Walking up a snowy hill today after a group sledding outing, I was talking with an Episcopalian friend about her church, and about why many former Catholics I know can no longer stomach the Catholic Church but find the Episcopal Church a welcoming alternative. Bridger was walking alongside us, listening, and he asked why some people were leaving the Catholic Church. I leaned down and told him the first thing that came into my head on the fly: "Well, historically the Catholic Church has hurt and mistreated a lot of people, like gays and lesbians."
"Oh," said Bridger. Temporarily satisfied with that answer, he moved on to the business of scooping up some snow to eat.
"Do your kids understand about gays and lesbians?" my friend asked me in an undertone.
"Well, I don't know how much they understand, but it's something we talk about. I mean, we have so many gay and lesbian and bi friends and relatives, it can't help but come up. It's just part of life," I told her.
My friend shared some of the struggle within her church over what being "open and affirming" means, and how far it should go. Some congregants question whether they should be openly affirming homosexuality in front of the children. Is it age-appropriate? Will it confuse the kids?
Here's what I believe, and what I told my friend today.
What I believe is that kids need to hear open and affirming messages about sexuality, hetero and homo, much earlier than we may realize. In the memoirs of writers like Paul Monette, Mark Doty, and my old teachers Barrie Jean Borich and Elizabeth J. Andrew, in the stories of my GLBT loved ones, I hear how our culture's pained, uncomfortable silences around sexual "difference" cause so much hurt and confusion. We shouldn't shove sexual subjects in kids' faces, obviously, or willfully expose them to images or words that are way too mature for them to handle. But I think there is a way to tactfully, appropriately set a tone of acceptance very early--before children start to form negative stereotypes about others or to draw conclusions about themselves that they're too embarrassed or afraid to talk about with their grown-ups.
The first time a friend of mine had "the talk" with her young daughter, she explained about sexual feelings, "Most of the time, men feel those kinds of feelings for women, and women feel those kinds of feelings for men. But sometimes men feel that way toward men, and women feel those feelings for other women, and that's OK and normal, too."
Nothing especially explicit. Nothing inappropriate for the curious five-year-old her daughter was.
Her daughter beamed. "Mom," she said, "you're the greatest."
It's never too early for that kind of conversation, as far as I'm concerned. It's the kind of message that I think could provide a girl who wonders why she's more crushed out on the girl next door than the boy a huge measure of reassurance and relief--a message that could help her get on with the business of fearlessly being herself. It's the kind of message that might help a kid stop and think before he calls a buddy "faggot" as an insult. What my friend said is just the right thing to say, no more, no less, and I think the more churches that get in the business of saying it, loud, often, and with great joy, the better.
In the car on the way home, Bridger, Cass, and I talked a little more about what my friend and I had been discussing on our way up the hill. I talked about how some religions have taught that it's bad to be gay, even though homosexuality is just a part of people that they're born with, like their skin tone, their eye color, their hair texture, their voice. I talked about how those sorts of teachings have led to people losing their jobs because they're gay, not being able to bring their loved ones home to family gatherings, just plain not being able to tell the truth about who they are.
There are people I know and love--and many others I don't know, of course--who live in a state of legal, civil, and cultural uncertainty and ambiguity when it comes to their families. They do not have the safety nets and rights that straight people take for granted. There are people who have been married for decades even if the state of Minnesota does not legally recognize those unions as marriage.
What's indecent isn't talking about homosexuality in church. Heavens, no. It's that people like me do so little about an injustice we can see so clearly right in front of us.
Wednesday, December 23, 2009
Friday, December 11, 2009
Time to Take It Easy on Documenting My Family's Every Move
Well, there's nothing like staying up too late writing blog posts that highlight my more gentle, kindly parenting moments to turn me into an under-rested grump by the end of the week. Makes me feel a wee bit fraudulent.
But today was mostly another good one. We went to a paper snowflake-making crafting day at a friend's house with about a half-dozen other families, and it was wild, good fun. Topped off with stone soup for lunch, brimming with vegetables and beans and noodles we'd all contributed, it was the kind of day that makes me feel a lot less lonely and a hell of a lot more connected. What a great group of women--so thoughtful, honest, and funny. I feel amazed at my good fortune to count them as my friends. The kids had a blast making snowflakes and jumping around like monkeys in the basement play room while I snatched at bits of adult conversation where I could grab them amidst the happy chaos.
Tonight, though, it's early to bed so there's a whole lot less tired mom eye-rolling, door-slamming, and teeth-gritting around here tomorrow. Because after all, tomorrow is my birthday, and dang it, I'm going to have fun.
But today was mostly another good one. We went to a paper snowflake-making crafting day at a friend's house with about a half-dozen other families, and it was wild, good fun. Topped off with stone soup for lunch, brimming with vegetables and beans and noodles we'd all contributed, it was the kind of day that makes me feel a lot less lonely and a hell of a lot more connected. What a great group of women--so thoughtful, honest, and funny. I feel amazed at my good fortune to count them as my friends. The kids had a blast making snowflakes and jumping around like monkeys in the basement play room while I snatched at bits of adult conversation where I could grab them amidst the happy chaos.
Tonight, though, it's early to bed so there's a whole lot less tired mom eye-rolling, door-slamming, and teeth-gritting around here tomorrow. Because after all, tomorrow is my birthday, and dang it, I'm going to have fun.
Thursday, December 10, 2009
What Do You DO All Day?
9:15 am Wake up later than I like to, with the kids cuddled up to me in my bed, Brian already off to work. I had insomnia last night, so I must have needed the sleep, I figure. Glad I have a lifestyle that allows me extra sleep when I need it, but I suspect sleeping late could throw off the whole day's rhythm if I let it. I decide I'll try to approach it as an opportunity for what Ann Lahrson-Fisher calls "joyful disruption" in her book Fundamentals of Homeschooling. Discover a wet spot on Cass's side of my bed. Wake everybody up and get vinegar on the wet spot to neutralize the pee smell.
9:30 B. tries to look at one of Cassidy's First Ladies library books. She protests that that book is HERS. After a fair amount of tussling, we negotiate and decide to look at the book together. Read about the first dozen or so first ladies while munching dry cereal in Cassidy's (dry) bed.
10:00 Breakfast. Bridger gives Cassidy a Lego alien villain he's made and a small gold bar to go with it as an early Christmas and late birthday present.
10:15 Bridger and Cass play a story with Legos figures while I drink my coffee and prepare materials for a paper Santa Lucia crown Cassidy wants to make.
11:45 Play Stratego with B. while simultaneously helping Cass glue together pieces of her Santa Lucia crown. Work to stay relaxed about doing very different tasks at once and try to help B. stay relaxed and patient when I have to take frequent breaks from the game to glue and cut.
12:15 Came from behind and beat B. at Stratego in a surprise upset, just when he thought he had it made. He is crushed and swears he'll never play a game of any kind with me ever again. I feel intensely glad I just started re-reading Naomi Aldort's Raising Our Children, Raising Ourselves to fortify myself for my mom's upcoming visit, and consequently I don't feel AS strong a desire as usual to give Bridger a big unwanted pep talk about the value of losing as a learning experience--a sentiment I show a distinct inability to apply easily or painlessly in my own life. "I'll never be in such a good position again!" B. laments. "I had the most powerful person on the board and I should have been able to wipe you out." I can understand why he's crying. None of us wants to think we can get beaten like that, just when we believe we're guaranteed to win.
12:30 Leave Bridger in his room to grieve a little more in private. Play the game Hullabaloo with Cassidy in our sunny attic, just cleaned up yesterday by me. Feel a rush of gratitude for this sunny, open space with its view into the top branches of our boulevard ash tree. Feel another rush of gratitude when Bridger joins us in the game and even smiles and laughs.
12: 45 A finger-food lunch upstairs while the three of us try to play Earthopoly together. It's too nice up here to break the momentum to come down for lunch. The Earthopoly game goes surprisingly well, with Cass tracking with the gist of it with a lot of help from Bridger and me. Bridger plays banker to free me up to coach Cass.
2:00 Quiet time--so to speak. Bridger retreats to his room to listen to a book-on-CD for an hour or so. While I clean the living room, our top clutter zone, Cassidy pretends I'm Cinderella and she's a stepsister ordering me around while I sweep. Then, once I go to the ball, she says, "Now I want to be Cinderella," and I become a stepsister. At times I feel myself getting edgy and thinking longingly of what it would be like to clean house without a constant stream-of-consciousness monologue from Cass. Then I imagine how I'll probably look back nostalgically on this very kind of moment. Then Bridger comes down and things shift again.
3:00 Kids messing around with watching home videos of our family on the computer. I get a call from a fellow library advocate and neighbor, one of the people I respect most in the world. We strategize a little about the library, and she asks how I'm doing after a presentation I made to the library board, which I wrote about here. I decompress about my regrets about the presentation and the things I think I've learned from my missteps. She listens thoughtfully, then says slowly and with great care, "I think sometimes our egos get in our way at the very places we could have great power." I take what she says two ways: one, that my egotistic pleasure in having a soapbox about the library issue and fancying myself a "community leader" can get in the way of me seeing the truth and being as effective as I could be in serving the library, which I think is absolutely true; and two, that my insecurity and fixation on my own mistakes can block me from fully accessing my power to create, construct, and connect.
I feel as if a warm, slow-burning fire has been lit in my chest. I feel healed and at the same time challenged to get over myself and get to work.
3:30 Not wanting to slow down the big cleaning momentum I had going earlier (and because we're going to a friend's house tomorrow morning, making it impossible to do our usual Friday morning DVD routine), I ask the kids if they'd like to watch their movie o' the week today instead of tomorrow. Uh, duh. Of course they say yes. I pop some popcorn and they settle in with some Curious George. I hear lots of laughter as I clean, then finally run out of steam and join them for the last half-hour or so. Good stuff about metamorphosis, deductive reasoning, seeds, and genuinely endearing and funny. I'm impressed.
5:15 The witching hour. Bridger asks Cassidy where the gold Lego bar he gave her this morning is. She doesn't know. He wails and cries and moans and tells her he'll never trust her with anything important ever again. I almost succeed in refraining from lecturing him, but not quite--I do have to get in a little mini-lecture. "It's a little piece of plastic, and you didn't tell her, 'Make sure you keep track of this Lego at all times.' Next time you give someone something, make sure you are clear about what your expectations about the gift are and let them know, too." Uh-huh. Are most adults even capable of this kind of clarity around gift-giving? I'm sure as hell not.
Bridger and Cassidy work together to try to find the gold piece, a missing pair of Lego handcuffs, and a green laser. I start getting ready for dinner.
5:45 Bridger sets the table, belting out "I Will Work With Joy," a song I've been known to warble through chores, from the book Seven Times the Sun. One verse goes, "Persistence and pride, creation unfolds,/As I work hard to reach my goals." Bridger sings it, "As I work hard to reach Mom's goals." I have to laugh at how damn perceptive he is.
Then Bridger starts chanting, "Cassidy is on the fork side of me, Cassidy is on the fork side of me," his mnemonic device for remembering silverware placement. "That's mean!" Cassidy howls, apparently thinking he's making fun of her somehow. Bridger continues to sing the offending song. Cassidy continues to howl. Finally, I ask him, "If Cass was singing a song that really got on your nerves, and you asked her to stop, what would you want her to do?" He stops singing, and task done, darts into the living room without answering. At least not directly.
6:00 We sit down for an early dinner before Bri gets home, because I have a meeting tonight. The kids are chatty and silly and loud. Brian walks in the back door to the kitchen just as we're tucking into our lentil burgers and sweet potato fries. He sits down and does a mock (?) shell-shocked look at me across the table at the level of noise and incoherence at the table.
6:15 Finished with dinner, Bridger and Cass go in the living room and start fighting over the one blanket on the couch. "I'm cold!" "But I'm colder!" I suggest they go get another blanket from upstairs or figure out a deal for how to share it, then walk away, which is very hard for me to do. I always worry they'll come to blows. The next time I peek in, they're snuggling under the blanket together on the living room floor, laughing.
6:30 I walk to a meeting at our neighborhood library and sit around a table with eight awesome women, including the neighbor I talked to on the phone earlier who helped me so much. We laugh, kid around about our fundraising goals (we'd like to start with a country spa retreat for us, then go from there to make the world a better place). We dream about how to help our library stay open. This is my nerdy idea of a pretty dang good time.
8:30 I get home. The kids are in their jammies, having a bedtime snack at the kitchen table. Cassidy tells me, "I took a bath, and Daddy read Richard Scarry to me."
"What heaven!" I say. "Being read to in the bathtub!"
Cass agreed. "I have a lucky life," she agreed.
9ish The kids and I read part of a beautiful picture book by Diane Stanley about Michelangelo, then Brian tells them a "lights-out story" in the dark. Brian leaves, and I go in for the ceremonial bedtime cuddling in Cassidy's bed before they fall asleep together there. We say our modified, Zen-flavored version of St. Francis's "Instrument of Peace" prayer. One of the lines is "May I seek to understand, even more than I seek to be understood." Bridger mutters under his breath, "May I seek to understand, even more than I seek to annoy."
Here's my prayer, silently offered up as my children drift into sleep: May our luck hold a little longer. Or, may we learn to keep finding joy, even when an attack we didn't see coming takes us by surprise, just when we thought we were home free.
9:30 B. tries to look at one of Cassidy's First Ladies library books. She protests that that book is HERS. After a fair amount of tussling, we negotiate and decide to look at the book together. Read about the first dozen or so first ladies while munching dry cereal in Cassidy's (dry) bed.
10:00 Breakfast. Bridger gives Cassidy a Lego alien villain he's made and a small gold bar to go with it as an early Christmas and late birthday present.
10:15 Bridger and Cass play a story with Legos figures while I drink my coffee and prepare materials for a paper Santa Lucia crown Cassidy wants to make.
11:45 Play Stratego with B. while simultaneously helping Cass glue together pieces of her Santa Lucia crown. Work to stay relaxed about doing very different tasks at once and try to help B. stay relaxed and patient when I have to take frequent breaks from the game to glue and cut.
12:15 Came from behind and beat B. at Stratego in a surprise upset, just when he thought he had it made. He is crushed and swears he'll never play a game of any kind with me ever again. I feel intensely glad I just started re-reading Naomi Aldort's Raising Our Children, Raising Ourselves to fortify myself for my mom's upcoming visit, and consequently I don't feel AS strong a desire as usual to give Bridger a big unwanted pep talk about the value of losing as a learning experience--a sentiment I show a distinct inability to apply easily or painlessly in my own life. "I'll never be in such a good position again!" B. laments. "I had the most powerful person on the board and I should have been able to wipe you out." I can understand why he's crying. None of us wants to think we can get beaten like that, just when we believe we're guaranteed to win.
12:30 Leave Bridger in his room to grieve a little more in private. Play the game Hullabaloo with Cassidy in our sunny attic, just cleaned up yesterday by me. Feel a rush of gratitude for this sunny, open space with its view into the top branches of our boulevard ash tree. Feel another rush of gratitude when Bridger joins us in the game and even smiles and laughs.
12: 45 A finger-food lunch upstairs while the three of us try to play Earthopoly together. It's too nice up here to break the momentum to come down for lunch. The Earthopoly game goes surprisingly well, with Cass tracking with the gist of it with a lot of help from Bridger and me. Bridger plays banker to free me up to coach Cass.
2:00 Quiet time--so to speak. Bridger retreats to his room to listen to a book-on-CD for an hour or so. While I clean the living room, our top clutter zone, Cassidy pretends I'm Cinderella and she's a stepsister ordering me around while I sweep. Then, once I go to the ball, she says, "Now I want to be Cinderella," and I become a stepsister. At times I feel myself getting edgy and thinking longingly of what it would be like to clean house without a constant stream-of-consciousness monologue from Cass. Then I imagine how I'll probably look back nostalgically on this very kind of moment. Then Bridger comes down and things shift again.
3:00 Kids messing around with watching home videos of our family on the computer. I get a call from a fellow library advocate and neighbor, one of the people I respect most in the world. We strategize a little about the library, and she asks how I'm doing after a presentation I made to the library board, which I wrote about here. I decompress about my regrets about the presentation and the things I think I've learned from my missteps. She listens thoughtfully, then says slowly and with great care, "I think sometimes our egos get in our way at the very places we could have great power." I take what she says two ways: one, that my egotistic pleasure in having a soapbox about the library issue and fancying myself a "community leader" can get in the way of me seeing the truth and being as effective as I could be in serving the library, which I think is absolutely true; and two, that my insecurity and fixation on my own mistakes can block me from fully accessing my power to create, construct, and connect.
I feel as if a warm, slow-burning fire has been lit in my chest. I feel healed and at the same time challenged to get over myself and get to work.
3:30 Not wanting to slow down the big cleaning momentum I had going earlier (and because we're going to a friend's house tomorrow morning, making it impossible to do our usual Friday morning DVD routine), I ask the kids if they'd like to watch their movie o' the week today instead of tomorrow. Uh, duh. Of course they say yes. I pop some popcorn and they settle in with some Curious George. I hear lots of laughter as I clean, then finally run out of steam and join them for the last half-hour or so. Good stuff about metamorphosis, deductive reasoning, seeds, and genuinely endearing and funny. I'm impressed.
5:15 The witching hour. Bridger asks Cassidy where the gold Lego bar he gave her this morning is. She doesn't know. He wails and cries and moans and tells her he'll never trust her with anything important ever again. I almost succeed in refraining from lecturing him, but not quite--I do have to get in a little mini-lecture. "It's a little piece of plastic, and you didn't tell her, 'Make sure you keep track of this Lego at all times.' Next time you give someone something, make sure you are clear about what your expectations about the gift are and let them know, too." Uh-huh. Are most adults even capable of this kind of clarity around gift-giving? I'm sure as hell not.
Bridger and Cassidy work together to try to find the gold piece, a missing pair of Lego handcuffs, and a green laser. I start getting ready for dinner.
5:45 Bridger sets the table, belting out "I Will Work With Joy," a song I've been known to warble through chores, from the book Seven Times the Sun. One verse goes, "Persistence and pride, creation unfolds,/As I work hard to reach my goals." Bridger sings it, "As I work hard to reach Mom's goals." I have to laugh at how damn perceptive he is.
Then Bridger starts chanting, "Cassidy is on the fork side of me, Cassidy is on the fork side of me," his mnemonic device for remembering silverware placement. "That's mean!" Cassidy howls, apparently thinking he's making fun of her somehow. Bridger continues to sing the offending song. Cassidy continues to howl. Finally, I ask him, "If Cass was singing a song that really got on your nerves, and you asked her to stop, what would you want her to do?" He stops singing, and task done, darts into the living room without answering. At least not directly.
6:00 We sit down for an early dinner before Bri gets home, because I have a meeting tonight. The kids are chatty and silly and loud. Brian walks in the back door to the kitchen just as we're tucking into our lentil burgers and sweet potato fries. He sits down and does a mock (?) shell-shocked look at me across the table at the level of noise and incoherence at the table.
6:15 Finished with dinner, Bridger and Cass go in the living room and start fighting over the one blanket on the couch. "I'm cold!" "But I'm colder!" I suggest they go get another blanket from upstairs or figure out a deal for how to share it, then walk away, which is very hard for me to do. I always worry they'll come to blows. The next time I peek in, they're snuggling under the blanket together on the living room floor, laughing.
6:30 I walk to a meeting at our neighborhood library and sit around a table with eight awesome women, including the neighbor I talked to on the phone earlier who helped me so much. We laugh, kid around about our fundraising goals (we'd like to start with a country spa retreat for us, then go from there to make the world a better place). We dream about how to help our library stay open. This is my nerdy idea of a pretty dang good time.
8:30 I get home. The kids are in their jammies, having a bedtime snack at the kitchen table. Cassidy tells me, "I took a bath, and Daddy read Richard Scarry to me."
"What heaven!" I say. "Being read to in the bathtub!"
Cass agreed. "I have a lucky life," she agreed.
9ish The kids and I read part of a beautiful picture book by Diane Stanley about Michelangelo, then Brian tells them a "lights-out story" in the dark. Brian leaves, and I go in for the ceremonial bedtime cuddling in Cassidy's bed before they fall asleep together there. We say our modified, Zen-flavored version of St. Francis's "Instrument of Peace" prayer. One of the lines is "May I seek to understand, even more than I seek to be understood." Bridger mutters under his breath, "May I seek to understand, even more than I seek to annoy."
Here's my prayer, silently offered up as my children drift into sleep: May our luck hold a little longer. Or, may we learn to keep finding joy, even when an attack we didn't see coming takes us by surprise, just when we thought we were home free.
Wednesday, December 9, 2009
A Few of The Things We're Learning These Days
Well, the above moment surely warmed my heart and assuaged some of my Waldorf guilt, a malady beautifully described by fellow blogger Patricia Zaballos. Bridger wanted to make an ornament for our Christmas tree, and even though we were running late for an errand and I knew it was going to take us a good half-hour to get on the winter gear, how could I resist his sudden desire to be crafty, a desire he almost never evidences? I showed him how to make one of these nifty felted wool wreaths, and he went to town, his first-ever sewing experience. You could have knocked me over.
His creative pursuits usually skew more towards the Lego end of things. He took a Lego Dragsters and Monster Trucks class at the Science Museum with his dad last weekend and built some very cool vehicles and learned some physics along the way. And then when he came home, he immediately sat down and built. . . more things with Legos.
He's also teaching himself to read, slowly but surely. He started with a series of "Now I'm Reading" books that were very basic, but lately he's been picking out whole sentences in his Lego Club magazine and in picture books I'm reading to the kids. It's so fun to see his excitement and pride when the puzzle pieces come together to form a coherent, meaningful whole. He also finally whipped my butt good at Stratego, a board game we found at a thrift store that I'd beaten him at over and over again, to his great annoyance and frustration. Today he had me cornered so beautifully my heart was literally racing--and I don't think I could possibly have enjoyed a victory of my own more than I enjoyed his.
The other fun development is his increasing mathematical confidence. The other night after he'd gone to bed, I was taking a nice candle-lit bath. He knocked on the door, came in, and asked, "Does 150 X 20 equal 3000?" I had to think about it for a minute--it's hard for me to do equations like that without a pencil and paper--but I realized that, yes, 150 X 20 did equal 3000.
"How did you figure that out?" I asked him.
"Well, I know that 100 X 20=2000, and 50 X 20=1000, so I just put them together," he said.
I love that he is lying awake at night, doing math equations in his head, learning to juggle numbers in his own unique but effective way.
Cassidy learned to finger-knit this week (another strike against my own Waldorf guilt!) and sewed a felted ornament, too. Inspired by Ed Emberley's great drawing books, she and I have been working on a giant picture of a made-up faraway land, complete with a skeleton who wants to marry a serving maid, a circus wagon, a swirling storm, and a purple castle.
She is also showing a serious bent toward women's studies ("Are there any girls in this book?" and "Why aren't there more women?" are her constant questions), and is becoming an avid letter writer, with a lot of help from me as she learns to form the letters and numbers. Her interest in writing letters started after she wrote a lot of thank-you notes after her birthday and got back truly enthusiastic responses from her grandma and her aunt. Then, a few weeks ago, her interest in correspondence and feminism came together when she noticed that the author of the Magic Treehouse books almost always has the main characters, Jack and Annie, go back in time to help male historical figures, not women. So she decided to write a letter to Mary Pope Osborne, the author, asking her to please include more female historical figures. Wouldn't it be cool if she actually got a reply? If the writer actually wrote about some kick-ass historical women?
She's currently gotten interested in First Ladies, who not only had great wardrobes but also have some pretty compelling stories. Right now her favorite is Dolley Madison, who was so beloved for her kindness and generous personality that she actually got away with dipping snuff and wearing outlandish turbans bedecked with ostrich feathers. During the War of 1812, Dolley saved a famous portrait of George Washington and important government papers right before the British burned the President's Mansion--and right after the 100 soldiers assigned to guard the presidential residence had fled in terror.
After a steady diet of Barbie as Mariposa, I am happy to be reading about this kind of heroine, let me tell you.
So that's just a little of what we're learning right now. We putter through our days seemingly doing very little, yet when I write all this down, I'm reassured to see how much the kids and I are learning together.
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Our Hybrid Holidays
It's snowing here today, we've had Christmas songs by Tony Bennett and Aretha Franklin and Sinatra on heavy rotation, and the tree's up, hung with ornaments that bring back so many memories--the striped stocking a childhood friend gave me 33 years ago (!); the craft foam dove and the jingle bells cut from old egg cartons from our next-door neighbors; the paper gingerbread men Bridger made at ECFE when he was three; the finger-knit garlands I learned to make last year after many, many failed tries. A good Christmas tree tells all kinds of stories, about where you've been, the people you've known, and how you've changed.
We practice a rather spotty, hit-and-miss Buddhist-Christian-pagan fusion spirituality around here, so putting up the Christmas tree coincides with the week-long celebration of Rohatsu, Buddha's enlightenment. Inspired by Katharine Krueger, the dynamically wonderful director of children's practice at our Zen center, we made a little scene of Buddha meditating under the bodhi tree at our house, with a clay Buddha sitting on a Lego meditation cushion, attended by Lego figures standing in for Svasti and Sujata, children who helped the Buddha while he sat under the bodhi tree by bringing him milk porridge to eat and grass for a soft place to sit.
Every day this week, the kids and I brought milk to the little Buddha figure, as the girl Sujata is said to have done (except for the morning or two we forgot--sorry, hungry little Buddha!). We talked about how people here in St. Paul and all around the world were sitting weeklong silent meditation retreats in Buddha's honor. One day we enacted the legend of the demonic Mara trying to sway the Buddha from his concentration. Cassidy draped herself in silk scarves and danced in front of the Buddha to try to distract him with her beauty, like the dancing girls Mara conjured up. Bridger built Lego cannons and fired them at the Buddha. And I pulled out the most powerful weapon of all--shame. "You think you can understand the truth? What an arrogant fool you are! You might as well give up! You'll never succeed!" But Buddha kept sitting.
Today, December 8, is traditionally celebrated as the day the Buddha became enlightened. He touched the earth with one hand and declared that together with all beings, he had found the truth and was free. That's the part I love--all of us are included.
The legend is that the Buddha's first "sermon" was to the children who had helped him and their friends, and what he taught was how to eat a tangerine mindfully. You can find a nice version of the story here. After telling a much-abbreviated version of this story, the kids and I got out a Satsuma mandarin, peeled it, divided it up, and ate our slices together in silence, an activity they've already been introduced to at the Zen center. We tried to pay attention to the sounds, the smells, the tastes, the look and feel of the mandarin. We noticed that we were much more aware of the weight and shape of the fruit on our tongue than we normally are. Usually we immediately bite the fruit, chew it up, and swallow before we've really even tasted what's in our mouths (a metaphor for how I often live my life, I have to say). Bridger, who isn't usually a fan of oranges, said he actually liked the orange when he ate it that way.
I am trying, this holiday season, to remember to slow down, do less, buy less, and find opportunities to express love in small but meaningful ways. To take time to show Cassidy how to use a big embroidery needle to sew together felt squares for a fabric wreath instead of trolling for one more gift we don't need online. To bake my traditional "so-you've-had-a-baby" veggie lasagne for a neighbor who's just had her third child. To stop myself before I give the kids "a horrible lecture" when I'm displeased with them, as Bridger put it yesterday, and find a way to communicate with more kindness and less criticism.
My father died when I was twelve, and for many years after his death, Christmas was a really hard time of year for me and my mom and sister. It didn't help that my birthday falls on December 12, so close to Christmas and finals week in school that I often felt deprived and gypped.
It's actually only in the last few years, spurred by my kids, that I'm finding joy and abundance in this time of year. I'm coming around to the idea that lighting candles and stringing up Christmas lights at this dark time is one of the oldest and most beautiful of human gestures.
Lately the kids have been asking for more stories about my father. I tell them about how he used to answer the door like Lurch on the Addams Family, intoning "You rang?" I tell them about how he once dreamed a burglar was climbing in his bedroom window and knocked himself out cold against the wall charging the intruder in his mind. I tell them about how he liked to click his heels in parking lots, how he cried when we had to give away our crazy cocker spaniel Honey when I was four.
"It's too bad your father never knew about Bridger and me," Cassidy said to me this morning.
I agreed. But maybe, I told her, he did know about them. After all, it's a big mystery what happens to us after we die. No one really knows for sure.
"Maybe God whispered about us in your dad's ear, and he saw an angel who looked like me," Cassidy said.
It's moments like this that make me so grateful, I could just about levitate.
We practice a rather spotty, hit-and-miss Buddhist-Christian-pagan fusion spirituality around here, so putting up the Christmas tree coincides with the week-long celebration of Rohatsu, Buddha's enlightenment. Inspired by Katharine Krueger, the dynamically wonderful director of children's practice at our Zen center, we made a little scene of Buddha meditating under the bodhi tree at our house, with a clay Buddha sitting on a Lego meditation cushion, attended by Lego figures standing in for Svasti and Sujata, children who helped the Buddha while he sat under the bodhi tree by bringing him milk porridge to eat and grass for a soft place to sit.
Every day this week, the kids and I brought milk to the little Buddha figure, as the girl Sujata is said to have done (except for the morning or two we forgot--sorry, hungry little Buddha!). We talked about how people here in St. Paul and all around the world were sitting weeklong silent meditation retreats in Buddha's honor. One day we enacted the legend of the demonic Mara trying to sway the Buddha from his concentration. Cassidy draped herself in silk scarves and danced in front of the Buddha to try to distract him with her beauty, like the dancing girls Mara conjured up. Bridger built Lego cannons and fired them at the Buddha. And I pulled out the most powerful weapon of all--shame. "You think you can understand the truth? What an arrogant fool you are! You might as well give up! You'll never succeed!" But Buddha kept sitting.
Today, December 8, is traditionally celebrated as the day the Buddha became enlightened. He touched the earth with one hand and declared that together with all beings, he had found the truth and was free. That's the part I love--all of us are included.
The legend is that the Buddha's first "sermon" was to the children who had helped him and their friends, and what he taught was how to eat a tangerine mindfully. You can find a nice version of the story here. After telling a much-abbreviated version of this story, the kids and I got out a Satsuma mandarin, peeled it, divided it up, and ate our slices together in silence, an activity they've already been introduced to at the Zen center. We tried to pay attention to the sounds, the smells, the tastes, the look and feel of the mandarin. We noticed that we were much more aware of the weight and shape of the fruit on our tongue than we normally are. Usually we immediately bite the fruit, chew it up, and swallow before we've really even tasted what's in our mouths (a metaphor for how I often live my life, I have to say). Bridger, who isn't usually a fan of oranges, said he actually liked the orange when he ate it that way.
I am trying, this holiday season, to remember to slow down, do less, buy less, and find opportunities to express love in small but meaningful ways. To take time to show Cassidy how to use a big embroidery needle to sew together felt squares for a fabric wreath instead of trolling for one more gift we don't need online. To bake my traditional "so-you've-had-a-baby" veggie lasagne for a neighbor who's just had her third child. To stop myself before I give the kids "a horrible lecture" when I'm displeased with them, as Bridger put it yesterday, and find a way to communicate with more kindness and less criticism.
My father died when I was twelve, and for many years after his death, Christmas was a really hard time of year for me and my mom and sister. It didn't help that my birthday falls on December 12, so close to Christmas and finals week in school that I often felt deprived and gypped.
It's actually only in the last few years, spurred by my kids, that I'm finding joy and abundance in this time of year. I'm coming around to the idea that lighting candles and stringing up Christmas lights at this dark time is one of the oldest and most beautiful of human gestures.
Lately the kids have been asking for more stories about my father. I tell them about how he used to answer the door like Lurch on the Addams Family, intoning "You rang?" I tell them about how he once dreamed a burglar was climbing in his bedroom window and knocked himself out cold against the wall charging the intruder in his mind. I tell them about how he liked to click his heels in parking lots, how he cried when we had to give away our crazy cocker spaniel Honey when I was four.
"It's too bad your father never knew about Bridger and me," Cassidy said to me this morning.
I agreed. But maybe, I told her, he did know about them. After all, it's a big mystery what happens to us after we die. No one really knows for sure.
"Maybe God whispered about us in your dad's ear, and he saw an angel who looked like me," Cassidy said.
It's moments like this that make me so grateful, I could just about levitate.
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