And truth be told, I am not very outgoing with my life right now. I’m not joining the PTA or finding many new friends. I’m carefully tending a few old friendships, and going to church, and seeing my family. But I’ve become a bit more of an introvert.

While walking this morning, and listening to a podcast devotional, I heard a few of the sower parables read. And I was hit by this thought: God asks us, in spreading the kingdom, to scatter seed with abandon.

In my ministry position, I scattered seed with abandon, no question about it. There were so many people, so many hours spent with teenagers and little children and their parents, so much good and wonderful chaotic noise, and wonderful wonderful hours of interaction with all of these people who were God’s beloveds. I’m not trying to be prideful, and I know there may be a few who would disagree with this, but I think I took good care of the patch of soil God gave me, and I think I often did it with abandon. I have every hope and faith that somehow, God used me to scatter a few seeds of gospel into some lives. I can’t wait to hear news of green shoots some day.

There’s not so much of the scattering with abandon anymore these days. I am very measured about things.

And maybe that’s what I am waiting for: the next point where I can scatter with abandon.

To everything a season, right?

[ Filed under Uncategorized | 1 Comment ]

Drowning

Mark 1:1-11

Genesis 1:1-5

Hope Christian Reformed Church, Oak Forest, IL

On New Years Day, I took my five year old daughter for a walk, with the goal that we would be taking our shoes off and dipping our toes into Puget Sound. I figure, when you’re on vacation near the ocean, you ought to stick your feet in at least once.

And what better time than New Years day, to start out new with the cold clarity of water between your toes?

New Years is a holiday with enough “religious-ish” significance that churches take it on (schedule and energy for additional church services permitting) as an additional worship service.

You can hear echoes, in my New Year’s walk with Zora, of baptism, or at very least, renewal of baptismal vows.

A new year, so a time to recommit to health and well being, personal goals, relationships. Turn a new leaf. Another year, another chance to succeed. Get your house in order and your ducks in a row. Start out fresh and clean. The water is a good place to do this.

Behind the New Years resolution language of self improvement, there is a longing to be the person you are meant to be. Perhaps the person you are meant to be in your own estimation; but, then again, resolutions are famous for failure.

Which is where baptism comes in.

Baptism is our primary mark of identity as Christians. It’s not an identity we choose, or give to ourselves. It’s the identity God gives us.

Baptism doesn’t call us to be the person we think we ought to be.

It calls us to be the person God wants us to be, the person God created us to be.

Which is something of a frightening thing. (I wish it were comforting, but…)

There was a time when my now five year old called the baptismal font “the church bath”. I am eternally grateful that she grew up in a church whose baptismal bowl was in fact big enough to dunk a baby into, because it seared that picture of a baby taking a bath into her little brain. Not that I ever dunked a baby…I go for as dramatic a sprinkling as possible.

But, some of you may know that in the Eastern Orthodox tradition, they dunk even the babies. All the way in three times, in the name of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. It’s kind of horrifying. (Some of you may know the look on the face of a baby who has slipped out of a seated position in the tub. Scary…)

Even if your child is only sprinkled on, when you hand your baby over the officiating pastor at baptism, you let them dangle that little one over the bowl.

Water is the source of life, Water cleanses, water purifies, water quenches thirst.

It’s also where people drown.

Water, in the Bible, is the sign of chaos. The Hebrews were not sailors. And the water was a big, messy, scary place.

In the beginning, then, the Spirit moved, as the Spirit will, over the water, through the void…

And God began to order the chaos…light and dark, water above and water below, sea and earth, day and night…a place for everything and everything in its place.

By God’s Word alone, the water was placed under order and control…but, of course, under God’s order and control.

And it was good. Even after sin entered the world, the creation was still good.

And God was still holding back the chaos and maintaining order.

But here’s the thing: it’s too easy to stop at the idea that God simply maintains the chaos and keeps us safe.

The world is not God’s wind-up toy, left to run on it’s own. God is constantly creating, and calling us to creativity alongside. We believe that God rested on the seventh day..

but then God got back to work.

Mark is another beginning. “The beginning of the Good News of Jesus Christ.”

And the scene pulls in to John, crazy, chaotic John, calling people out to the wild places, and asking them to get down in the river and go under the water, into the current, down where it’s not really safe.

And Jesus, too, comes to that place, and goes under the water.

And then, creation starts to come apart at the seams.

The heavens split open. (Just to review: The strangest part of the creation story, for 21st century people who are familiar with NASA and the space program, is this whole thing about separating the waters with a “firmament” or “dome.” The Old Testament version of astronomy held that the sky, the heavens, was a big, huge dome that held back “the waters above,” and kept them from engulfing the earth in chaos.)

So when Jesus sees the heavens split open in Mark, it’s not just a flash of metaphorical light. It’s the creation cracking.

And the Spirit descends like a dove. What if the dove doesn’t glide on soft wings, in loops and whorls. What if the dove dive bombs? Sometimes the Holy Spirit whispers, but sometimes the Spirit comes charging at your head with a sharp beak, just to make sure you get the point.

If the heavens are cracking open, I’m more inclined to go with the dive bombing bird.

Baptism is meant to remind us that God’s identity for us is not a safe place.

One of the reasons theologians say that Jesus had to be baptized was so that we could share in baptism with him.

If Jesus was without sin, there was no reason for a baptism (especially in John’s way of talking about it: a baptism of repentance).

Except that Jesus was meant to share with us in all things, and in baptism, we are joined to Jesus.

And joined to his identity.

Which includes going down into the water

going down into death

and coming back up to life again.

We all drown in our baptism, back into the chaos,

so that we can be re-created.

I wish that was always a completely comforting thought.

My New Year’s resolutions are usually pretty comforting. If I can accomplish them, things will be better. I’ll be more organized. I’ll be in better shape. I’ll be a better person.

Even the more “spiritual” ones (I’ll pray more regularly, I’ll read the Bible more…) are often really about self-improvement. (Because if I do those things, I’ll be a better Christian.)

But living into God’s identity for me in baptism is hard work.

Because it means giving into the chaos, going down into the water,

and coming up, gasping for air, while the world as I thought I knew it looks to be coming apart at the seams.

It’s a new start, but not on my terms.

And as Jesus came up from under the water of the Jordan, and saw that bird dive-bombing at his head, I wonder if he knew that things would never be the same. Because his identity was the very thing that broke open the heavens, God-among-us.

And the only way to tame the chaos was for Jesus to go right through it, clear unto death.

Epiphany is the time after Christmas when the lights go on, and we figure out who Jesus really is. The Kings arrive, and bring gifts to this toddler child of peasant parents. Jesus is baptized and heaven splits open. Jesus begins his ministry and calls his disciples, and heals people, and says the most extraordinary things. And everyone starts to wonder: “What child is THIS?”

And if we have been baptized with Christ, Epiphany is also the time when we figure out who we are. It should be like the shock of cold water on your face. We’re called good, and we’re called God’s beloved. But not so that we can sit comfortably in the order of that. So that we can come alongside God in the places, often chaotic, that need light and redeeming.

Stick to your resolutions, but remember that you have already been called to new life in your baptism. It might be chaotic. It might feel like the person you thought you knew is going under.

But there is ONE who has been baptized with you, who has been from the beginning, has been through the chaos and back, and will be with you.

Amen.

[ Filed under Sermons, Uncategorized | 1 Comment ]

Swift Away the Old Year Passes

2011 was the year when I didn’t get enough sleep. I blame Abram, mostly. Not that I regret one second of the blurry nights awake, holding and feeding him.

But if you asked me what one moment of the year was the straight up distilled essence of 2011, it was a moment when Abram was finally asleep. June 22, 2011, sometime around 2:00am, somewhere near Supply, NC.

The previous afternoon, Erik, Zora, Abram, and I, along with 40 teenagers and 10 adults, drove down a dirt road, and discovered that the mission camp we were planning to spend a week at was not exactly what its directors had represented it to be. (Yes, I am being diplomatic.) They had concealed from us that the building where we were to stay was not yet completely constructed, and certainly hadn’t  yet passed inspections. In several key regards, it was unfit for occupancy, even by a youth group that was ready to rough it a bit.

Faced with the emergency need to get everyone settled in for the night after a long bus ride, several of the adults sprung into action and tried to get the camp building into shape, and we decided that the girls and my family would sleep in a nearby Methodist church. while the boys toughed it out at the camp.

While the girls got the better deal in terms of a finished roof and walls, this tiny little country church, with two already ailing toilets, had never been designed to cater to the sanitary needs of 30 people. By early evening, the toilets had stopped working, and teams of kids were crossing a state highway to access the flushibility of a gas station’s facilities.

Meanwhile, Erik was trying to settle our children to sleep in a miniature nursery. Even with the furniture removed, only 2 twin air mattresses and travel crib fit inside, so I would be sleeping on a mattress in the hallway.

Finally, around 1:30am, the teenagers and chaperones were asleep, and most mercifully, so were our own children.

I had not yet had a chance to visit the gas station, which it turned out did not stay open all night, but closed around 1:00. Things were getting a little desperate.

It was a lovely night. You would think that we would relish the quiet, and enjoy a moment to ourselves at the beginning of a busy mission trip week. Or, maybe, we should have been inside getting some much needed sleep.

What we were actually doing was tapping away frantically on our smart phones, trying to find a hotel where at least we and the kids could stay for the week. (Erik was not sure how he would safely keep the kids engaged all day in either a small church without functioning toilets or the construction zone that was the mission camp headquarters.)

We were also fighting about when we might check into this hotel. My need of a bathroom was spurring me to advocate immediate hotel occupancy. Erik was taking a more reasoned approach: waking an exhausted 4 year old and 4 month old was a horrible idea. Erik won. We would move in the next morning.

Eventually, my amazing youth leaders and equally wonderful youth group members worked together with me to salvage the trip. We secured accommodation for the whole group in the same hotel (although, sadly, this depleted the carefully stewarded youth group savings account my church had constructed). We gritted our teeth and found a way to work with the camp’s disorganized staff, which had also mislead us on their ability to manage a group of our size, and coordinate enough appropriate work for us.

That moment in front of the church, though, at 2:00am, with Erik remains at the center of the year for me. It was a year when I juggled family and church needs. It may have been the year that church needs lost out to family needs as we moved back to the city, closer to Erik’s work, and away from my position. I lost sleep, not just over the care of my darling baby, but also over the care of God’s most precious people.

Somehow, I hope, 2012 will be a year when I will get it back into balance, the various callings of my life: family, ministry, children of mine, children of God. I’d like to imagine I’ll get more sleep, too. But you never know, in January, where you might be on a fine June night, and what you might be called to do at 2:00am.

[ Filed under Uncategorized | 0 Comments ]

New Years Day

The original plan was to take a restorative, reflective New Year’s Day walk alone. I am almost never alone now: there’s always a kid with me.

But even though Erik had offered to make the original plan happen, by the time I was about to leave, Zora was antsy. I gave her the option, and she decided to come along.

The route meandered through an old quarry-turned golf course, with a side trip to a footbridge over railroad tracks. Before the footbridge, the path looped left or right, a full circle over a field, both ends meeting up at the base of the bridge. I suggested to Zora that she could go left and I could go right. We would see who made it to the bridge first. It was something, I thought as I said it, that would motivate her to keep walking. But as she walked away to the left, I realized that the slight slope of the field would hide her from my view. The circle looked smaller than it was, a trick caused by the bare, green, sameness of the field of short grass. And when she was too far for me to yell for her to come back, the gleam of her bright blond head slipped lower and lower. She turned and waved to me before she disappeared completely. I checked my worry. She would be fine. I would meet her on the other end. We were still headed to the same place.

Last night, someone asked what the highlight of the year was for each person. For me, no question, it was her brother’s birth. It was a magnificent birth. He is a magnificent baby.  2011 was momentous for other reasons, but almost everything that happened can be traced to the fact of Abram’s birth. Even the lack of sleep, slowly accumulated through the year until I caved in to drinking a daily dose of caffeine this fall, even that sweet exhaustion of baby-holding and feeding is his fault. He was born in 2011, and in many ways it was his year.

But while I wasn’t watching, my other child has grown inches and slipped from the round, soft shape of a preschooler into a girl with long strong limbs, finding her way across this loop of path without me.

When her path rises enough, I see her head again. She is luminous, hair blowing around her head like a halo, confident and quick in her step, expecting our reunion, and waving, happy to see me.

We cross the bridge. We put our feet in the water at the edge of the sound.

She still needs me to manage the careful balance of rinsing feet and drying them without shoes or socks slipping into the cold water. She laughs and wiggles on my lap. She is still a little child, angry to leave the shore and go back. She still needs to ride on my shoulder for part of the long walk back.

She will never be as young as she is today.

[ Filed under Journal | 0 Comments ]

Happy New Year

[ Filed under Journal | 0 Comments ]

Holy Innocents

I’m too much of a news junkie, mostly on my smart-phone. In my current life as a stay at home mom with a 10 month old baby and a kindergardener who needs dropping and off and picking up, I don’t get out much or see many other people. So I find myself paying way too much attention to that little box in my hand to get some sense of what’s happening beyond the 10 city blocks that are my present habitat.

A few weeks ago, I noticed that a friend, on his twitter feed, was mentioning the need to pray for folks in Belgium after some act of violence. I jumped onto a news application on my phone and saw this headline: “More than 500o Killed.”

Because there is no more appropriate reaction to such obscene wastes of human life than obscenity (and because the baby isn’t yet repeating what I say), I saw that headline and yelled, “Holy S#!t” 5000 people dead in Belgium?

And then I noticed that the headline referred to Syria. And, I’m embarrassed to write it, my reaction was tempered a bit.

The attack in Belgium had no where near that amount of casualty (6 dead including the gunman, more than 100 wounded). I knew about what was happening in Syria. 5000 people dead in Belgium would have been more shocking to me in that moment, because Belgium seems peaceful compared to Syria.

But it felt awful to realize that, in some way, I had placed more value on that number of deaths had they happened in Belgium than in Syria.

Tomorrow is the day Christians remember “The Slaughter of the Innocents.” This is one of the parts of the story that gets left out of Christmas pageants. After the Wise Men visit Herod in Jerusalem, looking for the King who the star is leading them toward, Herod gets jealous at the possibility of another king, and orders all male children under the age of 1 to be killed. It is a gut-wrenchingly horrible story, and it reminds us how fragile this human life that God entered as Jesus really is.

Jesus has arrived, light breaks though, but the fact is that there is still suffering.

It’s one of the hardest truths about Christmas: here we’ve been waiting, we get a few days of oxytocin-induced happiness with the baby Jesus…and then we remember that everything is not yet right in the world.

The tally these days is still terrible. 6 in Belgium. Over 5000 in Syria. 8 in a family in Texas. More than 1000 from the typhoon in the Philippines…

Every one deserves to be remembered.

[ Filed under Uncategorized | 1 Comment ]

Messengers in Goose Down

I’m crying right now after listening to this NPR report on the Juarez, Mexico youth groups that go out dressed up as angels to protest the murders in their town.

If angels are those who bear the good news to people on earth, THIS might be the most heart-stopping announcement of that news I’ve heard outside of the Bible.

If you listen to the whole story, you’ll notice that these are real life teenagers. (The youth pastor loudly and matter-of-factly telling the kids to get moving and move quickly could have been any youth pastor herding a youth group to an activity.) As a recently-resigned youth pastor, I’m struck and astonished by the power of what youth are capable of, but particularly convicted, by these young people, of what we ought to be pushing our youth to do as witnesses. What if American teenagers started witnessing to the news of peace in the places around us where there is no peace? What if we were willing to take even a tiny bit of the risk these kids are taking on ourselves, and to allow our own teens to take on some of that risk as well?

(If I were still pastoring youth right now, I’d be planning a Bible study and discussion based on this news report for Epiphany, about being a witness and bringing light to the places that need it.)

[ Filed under Uncategorized | 0 Comments ]