Tag Archives: children

On delight…

27 Wednesday Aug 2014

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As parents of two young children, whose family lives far away, we try to be diligent about documenting our children’s development and milestones.  In our family we do that with group emails and links to recent photos.  At the beginning of our children’s lives, we share about the many firsts:  first smile, first laugh, first crawl, first step.  As they age, we note other developments: conversation skills, playing abilities, sleeping habits, physical growth.  Of course we usually include funny anecdotes which give a little insight into the unique personalities of both our children.  At this age, there is a sense that everything is monumental and to be cherished.  We get excited about and are fascinated by the constant changes and growth.  Consequently, we are often scrambling for a camera, or trying to memorize details to share later.

As I was filling out my youngest child’s “First Year Calendar” this week, noting all the little details I could remember from the last month, I was thinking about what a shame it is that we do not do the same things for ourselves as adults.  I do not know about you, but I find that I am so busy looking ahead and attacking tasks in front of me, that I rarely sit down and look back at what has happened in my life – in the last day, the last week, the last month.   And when I do look back, I more often look back at things I have yet to do.  I have lost altogether a sense of wonder and amazement at my own life – the accomplishments, blessings, and goodness of life.  I cannot remember a time when I thought, “Wow, look at how I have grown and changed in this last month!  What a blessing!”

I wonder if this might be a spiritual discipline that could bring us closer to God.  Our God is a God of love, who looks at us and is well pleased.  In fact, when God created humankind, God said that it was “very good.”  I like to imagine God as the kind of God who takes the same kind of delight in each of us as we take in little children.  I invite you this week to grab your family calendar, your smart phone planner, or your recent photographs and reflect on the goodness that is you.  You are made in the image of God and are wonderfully made.  I invite you to take delight in God’s creation.

The community of faith…

23 Wednesday Jul 2014

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My oldest daughter attends a Lutheran preschool.  During the summer the school runs a camp that is more play-based.  What our family loves is that they keep the religious content present in both programs.  What I especially enjoy is discovering my daughter singing a religious song that I remember from childhood, but have not yet taught her myself.  Last week it was “I’ve got the joy, joy, joy, joy down in my heart…”  When I shouted out in response, “Where?!?” she started laughing.  Then I told her how her father knew the same song in Spanish, since he had learned it on a mission trip in high school.  All of a sudden the room was filled with bilingual singing about the love of Jesus being in our hearts.

What my daughter’s singing reminded me of is how dependent we are upon the community of faith to raise up our children.  Many of you may be thinking, “She’s a priest.  Does her daughter really need anyone else to teach her stuff about God?”  The answer is an emphatic, “Yes!”  Though my vocation involves teaching and preaching, it is the community of faith combined with our efforts at home that will expose our children to and reinforce for them the love that God has for them.  I cannot do it alone.

This past Sunday, our youngest daughter was baptized.  The bishop asked us and her godparents if we would be “responsible for seeing that the child you present is brought up in the Christian faith and life.”  We responded by saying “I will, with God’s help.”  But the bishop also asked the congregation gathered, “Will you by your prayers and witness help this child to grow into the full stature of Christ?”  Their response was the same.  I came away from the baptism feeling deeply appreciative of the fact that we have a community of people who have committed to helping us raise our child to know the love that God has for her and to help her live into Jesus’ life and example.  It was a deeply affirming and encouraging experience for us all.

That is the joy of belonging to a Christian community.  Though we all have individual responsibilities, we also regularly acknowledge how none of us can do this alone.  The community of faith comes together to raise us up, encourage us in doubt, comfort us in suffering, and then partner with us in raising our children.  I am grateful today for the blessing of Christian community both in my life and now in the lives of my children.  Thanks be to God!

A child of God…

02 Wednesday Jul 2014

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I am a regular advocate for children in Church.  I think the practice shapes children at a young age and enlivens worship for the community.  Though distracting to some, the noise of children makes me feel like the church is alive and joyful.  That is why I always encourage parents with young children, because I know from experience that the noises of your own child sound ten times louder than they do to anyone else.  I also know that wrangling little ones can be frustrating some days and other days down-right impossible.  Many a parent has expressed to me that they are glad the sermons are posted online, since they often do not hear it when their little ones are particularly active.  I encourage parents to persevere and even make sure that Sunday School does not bleed into worship time so that our children can be present as gifts to the rest of the congregation.

But every once in a while, my own daughter reminds me how my principles do not always coincide with the realities of experience.  This past Sunday, as we were serving communion, my daughter managed to sneak away from her dad, and kneeled next to another parishioner.  When I reverently offered her the host, she abruptly grabbed it from my hand and shoved it enthusiastically into her mouth.  As her parent, my immediate reaction was to be a little embarrassed and to wonder what the other parishioners must think of my parenting skills.  Despite a couple of chuckles, I squashed my embarrassment, and moved on to the next person at the rail.  Later that morning, during the final hymn, my daughter joined me in the aisle as I sang and waited to deliver the morning’s announcements.  As the hymn was wrapping up, she dropped my hand and started shaking her hips in the center aisle, dancing to the hymn with reckless abandon.  Again, my initial instinct was to fret over what parishioners might think about the kind of dancing I was teaching at home.

Later, as I was thinking about the two incidents, several things came to me.  One, I was once again reminded how hard it is to manage children in the context of formal worship.  I am so grateful to the parents who do it every week and who allow us to be blessed by their children.  Two, I realized how hyper aware I am of my role within the church and how that role has some serious implications for my family.  In my ordination vows, the bishop asked me, “Will you do your best to pattern your life and the life of your family in accordance with the teachings of Christ, so that you may be a wholesome example to your people?”  Sometimes, I think that question makes priests and their families feel like they have to be perfect – including in the pew on Sundays.  But what I realized was that my daughter was not shattering our “perfect” image.  She was inviting me to let go of pretenses and be real with our parish.  Being a parent, in fact being a human, is messy, and I do not need to pretend that I somehow have a better hold on being “not messy” simply because I am a priest.

Finally, what I realized on Sunday is that being a “wholesome example” means loving my child in the way that I love all our children at church.  When I could step back from the fact that my child was greedily grabbing Eucharist and dancing a little “inappropriately” in church, I could see the incidents totally differently.  When I could see my child as a child of God, I could see someone who was demonstrating how eager we all should be to receive Christ’s body at the table:  how our longing for Jesus sometimes is downright greedy and aggressive, and grabbing for the bread is a physical way of showing a passionate longing for Christ.  When I could see my child as a child of God, I could see someone who was moved by the Holy Spirit to joyfully dance before the Lord, not unlike David so many years before[i]:  someone who was actually inspired by the music being sung and played, not just dutifully and dispassionately singing the words.  I thought about how her body is a gift from God and how wonderful it was that she was using her body to praise God, even if my uptight-self resisted it.

One of the greatest reasons having children among our midst in church is because they help us get out of ourselves and our need to keep up appearances, and they help us to see the holy in new, exciting, and fresh ways.  So, please keep bringing those little ones.  We all need them to show us the face of Christ.  And for our parents, occasionally they might remind you how they are children of God as much as they are your children as well.

[i] 2 Samuel 6.16

Holy chaos…

08 Wednesday Jan 2014

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This past Sunday, our church held its annual Epiphany Pageant.  Since the pageant involves using Scripture and hymns to retell the entirety of Jesus’ birth narratives, the pageant replaces most of the Liturgy of the Word (the part of the service when we traditionally read/chant the four lessons and then hear a sermon).  Though part of what we love about the pageant is the kids’ presence, we also love being invited into the familiar – rehearing the story of the Christ’s birth and incarnation and singing the hymns that we look forward to all year.

Inevitably, the pageant is a bit messy and chaotic – children forget where to go, costumes do not quite fit, or attention spans are just not long enough.  Situating the pageant within the context of worship also means that the entire worship experience that morning is loud and a bit difficult to stay fully engaged in – especially if you are looking for a quiet, contemplative reflection on the incarnation.

But to be honest, that is what I love about the pageant – the holy chaos of it all.  We often think about the birth of the Christ Child as a clean story, much like many of the two-dimensional artistic renderings we see of what looks like quiet adoration at a manger.  But the whole concept of the incarnation is messy:  from Jesus’ scandalous conception, to what had to have been an unsanitary birth among hay and animals, to stinky visitors like the shepherds, to the visit of three foreign men who act strangely and probably raise more suspicion than excitement.  The birth of Jesus is a bit of a holy mess, not to mention the rest of Jesus’ incarnate life, which involves hanging with those of ill-repute, with smelly fishermen, and with the seriously infected and ill.  Nothing about Jesus’ birth or life is sanitary, controlled, or predictable.

Later on Sunday morning in worship, as I distributed communion, I gave the body of Christ to the young girl who had just played Mary in the pageant.  In that moment, the chaos of the day disappeared, and the miracle of the incarnation became much more real to me.  Mary, the mother of Jesus, was just a woman, trying to live faithfully, caught in the holy chaos of life.  I found myself wondering what receiving the body of Christ, the body of her son, would have been like, especially once he was gone.  And just like Mary was just a woman, each one of us in church – the young girl, the middle-aged man, the aging woman – are all just people, caught in the holy chaos of life, trying to make sense of it all, but also eternally grateful for a God who takes on human flesh for us.  That is why Church is so incredible to me.  In the midst of contemplative prayer, and even in the midst of what feels like a loud, crazy liturgy, God can break through and speak truth to us.  I am grateful to our children for reminding me that God is incarnate in the midst of all of life – in the beautiful and quiet, but especially in the messy, loud, chaos of life.

Sacred noise…

20 Wednesday Feb 2013

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One of my challenges as a priest has been how to encourage parents who are worshiping with their children in church.  I want them to stay in church, but I also want to honor the occasional discomfort of their experience.  Of course, my opinion on this matter has changed dramatically since I became a parent, but what was once distracting noise by children in church has now become the sound of life to me.  A fellow blogger expressed this reality for me quite beautifully here.

But me telling a parent that they are welcome to stay in church does not solve much.  I cannot control the glares or the shh-es from other parishioners.  I cannot control the wave of panic that crashes over a parent when it feels like your child’s noises are as loud as a parade in a library.  I cannot even set an example because I am rarely actually in the pews with my fellow parents.  But I have experienced some of the grace that can happen when people are open to a child in church.  Back in December, I took my three-year old daughter to an ordination at the Cathedral.  She lasted relatively well for the first hour, but then became antsy.  I asked her if we should go after the peace, but she insisted she wanted to stay.  We made it back to the pew, and midway through the bishop’s praying of the Eucharistic prayer, my daughter impatiently asked, quite loudly, “Can I have the body of Christ now?!?”  Everyone around me giggled and I did too.  She broke the tension I had been feeling about her noise.  She probably voiced the fatigue that fellow worshipers around me felt too.  And she showed me that she fully understood what was happening, and was eager to receive the sacrament.  It doesn’t get more awesome than that.

I can’t force parents to stay in church with their kids.  I can’t force parishioners to always be sympathetic or even helpful.  What I can do is continue to hold all parents and children in prayer, thanking God for their presence, and the ways in which they keep me humble.  Thank you, parents, for all that you do to raise our children in the church.  We are blessed by you more than you know and always happy to have you in church.

As a child…

09 Wednesday Jan 2013

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Diverse kidsI never really spent time around young children growing up.  I was never a babysitter.  As I became older, my friends often speculated lightheartedly that I would never survive as a mother, since when kids were around I was either like a deer in headlights or was a bit disdainful with the mess, noise, and general chaos.  Even when my own child was born, I had never changed a diaper.  So when Jesus says, “Whoever does not receive the kingdom of God as a little child will never enter it,” I have often worried how serious he really was about that.

But this Christmas and Epiphany, I slowly began to see the wisdom in Jesus words.  My own daughter really opened up the incarnation for me this year in a fresh way.  Over the holidays, we made our way to St. Mary the Virgin Episcopal Church in Times Square.  After Eucharist, while looking at the many side altars, my daughter found a crèche.  She immediately ran up to the small crèche, and knelt on her knees to look at the figures.  I was shocked at the peaceful calm that came over her as she knelt at Jesus’ manger, and was immediately reminded of the way the magi too were brought to their knees in the presence of Jesus.  Her small body kneeling at the feet of Jesus gave me a small window into Jesus’ words about how children guide us into the kingdom.

But my daughter was not the only child who opened up the incarnation for me this year.  Our confirmation class of six teens got word from a parishioner of families in a local hospital who would not be able to afford Christmas gifts this year.  So, the class agreed to take up their December class time (adding in another class sometime this spring as a make-up) to go together and shop for gifts, using their own money.  The pile of gifts the next day blew me away.  Without even thinking, our confirmands demonstrated Christ’s love incarnate in a season that can typically be very self-centered.

Finally, this past Sunday, our young people offered an Epiphany Pageant in the context of worship.  Because they were helping lead worship that day, I asked the children and youth to pray with me the same prayer that I pray with our choir and acolytes before we lead worship.  And although we had the typical smiles and photo ops, the children seemed to really get it – they were leading worship.  And as the pageant closed, with all the kings, shepherds, angels, Mary and Joseph kneeling at the feet of the Christ Child, the incarnation came alive once again.  I could feel the reverence of our children, and they drew me out of my smiles about their “cuteness” and reminded me of my own need for a posture of reverence at our Lord’s feet.

So today I am grateful for the tremendous life and witness of our children.  They are teaching me everyday new and deeply meaningful ways to enter the kingdom of God.  Thank you for your witness to me and to the people of faith.