Breaking Our Kids' Hearts

"We need to break our kids hearts," said Jennifer Harvey in her talk at The Well last Thursday evening. "There's nothing innocent about white innocence." In her follow up to her book Dear White Christians, called Raising White Kids: Bringing up Children in a Racially Unjust America Harvey is inspired by the questions and issues arising from her own parenting, and her desire to again address her own community: white folks. Most of the folks in our congregation who are parent are raising or have raised white kids. And all of us - parents of white kids or not - have ample opportunities to grow in the ways that we engage our families and communities around issues of awareness, bias, privilege and racial justice.

What Dr. Harvey means when she says we must break our children's hearts is that it is only our privilege that allows us to protect our kids from knowing personally the bias and racism experienced daily by people of color. We want our children to be people who are advocates for justice and equality and teaching them that everyone is the same - teaching 'colorblindness' - ignores the fact that people are in fact different. And those differences mean that those who are people of color have been and continue to be treated differently. The only way that our children can fight for their fellow humans, the only way they can be brave together through the awkward and the uncertain is to know the pain and tragedy of what happens because of implicit and explicit racism and then rebuild their understanding that we and they have agency to respond in just ways.

Harvey's book speaks from her own experience as a parent of white children and aunt to two black children. She starts from the beginning (there's literally a chapter called "Where do I start?") for folks who are at a loss for how to initiate conversations in their families. And she acknowledges that it can be fraught and confusing and awkward but presses us to dive in anyway. When we don't find ways of addressing race, children will notice and make their own conclusions about our opinions.

As a parent of a tween, I have my radar attuned to middle grade fiction that addresses issues of race, since I always like books to do a little of the work for me and give me a reference point in conversation. I have two suggestions that I think will also be meaningful reading for adults:

Feathers by Jacqueline Woodson (and any book by her - she writes picture books for younger children as well) deals with race, faith, disability and belonging through the eyes of a sixth grade girl. Franny is a black girl living in an all-black neighborhood but begins to ask questions about how black and white folks should interact when a white kid who looks a lot like Jesus shows up in her classroom. We read this book together and then we used the questions at the back of the book as a starting place for conversation about our own experience and attitudes.

Ghost Boys by Jewell Parker Rhodes (and anything by her too). I haven't read this one yet but heard the author on The Longest Shortest Time podcast and then went to see her the next day when I discovered that she was speaking and reading at the Seward Park Third Place Books. Her book starts with the shooting of Jerome, a 12-year-old black boy, by a white police officer. It tells the rest of the story through his eyes as a ghost - encountering both the grief of his family and community, a host of other ghosts, including Emmett Till, and the one child who can still see and hear him: Sarah, the daughter of the officer who shot him.

Both of these books are heartbreaking in just the way that Harvey suggests. They will break open our own and our kids' hearts in ways that we can put them back together again full of hope. Much of the hope in the books is lodged in the young protagonists and their peers. I was so impressed by Jewell Parker Rhodes in how full of joy she was in spite of the heavy content of her work. She sparkled with delight in the young people in her audience and urged all of us, young and old alike to tell stories like Jerome's and to talk to each other about how to build hope and justice in our communities. We can start in our own families.

One God Who Mothers Us All

One of my preferred ways of speaking the trinitarian formula is this:
     In the name of the Father
     and of the Son
     and of the Holy Spirit
     One God who is Mother of us all.

This is a favorite now but but when I first began to imagine God as Mother it felt really weird.  It made me feel squirmy and wrong when, in my prayers I began to experiment with female images.  I think this may be the case of many of us who grew up in traditional churches.  It's likely true even in non-church culture, where 'the man upstairs' is universally understood to mean God and with a couple of notable exceptions (Alanis Morrisette or Octavia Spencer for example) God has been portrayed in most art and media as an old white, bearded dude in the clouds.

Yet mothering imagery for God - even for Christ - has ancient roots.  These are words from Julian of Norwich in the 14th century (and from our Hymnal #482):
     Mothering Christ, you took my form,
     offering me your food of light,
     grain of life, and grape of love
     your very body for my peace.
Who else but a mother feeds and nourishes and sustains her children from her very body?  This Christ-like action that we all experience when we share at Christ's table and that I understood in a new way as a nursing mother.

And way, waaay before Julian, the Biblical writers understood the mother-ness of God, although we haven't always read it that way.  Hosea writes in the voice God: 
     I taught Ephraim to walk, I took them up in my arms;
     yet they did not know that I healed them.
     I pulled them along with humane restraint, with ties of love.
     And I was to them like those who lift babies to their cheeks,
     I reached to them and fed them.
Sure, dads can do that stuff too (thanks be to God).  But for the prophet and the culture and context in which he wrote, he was imagining the Mother.

When I was in college and spent a summer as a camp counselor in Alberta, I butted heads often over theological issues with a particular counselor who was much more conservative than I.  But I found on the matter of gendered God language he was completely on board with Mother God.  For him it was a matter of having had a father who was emotionally and sometimes physically abusive, who was anything but the nurturing and tender parent that we long for in the God.  To imagine God as Loving Father was painful and difficult and difficult for him, when for me it was comforting and tender because I have a dad who was comforting and tender.  Hosea's image could easily have been Father in my eyes, just as it has so often been understood by so many.

The naming and understanding of God is going to be as nuanced as the ones who name and call on Her.  For those of us who parent, we can understanding a parenting God through the lens of our experience of parenting. Calling on Mothering God can be meaningful both in our experience of mothering and in our longing for one who provides the comfort and tenderness of a mother's arms in our time of need when nothing will do but Mama.

Finally, if you have not heard it before (or even if you have!) I recommend Bobby McFerrin's adaptation of the 23rd Psalm.  His hymn of praise to God our Mother is transporting.  You should put it in your ears RIGHT NOW.  Happy Mother's Day all you who mother, who have mothers or who need our Heavenly Mother to give you rest.
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Image of Julian of Norwich by Br. Robert Lenz.  Click on it to learn more about Julian (and her cat).
Image of hands by Jon Warren, taken about 10 years ago of my hands with my daughter.

For the Love of Camp

Camp Shekinah, approx 1989

When I was a child, my Mennonite camp was called Camp Shekinah. It’s in the valley cut out of the prairie by North Saskatchewan river, which in some summers a trickle and some summers floods the banks as far as the lodge, but most summers is somewhere in between. Which always provides ample breeding ground for mosquitoes. It's the camp where I learned to canoe, tie knots, use a compass and build an excellent log-cabin or a-frame fire. It's also where I re-enacted the Exodus, learned the definition of the word 'statutes' (it's not the same as statues), had a counselor talk to me about why he got baptized and where I began to understand that following Jesus would be my choice too.

I loved camp. I could not wait to say goodbye to my parents and find the friends that I'd made the year before. I felt like I belonged there in a way that I didn't experience in other parts of my life and it fed my soul. That is the experience I long for every child to have when they go to camp. I see it now at Camp Camrec when I go as a staff person. The space might be different, but the essence is remarkably similar: the beauty of creation all around, children and youth invited into the work of God in the world, the joy of connecting with caring community, songs and stories and worship around the campfire.

My childhood camp isn't the 'Camp Shekinah' of the canvas tents and mud trails anymore. It's Shekinah Retreat Centre whose facilities have grown (past the flood line) and whose program is year-round. I've visited a few times in recent years and because my cousin was the program manager I even got to experience the new zip line. But the kids that I observed who were there as campers were still having essentially the same experience that I had, that kids at Mennonite camps all over the continent are having - a fun, meaningful, holy time of learning and connection.

I'm looking forward to being at camp again this summer with the older youth. I hope your families too will take advantage of the opportunities it offers. Registration is open.  :)