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February 2004 Sermons
February 1, 2004 SermonRev. Nancy D. Dean February 1, 2004 What Matters Most This has been a tough week, so tough that when it came time to putting my sermon topic bits and pieces together for this week’s sermon, originally planned under the title Hate: The World’s Most Destructive Emotion, I found that I could not talk about hate. I was in no mood to talk about the most destructive emotion when my heart was so full of pain and fear about my daughter who had a terrible accident early Tuesday morning. She fell fifteen feet from her upper deck to the lower deck, landing face first on the glass patio table. She broke several bones in her face and her nose was badly shattered, so Thursday she had reconstructive surgery to repair the worst of damage, and it is likely that she will need further surgery to take care of distortions and so forth. As you can imagine, I was in terrible anxiety, spent all afternoon and well into the evening trying to fly to Atlanta due to all the weather delays, and finally they cancelled all flights and I had to come home. In the meantime, my son-in-law who was in west Texas was located and got home late that evening, and thanks to wonderful neighbors, Haley and Morgan, my two-and-half-year -ld granddaughters were being cared for until he got home. After much deliberation, I decided to wait and go down this afternoon so I can help out. All this real and painful emotion that stems from love for my daughter did not put me in the mental place to talk academically or ministerially about hate. Hate is without any doubt the most destructive and useless emotion most of the time, but love, anger, hope, righteous indignation related to our values and principles are the constructive emotions related to what matter most to us. So, out of all the anxiety of not knowing, of waiting, kept many things going through my mind, but nothing related to hate; rather, I have been centered on the people and things that really matter most for me, and for most people. During those first most anxious hours, I was also preoccupied with all those “what might have beens”; all the things that fly through one’s mind in crisis and stress about what could have happened, the other scenarios that would have meant permanent brain damage, permanent disfigurement (which is still a concern), a spinal cord injury, or even death. People have had falls of much less than fifteen feet and been victim to these; like Christopher Reeve who fell from a horse and was left a quadriplegic. And, as the minds of some of us likes to do, mine raced to all the possible scenarios in those early hours when we did not know much. What if she had a brain injury that meant months of recovery and rehabilitation? What if Stephanie died? I thought, who would raise the girls while Joe worked; would I need to step in to help while their father, whose work often takes him away and for some several weeks of the year, or those times he works 18-20 hours a day. What if? What if? All those what ifs related first and foremost to my fears for my daughter. My daughter has always been healthy, never had an accident of any kind, and was only in the hospital to have her babies; the worst thing she ever had was a very bad reaction to poison ivy. It was not in my thinking that something could or would happen to her. Nor is it natural that it would be except in some rational discussion. Yes, of course, we know that such things do happen and are possible, but such thoughts really don’t settle in our minds. So, when something bad happens to someone we love and perceive as healthy and strong, our reactions can be quite painfully emotional. And, we do as I have done, and think very seriously about what does indeed matter the most. I looked through my files for something that related to this and I came across a message sent by George Carlin on the internet. Now Carlin is well known for his comedy, especially political comedy and satire, and his famous seven words you can’t say on television back in the 1970s, but this is very different, it is such a serious and even tender piece about our human condition. Indeed it is filled with perspicacity, with such great perception, that I wondered if he had been reflecting as I had been, upon something tragic or near tragic that happened in his own life. Carlin writes: The paradox of our time in history is that we have taller buildings but shorter tempers, wider freeways, but narrower viewpoints. We spend more, but have less. We buy more, but enjoy less. We have bigger houses and smaller families, more conveniences, but less time. We have more [college] degrees but less sense, more knowledge, but less judgment, more experts, yet more problems, more medicine, but less wellness. He is right, of course, we are paradoxically skilled at creating practically anything we can imagine; we make money and things easily compared to any other time in history, and the more we make, the more time-saving gadgets we create, the more we fill up the time we saved with too much work or meaningless distractions, and still manage to give too little time for families, healthy food and exercise. Additionally, we give little of that saved time to do arts or crafts or volunteer work that might be a balm to our troubled and harried minds. We have condensed our food until we have so many calories in such small amounts of food that sixty percent the population is struggling with being over weight, and thirty percent are in the danger range of obesity. We have so much entertainment at our finger tips that we have little patience for the self-made entertainment of generations past that brought our communities together. He goes on: We drink too much, smoke too much, spend too recklessly, This is the great arena of the too, t-o-o. Too much of everything, yet we seem constantly beset with concerns about what we do not yet have. You sitting here are the exceptional ones, for you recognize the need for soul sustenance, the feeding of the inner woman, man, and child. Material things do have a place, but should never be in the center of our lives. We in this country in particular acclimate so readily to the things of ease, and resist so mightily the things that require physical and mental effort, things that have the ability to remind us of the great good, the noble path, the dream stuff and the values stuff that makes us better people. Carlin goes on: We've added years to life not life to years. We've been all the way to the moon and back, but have trouble crossing the street to meet a new neighbor. We conquered outer space but not inner space. We've done larger things, but not better things. We've cleaned up the air, but polluted the soul. We've conquered the atom, but not our prejudice. We write more, but learn less. We plan more, but accomplish less. We've learned to rush, but not to wait. We build more computers to hold more information, to produce more copies than ever, but we communicate less and less. This issue of how to be as great as what we create may be the biggest
challenge in all of human existence. I have lived in my house for almost six
years, but only know my neighbors to say hello or chat a few minutes when we
happen to be out doing yard work, but I have never had a meal with any of them,
know little about what work they do away from home, and would feel comfortable
calling only two of the seven families in my cul-de-sac if I was having a
problem. I know this is not a good situation, yet I do nothing to alter it. I am
as guilty as anyone of many of these shortcomings. And, like you, I find that it
is the focus on the spirit, the inner self that can get neglected if we are not
purposeful about finding ways to get the refreshment of mind/spirit. These are the times of fast foods and slow digestion, big men and
small character, steep profits and shallow relationships. These are the
days of two incomes but more divorce, fancier houses, but broken homes.
These are days of quick trips, disposable diapers, throw away morality,
one night stands, overweight bodies, and pills that do everything from
cheer, to quiet, to kill. It is a time when there is much in the
showroom window and nothing in the stockroom. A time when technology can
bring this letter to you, and a time when you can choose either to share
this insight, or to just hit delete. I grew up in an odd, and it seemed at the time a rambling, Victorian-era house, with one bathroom that was tacked onto the big country kitchen, of all places. I have sometimes been made to recall how much smaller houses used to be in general compared with those today; yet, large families were reared in one-to-three bedroom houses with one bathroom, and no one thought they were particularly crowded. It may have accounted in part for the fact the kids and adults spent much more time outdoors. Now we have one-to-four people living in houses three or four times the size, with a bathroom for every single person (and guests), and kitchens that could produce meals for a hundred. Yet, we cook less, see each other less, have less company. Though, with all those bathrooms, we are probably cleaner! In the 1950s and further back, a bath once a week was consider normal, with touchups from a wet washcloth as needed. I can still see in my mind’s eye my youngest brother recoiling from the washcloth my mother would administer on my perpetually dirty little brothers. We sat down to three meals daily, but snacked rarely, and running and playing outside was what we expected to do. The thought of staying shut up with a computer would have been unpleasant to those of prior generations; yet, my son and his friends found the computer more interesting than our simple play, and he like many other children these days, became quite overweight from lack of exercise. When he hit eighteen he started exercising and dropped down into the very thin range-something which is far harder for those of middle age to do. We have skewed our lives out of proportion to what we have evolved to be and do, and we are now having to re-train our minds and bodies to learn how to be and do so that our minds and bodies do not suffer the consequences of too much food, too much ease, too much convenience of all kinds. Finally, Carlin writes: Remember, spend some time with your loved ones, because they are not
going to be around forever. Remember, say a kind word to someone who
looks up to you in awe, because that little person soon will grow up and
leave your side. Remember, to give a warm hug to the one next to you,
because that is the only treasure you can give with your heart and it
doesn't cost a cent. What matters most to you today my beloved congregation? What fills your heart with concern for what your world would be like if you lost what is most dear to you? What matters most to me is my family, and this congregation, you, who are also my family. People matter most, the love and friendships that we cultivate throughout our lives. We spend a lot of time teaching children how to grow up and make a living, but are we spending enough time teaching them how to make their lives full and rich with love and meaning? The only compensation for the loss of someone we love, is the love of others around us whom we also love. There is no thing, no object of any value, that could compensate for the loss of any member of my family, my daughter, son, husband, grand-daughters: these are the wealth in my life, as are you. Love among the peoples of the world is the great mutuality which is the ultimate goal of civilization; but as any day’s report in the news tells us, we are far from true civilization. The ego rules too much of the human population, especially too much of the leadership of the countries of the world, including our own. Hundreds will die this year trying to achieve a lot that has little to do with love, compassion, and uplifting the human family. The greatest virtue of our religious community here, in this place, here where we can explore our deep spiritual longings and questions, is the company of people who care about us. This is what matters most about this congregation, that it nurtures all the forms of love uplifted in our Seven Principles from basic kindness to compassion to respect, and respect is the highest form of love in the human family. The poet Edwin Markham wrote: We . . . of earth have here the stuff Of Paradise . . .we have enough! Here on the paths of every day, Here on the common human way Is all the stuff the gods would take To build a Heaven, to mould and make New Edens. Ours the stuff sublime To build Eternity in time! Whatever struggles we face from day to day, the best measure of their significance is to ask ourselves: What matters most? For at some level we know that what matters most is now, is love here and now. Let us ask ourselves more and more, What/Who matters most? Then we will be far more likely to exercise the best parts of ourselves to the service of humankind and the beauty of life, which is also the best we can give to ourselves. So be it. February 8, 2004 SermonRev. Nancy D. Dean February 8, 2004 Old Fashioned-New Fashioned Love Hear this opening stanza from a modern poem entitled Old-Fashioned Love: In this world of push and shove Valentine’s Day is now well established as a secular holiday honoring love, courtship, and marriage. In fact, it is spreading around the world. Yet, for all we spend on this day to lift up this the greatest of all human emotions, there is a dichotomy of belief and understanding about what constitutes real love, romantic love, perfect love, or just simple “I’m in love with you” love. As so often happens when we, of this modern time, try to understand all the complexities of our lives, especially the emotional side of life, many of us often succumb to nostalgia, believing that love of a time past was somehow better or superior, truer, richer, more lasting than is love today. Well, in some cases, I have no doubt that that is true, but I believe we are not without our own virtues in this era either. So, as you ponder the Valentine holiday from this point in time, this morning, I want us to consider just what old fashioned love looks like compared to our modern, new fashioned love. When I asked a few people what they thought the difference was between old fashioned and modern ideas about love, I got a fairly consistent answer that in older times (older times, depending on the person’s age, means anything from the 18th Century to the 1960s!),but that in older times love relationships were about courting and romance from some reserve or some distance, but nowadays love relationships are more sexually oriented and more about finding a good match, though some said modern love was more romantic than in the past. Do you think this is true? If not, then what are our resources for looking at the reality of love and marriages of the past versus those of today? Fortunately, literature abounds with good information about what love was like for the last three thousand years or more; and based on that, I would say this issue has been discussed for about as long as we have had writing. In other words, every generation tends to see the present in light of the past as somehow either better or worse. The least that I can say is that for as far back as we can know with any certainty, love relationships have been good for some people, not so good for some people, and terrible for some people. We can see changes of a sort, but the root issues have not changed nearly so much as we might assume. Now most people assume that prior to the Enlightenment period of the 16th and 17th centuries, and Shakespeare, there was no such thing as romantic love, that it was purely an invention of modern times. There is an element of truth in that, but not absolute truth, for all we have to do is turn to the Hebrew Scriptures, or Old Testament, to the Song of Solomon to find that romance was alive and well in the Middle East even 2-3000 years ago. Hear these passages from the Song of Solomon: First from the female voice: By night on my bed I sought him whom my soul loveth: I sought him, but I found him not. I will rise now, and go about the city in the streets, and in the broad ways I will seek him whom my soul loveth: I sought him, but I found him not. The watchmen that go about the city found me: to whom I said, Saw ye him whom my soul loveth? It was but a little that I passed from them, but I found him whom my soul loveth: I held him, and would not let him go, until I had brought him into my mother's house, and into the chamber of her that conceived me. And, from the male voice: 1 How beautiful are thy feet with shoes, O prince's daughter! the joints of thy thighs are like jewels, the work of the hands of a cunning workman. Thy navel is like a round goblet, which wanteth not liquor: thy belly is like an heap of wheat set about with lilies. Thy two breasts are like two young roes that are twins. And so forth and so on, it goes for several chapters describing the delights of the beloved from male and female points of view. Now some scholars say that this is all metaphor for religious sentiment, and it may be, but it is also human and emblematic of the way a love relationship was thought about in that time. Similar material exists in other world religions and literature that lift up great passionate love, the merits of love on both the physical and emotional planes; so, it seems clear to me that love as passion is far from new and confined to our modern times. So what was different, if passion, sensuality, and ordinary sexuality were as ripe in the past as today? The main thing is advertising. The biology of human beings has not changed dramatically for the last few thousands of years, but what has changed, and will continue to, is how any given culture reacts to our biological drive to be partnered, to mate, which begins early and last quite a long time for human beings (far longer than most young people imagine). A lot of what distinguishes old fashioned and modern love has to do with the prevailing virtues, values, customs, which can vary over time from loose as they were in 16th Century Europe, and are today compared with the highly restrictive of the Victorian era. A reading of Shakespeare makes it clear that romance, romantic values were prized, but reading the history of the same period tells us that morals were far more flexible, as it were, than in the periods before or after. Marriage was then, as it continues to be for many (despite what we may think), both about love and about status or wealth. While it is true that we have greater latitude in love than did the 16th Century young man or woman, class still rules a great deal of modern marriage. Just read the engagements page in the Sunday NY Times or the local newspapers; couples tend to share a similar educational background, which is often the measure of equivalence these days. In the past, as today, there were exceptions to the norm; a poor boy might marry a rich girl-but only if he had distinguished himself in some way. The old adage that water seeks its own level plays out in marriages more often than not. Still, marriages of today are expected to start with love--that seems one of the bigger differences--and grow in depth and understanding over time, while more often in the past the reverse was true. In some times in the more recent past, a couple who had similar prospects and liked each other, would often marry, expecting that love would grow with time and the shared life. My principle point is that love, that passion of the heart for the other, is not new, nor is it passé´. We have always had that look across a crowded room, or crowded cave, that signaled attraction. And, we have always had friendships that blossomed into deep and lasting love. And, lest we forget, we have always had bad relationships that resulted in dissolution or disaffection regardless of how they started. What we have not always had is acceptance for these things and the role of parents has been greater in the past than it often is now. Depending on class, or status, these strictures have been more or less rigid. The higher the class or status, the greater the strictures were for marriage, the less they were for flirtations. The lower the class or status, the less the strictures on marriage, but the greater the strictures on flirtations. During most periods in history the virtues of the woman were held much more dear than the man’s; for instance, virginity in women has in most times been a virtue, though the man’s virginity was not considered a necessary virtue, if a virtue at all. The same goes for male and female accomplishment. Men were expected to have and maintain wealth or position, and to be skilled in some several ways. Women were expected to be skilled in housekeeping, needlework, art or music. We look a little less directly at accomplishments outside career these days, though they are still highly valued where they exist. People quickly note their loved ones or spouses accomplishments-it’s a sign of elevated merit and devotion. A man will say, for example: “My wife is a terrific manager, or gourmet cook, or mother.” Women will say: “My husband is such a craftsman, he can build anything, or fix anything, or such a good pianist.” I hear these things all the time, and say them, too. Listing the virtues of our loved ones is just as important in our new fashioned love and as it was in old fashioned love. But of all the things that are given greater or lesser value from one period to another, nothing rates as highly as sex. There have always been periods of great sexual restriction, especially for women, but also for men where the fathering of children was concerned. It might be all right for a man to sow his wild oats, but he was not expected to bring home a harvest from them. What a lot of people mistake, though, is that love, sex, and marriage have not been quite so solidly linked as they were in the Victorian era, a period which held sway in the western world from the early 1800s to the early 1900s. Also, any discussion of the body, body parts or body functions was tied to such eras. (Obviously we are not in such a time now.) This was true not only before marriage, but after marriage. For instance, when we from this point-in-time read the story of Mary in the Christian New Testament, that Mary became pregnant before she and Joseph had wed, and that an angel tells Joseph not to put her away, that is, not marry her, we assume it is because sex before marriage was forbidden. But that is not true, scholars of Hebrew history tell us the to be engaged, or betrothed, meant that the contract instigated by families had been established, and it was not uncommon for couples to get on with the business of “knowing” each other, in the Biblical sense, before the ritual of marriage. The Mary and Joseph story is about Mary getting pregnant and Joseph had not “known” her, and that was most certainly forbidden, even punishable by death. You see, for much of human history, property and alliances came through marriage, and the passing on of one’s property, titles, etc, meant that it was important to make sure you were indeed passing on all your wealth to your own blood. No doubt this is connected to our tribal origins. I read an interesting article a couple of years ago, that had pictures of four babies and four men on the page, and you were asked to match baby to father. It was fairly easy to do, despite the fact that there were many differences, as well. The article went on to point out that research has shown that regardless of who they grow up to look like later, in the first eighteen months of life, all newborns show the fathers’ characteristics most strongly. The theory is that down through time fathers have wanted to be sure off their offspring, and this has evolved out of that early established need. So sex has times of greater restriction and lesser, but it is not, as one would suppose by listening to the religious right, that we started out pure and gotten more and more sinful. This is not true, but it is true that compared to the Victorian age, we seem completely open to sexuality. Well, sexuality is less restricted now, that is true, but not entirely because people just want to do whatever people want to, but because we have few consequences now with the advent of birth control and advances in medicine. Our individuality is also at the forefront now in a way that is new compared to former times, but that is not because of a lack of virtue so much as ease of movement and the high level of communication advances over that last fifty plus years. When we all lived in communities boundaried within walls of the city or confines of the village, one’s reputation meant a lot more than it does now. It might not be the worst thing to get pregnant if you got married right away, but one could not easily flout the conventions of the community. Because of media, the knowledge about sex has grown, and young people know a lot more than their earlier counterparts of either sex, which has not always worked to their best interests in some ways. Furthermore, young people are not chaperoned all the time they way they were in some early times of western history. Both factors have led to earlier exploration and less value for the old fashioned virtue of chastity. Chastity, though, is not considered a virtue to the same degree for good reasons these days. Because we have divorce, birth control, women in more equal positions in the work place, men and women believe they have more to lose or gain if they make bad choices. I have not married but one couple in the last ten years who were not already living together. This is true for my minister friends in other faiths as well, though there may be a greater effort to disguise this fact from some ministers. However, the marriage license always gives the current addresses of the couple, so we learn this by inference from the documentation. The general reason men and women give for living together prior to marriage, is that they want to make sure they are compatible so they don’t wind up marrying the wrong someone and later have to get a divorce. Divorce in our time is costly both financially and equally emotionally, especially where children are involved. Ah, yes, and this is another aspect of old fashioned marriage that gets downplayed in the nostalgia over billing and cooing on the front porch swing in the 1890s. Bad marriages, bad relationships, were common and suffered through by thousands of people in days gone by. Yes, many marriages worked well, love grew from friendship and simpler beginnings, with discovery on the signed side of the marriage license, but there were also many couples who were very poorly suited to one another, who just had to find methods to stay out of each other’s way, share a house, but little of life together. The literature is also full of such stories of unhappiness and disappointment, not to mention violence and lives destroyed by the bad matches. Love is love is love. We will always have love, but we will always have the by-products of shallow relationships, as well as that which blossoms from gentler beginnings. What matters most is that we find our way through the cultural paths of our own time in a way that makes us contented that we have found the right way. We are in a time when young people, and those no longer young, must take personal responsibility for the virtue and value of their relationships. Those are not consistent across any population now, were not even as much as we might think in the past. The Victorians were more of an exception than the rule. Most of us hope that we will have relationships/marriages filled with love that grows and deepens over time, love that can withstand the slings and arrows of hard times, and that will fulfill our longing to be wanted and needed even as we wish to give and do the same for another. I cut out an article in the year 2000, about a couple in Florida who were celebrating seventy years of marriage, and the closing comment came from the woman who said: "We made it our business to love and respect one another," [she] said, smiling at her husband. "Even after 70 years, when he gets up in the morning he still says, "You're the prettiest girl in the world.' " This is the essence of love, both old fashioned and new fashioned. Keep in mind the word fashion. Fashion is something of a given time; fashion changes, it comes and goes, but the real stuff of love stays pretty much the same. Whether you liked the fashion of love in the 20s, 40s, 60s-those much freer, looser times; or you like the fashion of the Victorians or Puritans before them, the goal is love. Love, as the apostle Paul wrote almost 2000 years ago, that has strength of character that is beyond fashion. Love that lasts a lifetime. So be it. February 22, 2004 SermonRev. Nancy D. Dean February 22, 2004 The Blessed or Lost Years: The Child’s Experience Emily Dickinson wrote: Each life converges to some centre/Expressed or still. Clearly the beginnings of that convergence, that move of all things to the center, begins in the earliest days of childhood and is in that process for several years. As Dickinson pointed out, that center of one’s life’s convergence may be outwardly known and expressed, or it may reside in the quiet of one’s soul, which is to say that we sometimes can know the outcome of a person’s life’s convergence, or coming together, and sometimes, probably most times, we cannot. Since my earliest career days teaching first and second grade in elementary school, it has been plain to me that children must become who they are, and will be, both because of and despite their upbringing. Children who are very fortunate are born into homes where values are strong, discipline is real, material things adequate but not so plentiful that they are taken for granted, but most of all, where love guides all of life. For no matter how badly we sometimes will fail as parents and caregivers, children are capable of great forgiveness for our shortcomings when they know we love them. Children who are very unfortunate are born into homes where values are sketchy or not clearly present, where material things may be very scarce or again far too central, but most of all where love is never certain. Such children cannot forgive what they have not learned, nor love well if they have not learned to love. Now, those are the two ends of the continuum of what we might think of as either the blessed or lost years, and while some children do find themselves in those two extremes, most children fall somewhere along the continuum between the two ends. The difference between the blessed or lost years has everything to do with how we look at the lives of children, our children and the children of larger world. And, how seriously we take the fact that the child becomes the adult based in large measure on what happens in childhood. Sometimes children are encouraged, guided in a healthy way, are supported in their efforts to learn and grow. Sometimes children are neglected, given little guidance, and are left to their own devices. There is no doubt that many adults come to have very productive lives out of both environments. But sometimes children are used and abused to fulfill unhealthy or even evil desires in the parents or caregivers, and these children have a very hard time overcoming the damage of that kind of childhood. The point I most want to make is that the child does not cease to exist because we grow up. The child continues with us into our adulthood. The child is ever present in the background noise of the mind/spirit. The child is strong inside us throughout our lifetimes. I knew someone who was in some very bloody battles in France and Germany during World War II, and sometimes he would tell stories about how grown men would be reduced to crying for their mamas when severely injured or just horribly scared, and everyone understood why. It is an elemental response. My husband, a pilot by avocation, has a book about the last words on the voice recorders in the jet liners that crashed, and there, too, that elemental response is evident. There is a whole realm of child psychology that deals with the pain and trauma, the disassociated behaviors, the manifestations of peculiarities that can come from problem childhoods, and from disease of the mind, as well. The old tag I heard when I was young, when children where behaving in odd ways, was, “Oh, they’ll grow out of it.” But that was a hope more than a reality. Yes, we can learn and come to understand the world more clearly and put some of the harshness or misunderstandings of youth behind us, but we cannot or do not grow out of anything--we grow up with what comes in childhood. The hope is that we grow in understanding and love which are the two things that correct or ameliorate or fix the issues or problems of childhood. One of the great worries in the world today is related to the fact that we have a vast population of young people growing up in the most unsafe and unhealthy of environments. In some countries like Iran, Mexico, and China-and many others-over half of the population is under fifteen years of age. Children are expanding in numbers far faster than our ability to help them, and this is may become one of the world greatest problems. Most of this great population explosion-we are now over six billion people on this earth-are children. Take for example the children of Palestine. There are now two or three generations of people whose childhoods have been dominated by war, and by an inculcated/taught hatred for the nation of Israel. Children who live in great poverty and whose principle focus in life is destructive. Hope is not a part of their vision, only retribution. This has a lot to do with all these suicide bombings we hear practically every week, and with the reaction of the Palestinian people to efforts to create peace. So, too, do the children of Israel grow up in fear, being taught a way to think about themselves in relation to their country that does not promote peace either. Similarly, we such conflicts in Bosnia, Serbia, Greece, Turkey, North and South Korea. Around the world we have children born to war. We have generations of children born to war, to revenge, to hate, to hope that is at best jaded. This is not the way children should grow up, mainly to be tools of the previous generation’s hatreds. Yet, we see it every day in the news. And much of that hatred is now being focused on this country, too. The country that was once seen as the saving grace of the world. Closer to home, we see children running loose in bad neighborhoods while parents, who are struggling to scratch out a living, must leave their children too much on their own because they can’t afford proper childcare. On the other hand, we see parents so fearful for their children that the kids can’t walk to school, or wait at the bus stop because parents fear something may happen to their children. Parents who are so inundated by media about child abductions that they are restricting their children’s ability to explore and learn the things that are intended to teach us cause and effect, how and why, all the stuff of play that is the foundation for our adult years. I heard from a NPR family psychologist only this past week that the likelihood of a child being kidnapped as Carlie Brucia was, is much less than a child being struck by lightening. But in our media-dominated world, it seems so prevalent and presents too much of a risk. The same psychologist said we run a greater risk in many ways of raising children who are so fearful that they will be poorly equipped to handle life as adults. So how do we as parents and concerned citizens find our way through these mine fields of fear? What is the commonsense way to raise our children? If you think the children are not paying attention, even as they attend Sunday morning services listen to these two anecdotes a friend sent me this week: A Sunday school teacher asked the children just before she dismissed
them to go to church, "And do you know why is it necessary to be quiet
in church?" And: A little girl became restless as the preacher's sermon dragged on and on. Finally, she leaned over to her mother and whispered, "Mommy, if we give him the money now, will he let us go?" When I studied child development thirty-something years ago, it was understood even then that play was the child’s way to learn. Play is not wasted time, nor meaningless. Play is the classroom of the young mind. Many of life’s lesson’s are learned on the playground, or in the solitude of imagination in a make-believe house with make-believe children, or in the rough and tumble of bus stop group dynamics. What we learn in childhood sets us up for what we will learn yet again, usually more seriously, as adults. If we do not have an opportunity to learn to share, how can we learn how to get along with others in the workplace of our adult years? If we have not learned how to handle the verbal slings and arrows of the neighborhood kids, what will we do when the boss gives us a chewing out? If we have not learned to be indignant at the hurts of our best friends, how can we grow in empathy or sympathy? Psychologists John and Linda Friel wrote a great book entitled, The 7 Worst Things Parents Do. The seven categories of the worst things that parents do are: Baby your child Put your marriage last Push you child into too many activities Ignore your emotional or spiritual life Be your child’s best friend Fail to give your child structure Expect your child to fulfill your dreams
In all these areas children may be either blessed or losers. What parents and all caregivers are in need of is the Aristotelian Golden Mean, that happy balance between too much and not enough. My daughter who waited until her 30s to have her children, finally gave birth to twins that she has a strong urge to cosset, to baby. She is far more mindful than I was when she was a baby, while I was a good ten years younger than she, how quickly they will no longer be babies. One piece of advice I gave her was to resist that urge to baby them, for the very real risk is that they will become selfish, unpleasant girls that no one likes to be around. You and I have been around such spoiled, obnoxious people. It is no blessing to a child to have been babied. Putting one’s marriage on hold while the children are growing up is also a mistake. Children are observing in their own families what they will carry into making their adult relationships, even as they are learning how parents get along, or don’t, how parents handle difficulties-either good or bad, and so forth. Children need to see healthy models in their parents and other significant adults. Children nowadays are often over-scheduled, which is a much more common issue of these days when parents are afraid for their children’s success and safety. Rather than let a child play in the neighborhood park where they can’t be seen at all times, it seems better to have them in a half-dozen organized programs. Parents who ignore their own spirits do so at the child’s expense, for your spirit-mind-soul is your life. If we as adults are not nurturing the self of who we are, and are running constantly, stressed, never giving ourselves even this one hour of time for the spirit, then what does that show the children of what we think is most important. It takes a healthy spirit to have a healthy life. Being your child’s best friend is also doing them no favors. Children need adults for guidance, not companionship--they need other children for that. Which is not to say you cannot be friendly with a child; but friendship implies something of an equality that is not the best model for young children. Although, sometimes when the child is an adult, something of that friendship may form. Still the parent should always be clearly the parent. Failing to give children structure is the counter side of over-scheduling, when children do whatever, whenever they want to. I remember when my daughter was about seven, and heard her best friend explaining to her that she could eat anything she wanted, and could go to bed when she felt like it. “It doesn’t work like that in my house,” my daughter said with as much disgust in her voice as a seven-year-old can muster. Also, to expect one’s child to fulfill one’s dreams is one of the greatest set-ups for future unhappiness. I have seen quite a lot of this in my years as a teacher of elementary and university students. All too many parents get an idea in their minds of what the child will be or do that they can’t see past it. The child will go to college. The child will be a dancer. The child will be a doctor-lawyer-CPA. The problem is the child may be neither suited nor inclined to fulfill the parent’s vision. I have a relative who is determined that his son will be a major league baseball player, and the boy is doing his best to please his father. But what happens if or when he fails; what becomes of the boy and his view of his worth to his father and to himself. It makes me very sad when I see this kind of parental push that is really about realizing all that the parent would like to have realized in his or her own life. I remember telling a group of parents that while we may have hopes for our children, we must be prepared that they will not share them as they grow older, and let them know that regardless of what they make of their adult live, we will still love them. One young mother argued and argued that of course her daughter would go to college and be a professional person of some sort, and seemed very put out with me that I would suggest it might be otherwise. I only hope things work out so both mother and child will be happy. But can you imagine what it must be like for a child to know they are a constant source of disappointment for the parents? I have known many people who have failed to fulfill their parents’ wishes, and wind up with no really effect adult relationship with them as adults. It is so sad and so unnecessary. One reason I like the Hans Anderson story of the ugly duckling is not so much that the gangly little cygnet-mistaken-for-a-duck turns out to be a beautiful swan, but that his mother believes in his ability to grow up to find his way, and is more concerned that he has a happy disposition and can swim well. She focuses on his best qualities, rather than on whether he will grow up to be the ideal duck. Some scholar wrote that this is a story with a central focus on self-actualization. On becoming. And further: [The] story of "The Ugly Duckling” is . . . a story about life, itself. About pain and rejection, and rebirth. But what of the children of the world? How do we, in this the richest of all nations ever, how do we help children to become all that they might? One way might be to demand of our leaders that they build more schools and fewer weapons, or at least spend more to educate the children of the world, and less to blow them and their parents to smithereens. Or build more hospitals, more roads, more wells. We spend so much money on destructive purposes that could go to instructive or creative purposes. I think of all the hate that filled the men who caused the awful, the horrific events of September 11, 2001, and have to wonder what we might have done to fill them with hope? How much of what we are doing as a nation is building hope instead of hate? It is a question each of our elected leaders should be prepared to answer. After all, they represent you and me to the rest of the world. History tells us that the world moves forward in positive ways when nations support nations, when we are helping to build up the peoples of the world. Those peoples at this point in history are mostly children. We better be thinking about them, for what we expect of them as adults may not match what we are giving them for expectations of their own lives. Ultimately the whole issue of whether a child’s life is blessed or lost rests on trust, trust the child has in his parents, trust the child has in her teachers, trust children have in their nation, and trust they have in their world. We Unitarian Universalists are a people of a faith that rests on seven ethical principles of how best to be human. The belief in the inherent worth and dignity of each person born into this world. Belief in the right of self-determination within a system of justice, guided by democratic practices. Belief in freedom of religious thought and pursuit. Belief in the interdependent web of which each one of us is a part. While our principles do not say so explicitly, it is implicit that all of this must begin with the children, for it is they who will carry the ethical principles they learn into the adults they will be. So be it.
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