Why is there a tent on the sidewalk?

 What you can say to (and do with) kids about homelessness.

Our church, and I'm sure many of you, are encountering people who are unhoused daily. It's evident in growing encampments and an ever-present conversation in media as we anticipate city-wide elections. I don't have all the answers (or even many!) but as with so many things, it can be helpful to think through how you might answer kids' questions before they ask, or to be prepared to talk about an encounter or experience when it happens.

Why is there a tent on the sidewalk? (Or a person sleeping on a bench, or holding a sign asking for money). Most of our kids connect tents with camping or fun back-yard sleepovers. But more and more lately we've been seeing tents and encampments on our public sidewalks and parks, tucked away in unused greenspaces or on the sides of highways and under overpasses. It's only natural that children would ask. The only problem is that the answers aren't easy.

The very simple answer - and one I have given - is that the person doesn't have enough money to live in a house. Children might not know that it costs money - and in Seattle quite a lot of money - to live in a house or apartment. I remember conversations with my older child, when we were still renters, about how we had to pay someone else each month to live in our home.

Why don't people have enough money? It's never just one reason and each person has their own story, probably with many layers. I'd suggested starting with, "We don't know." Certainly avoid starting with reasons that blame, like, "They're lazy." or "They're a drug addict." The reasons folks don't have enough money are often beyond their control: rent went up, they were downsized or lost a job because of COVID, they got hit with a medical bill they couldn't pay, they're a kid who got kicked out because they're queer, they were left by a spouse whose income they depended on, they were trafficked.

You could suggested any of these as possibilities. Older children and teens could certainly engage in conversation about some of the systemic reasons for all the above: lack of a living wage or access to education, the high cost of health of childcare, mental illness and addition, disability, generational poverty and the growth of the wealth gap in our region has led to people being pushed out of their homes or further to the edges of community.

Could that happen to us? This might be concerning to young children especially, who don't have a handle on their own family's financial security. It's important to be honest but also offer assurance. I venture to say that I don't think the children in our congregation are in danger of losing their homes. If that's true for your child, of course say so. But sometimes families are homeless.

Recently Sesame Street added a Muppet to it's roster who is a child experiencing homelessness. Muppet Lily learns from the friend with whom her family is staying that home is where love is. She's surrounded by the love of her friends and family even though she no longer lives in her own apartment. Whatever your individual family situation is, I do believe that's an assurance we can offer our children. You are surrounded by people and community who loves and supports you and who will protect you.

Can we help that person? Yes! Start with advocacy! Call, write or email local and federal officials to ask when they're doing to support people without homes and build communities that are equitable and affordable for all people. Even kids can write postcards or letters that tell their leaders that they want everyone to have a place to live. Pay attention to the conversation in our local elections and think about what the most caring and harm-reductive approaches are.

And of course there are practical ways to help physically. In the big picture, you can support and volunteer as a family at a shelter or foodbank in your neighborhood. The Oaks is run by Lake City Partners and supported by the church. Not only will you be helping, you'll build relationships with people closer to the experience of being homeless.

For encounters with individual people, you can keep a stash of things like clean, new socks, handwarmers, water bottles or energy bars in your car for when you run into pan-handlers on those free-way exits. You could also just give money.

What if they spend it on drugs? Okay, a kid is probably not going to ask this, but so so many people do ask this question and I heard such a great answer recently that I wish I could remember who said it. "Well, they probably really need them." Addicted people do - to avoid a crash or symptoms of withdrawal. So give money or no, but start with empathy. The person asking for money knows best what they need - even if they are addicted. And if you don't want to give money, it's okay to ask someone what they do need - maybe you'll be able to offer support by buying a meal, picking up a few groceries. Some people also keep a stash of low-dollar amount gift cards.

Like us, people who live outside - or in tents or cars or RVs - are made in God's image and valuable to God. We can communicate this to our kids and teen by talking about and treating people experiencing homelessness with empathy and compassion. For more tips and conversations starters, here are a couple of articles from the United Way here in King County and from across the country in Massachusetts.

How To Talk Homelessness With Your Kids | United Way of King County (uwkc.org)
"What do I say?" How to talk to kids about homelessness (unitedwaymassbay.org)

--
Photo by Brandi Alexandra on Unsplash

Gender on My Mind

Over the next eight months or so, the high school youth are embarking on a series called Our Whole Lives. OWL is a comprehensive sexuality curriculum that's grounded in the values of inclusivity, sexual health, justice and a belief in the inherent God-createdness of each human. I love working with this curriculum and engaging with youth on issues of sexuality and their inherent goodness. The one area that Rex - my co-teacher - and I are finding a little out of date is the way it has approached gender. Though OWL is very aware of the differences between sex and gender identity and gender expression, and it is affirming of trans identities, still groups are often divided by gender, or conversation starters based on binary gender assumptions.

As I've been thinking about how to respond to these gaps in the curriculum (and looking forward to the release of the updated and revised edition soon) the question of gender popped into my church-ward view in a couple of other different ways. The first is around our mentoring program. A parent's question recently about how we choose mentors prompted me to think with more intention about our practice of pairing like-gender people. I had already been thinking about how this excludes non-binary folks as possible mentors. It also limits our children. If they reveal that they are trans or nonbinary after being paired, do they have to either cut off a mentoring relationship? Or do they continue to claim the gender they are assigned at birth to remain in a mentoring relationship. This not only makes no sense to me, it's counter to our statement of welcome and inclusion in all areas of ministry!

So with this explicit question about the possibility of a different gendered pairing I was prompted to think about what prevents us. Tradition, of course. But all traditions should be challenged if they exclude. I also wonder if we may have gut-check reaction about an older man being paired with a young girl. But again, I wonder why. We ask all mentors to adhere to our safe-child policy and I can absolutely imagine a meaningful and caring relationship between girls and men or boys and women in our congregation, never mind our openness to people of no or multiple genders participating. When I work with youth and their families to consider folks in the congregation for mentor, I ask them to think about people they might click with, already have a relationship with that could be formalized, people they may have something in common with. I now plan to bring a recommendation to Discipleship Council that we may explicitly name that though many youth may choose to be paired with someone of the same gender, gender should not limit their suggestions or choices.

Finally, whether it is synchronicity or Spirit, the conversations above were ongoing when I learned about an opportunity to learn more about welcoming gender expansive children. Brethren Mennonite Council for LGBTQ concerns is holding a 2 part series September 23 and 30 and I'm excited to attend. There are some details in the communicator. Or you can register for this Zoom opportunity at this link or find out more on Facebook.

Finally, finally - just for fun - a book recommendation: Earlier this summer I read a YA romance called I Wish You All the Best, about Ben, a non-binary teen who is rejected by their parents when they come out, forcing them to move in with an older sibling. Ben struggles with how to live into their new identity, create new friendships, and navigate a new school. It's a very sweet story of heartache and first crushes and resilience and identity. And bonus - gives those of us who are cis-gender a window into the experience of a young person who has struggled with the anxiety of hiding an essential truth about themself, and the relief and beauty of living fully into this truth.

Covid and Communicating Consent

If there's one thing I'm learning from the recent survey about children's participation in worship and Sunday school (to which you may still respond!) it's that many of you are very hesitant about including children in indoor activities until there is a vaccine available to those under 12. Right now that looks like some point in September.

Until then, we will begin to meet as a congregation, both outdoors and indoors. Many - if not most - of our adults and teens will be vaccinated may be starting to feel pretty okay with closer contact and un-masked interactions (though our current policy will be for everyone to be masked indoors). But children are still vulnerable.

I'm wondering if this is a time to brush up on how we talk about and communicate consent related to our and our kids' space. If you've participated in Zoom worship or listened in afterwards in the past couple of weeks, you'll have heard Pastor Megan preaching the gospel of consent. Because for so long we've been podded with the same folks, we may have grown accustomed to knowing (or thinking we know) the desires and expectations of the people we're with. Now that we're venturing out into the world a little more, we need to negotiate, check in, test assumptions.

Practice helps! The other day on the way to meet up with a friend, my six-year-old was talking about what he was going to tell his friend. While not intentionally hurtful, what he was planning to share might not have gone over that well. I suggested an alternative, so did he. He tried out his new suggestion. We practiced. Having conversations about consent might also look like that: before an encounter, deciding what to say, how to say it in a sensitive way, trying out different ideas. Parents, we might also have to practice how to talk to other parents about our expectations.

Folks, I've shared it before (a long time ago) but it's worth sharing this chart from Liz Kleinrock, an educator and anti-bias, anti-racism trainer. So much of consent is about communication and respect, not just of another person's body but about their autonomy. May we all have both grace and respect for each other. And may this time of increased sensitivity to the vulnerability of others continue to live in us going forward.

Pentecost Birthday Party

Right off the top, I need to apologize for the party blower. I realized as soon as Orie opened the bag and put it in his mouth that I was going to causing a great deal of annoyance for parents of 3-12 year-olds. Why did I even put that in there?? It's a party, that's why!
This week, if you have a kid preschool aged or older, they will receive a package to celebrate the birthday of the church. Not OUR church, but the whole idea of there even being a church. It's when the followers of Jesus shifted. They went from being a small cultish following of a particular guy to being a people who'd never even met or seen Jesus following and believing in a resurrected Christ who'd embodied the non-violent love of God.

Now, you don't have to put it quite that way with the little ones. But I hope that the little booklet that comes with this package will begin to tell that story of how the church was born and why we continue to celebrate today.

Your teens may even have received their envelope already, since teens who don't have a younger sibling will get theirs by mail. Families with younger kids I'll be making drop-offs this weekend. Inside will be a personal birthday cake mix - including frosting and sprinkles.  The Pentecost zine and recipe card - you can make your own mug-cake mix if you're so inclined - and for the elementary set, a balloon and the aforementioned blower (again: sorry.)

Take the opportunity to say the prayer for Pentecost on the back of the zine and give thanks for the things that you are grateful for about church and the presence of Jesus in your life. This is how we build the language of faith. Happy Pentecost! Happy Birthday Church!

Learning to Bless

 The past couple of weeks at the end of my storytime with kids I've use the ASL sign for 'God bless you'.* We've blessed each other as we say goodnight, learning one more way to speak our love without words. ALS signs have become a meaningful way to connect with each other in our congregation, longing as we are for ways to communicate and signal our care for one another.

In the same way that it takes observation, imitation and practice to learn the signs that we have, so we learn the language of faith. Blessings (ASL or not) are one very simple way of speaking our faith out loud. Unlike other other forms of prayer which are directed at God or other form of the Divine, our blessing are directed at the person we share them with. They speak into the presence of God our desire and hopes but are not directed at God. They invite God into the space with us.

Tami Keim, director of the Early Childhood Program at Hesston College, and contributor to the Building Faith blog (Mennonite Early Childhood Network), reminds us that blessings are all over the Bible. If you want to offer a blessing there's no need to make up your own or come up with the words yourself. To paraphrase Lavar Burton: Take a look, they're in a book! I'm a language person and I like getting creative with blessing words, but even I default to scriptural classics when I'm stuck: "May God bless and keep you. May the face of God shine on you and bring you peace." There's nothing like it.

When we speak blessings, we get used to having the language of faith in our own mouths and we model the use of this language to our kids. In the same post that Tami talks about the blessings in the Bible, she suggests a daily blessings at bedtime (she even created this handy list of blessings you could print). I do like the idea of daily blessings, but teens who go to bed later than their parents (only me?) get left out with that particular suggestion - though it's a good one - and there's no bad time to bless. Morning blessing over breakfast? Great! Blessing as you log into school? Sure!

I also like to mark special or difficult or new experiences with blessing. The beginning of school is a time to bless our children with courage and wisdom. A new bike might be cause to bless a child with safety and the joy of the ride. A blessing for patience and grace would be appropriate when they're going through a hard time with a friend or sibling.

*In this link, start at the 0:50 mark if you really don't want to watch the whole 2 minutes, but I love this pastor and have watched several of her signing tutorials. She's kind of awesome, so you probably won't be sorry if you watch the whole thing.   

__
Photo by Sai De Silva on Unsplash

Police and Prisons, Our Kids and Ourselves

I got a new picture book this week: Milo Imagines the World, a collaboration between two of my favorites: author Matt de la Pena and illustrator Christian Robinson. In it, a kid named Milo and his sister are on a long ride on the subway. It's an opportunity for Milo to imagine and draw the lives of all the people he sees, including a boy about his own age. Readers discover that Milo and his sister - and the other boy - are on their way to a correctional facility, where they are going to visit their mom. The way that de la Pena gives language to the emotions that Milo is feeling is poetry ("These monthly subway rides are never ending, and as usual, Milo is a shook-up soda.) And Robinson brings life and not only to Milo, but to Milo's imagination.

Milo's journey to the prison is also a journey of realization. When he sees that the other little boy, who he had imagined as someone who's experience was very different from his own, is heading for the same destination he is, Milo understands that the way he imagines the people in the subway might be way off and the pictures he made of them might have been all wrong! Readers begin to see that the ideas that we have about people - including people in prison - might also be based on biases or false narratives. You can read more about Milo at Social Justice Books, or listen to Christian Robinson talk about the book and illustrations on Vimeo (4:33-10:28 are particularly relevant).

At the same time as I'm enjoying Milo, I'm also reading We Do This Till we Free Us, essays on abolition by Miriam Kaba (much more slowly than the rest of the church book group, though I'm grateful they still let me listen in). Kaba writes about seeking justice beyond prison and punishment, building community as an alternative to policing, and transforming how we deal with harm and accountability. I'm not the only adult right now who's beginning to get on board with the idea of police and prison abolition. This awakening in our country is also happening in our denomination. Y'all may already have heard of the curriculum on abolition that MCUSA has created to help churches explore this idea.

But what about kids? The prevailing narrative in dominant culture is that police are the 'good guys.' They are here to help and keep everyone safe. From Paw Patrol to Brooklyn 99 (two programs popular with the young people in my family) media reinforces this narrative. Cops might be goofy or bumbling but are ultimately well intentioned and uphold justice with care. White children especially, who may rarely have had an encounter with police, don't have this narrative interrupted.

We know, though, that not every child does have life-experience to backs up the cultural narrative. Garfield Highschool teacher Jesse Hagopian tweeted last year about an assignment that his first grade son was asked to complete. The assignment invited students to read a page entitled "Police Protect Us" and then answer questions about the reading:

What are some of the things that police officers do? They pepper spray people like when they sprayed my dad.
Why do you think a police officer’s job is important? Nurses, doctors and ambulances are important, but not police!
What would be another good title for this story? Police don’t protect us.

In fact police had not protected this boy and his family. He and many other children have the experience that police threaten and/or do violence and harm to them and their communities.

In parallel to the dominant narrative about police being good, the narrative about prisons and the people in them is that the only reason people go to jail or to prison is that they're bad. Books like Milo make it clear that people in prison are loved and love others, have families, like to read stories and have dreams. They might be there because of limited choices, because they didn't have money to pay for representation or to pay bail, because of complications related to addiction - like illustrator Christian Robinson's own mom.

Milo Imagines the World is one of very few books that give children like Milo a mirror in which to see themselves and children like mine a window through which they can experience understanding and empathy. In addition to her writing and advocacy for and with adults, Kaba also wrote the picture book Missing Daddy because of her frustration finding materials that can help children deal with the “loss, grief, and trauma” of having a parent incarcerated. And there's a list of more books that address policing and prison at Social Justice Books which includes books for children as well as teens and adults.

Though I've been fumbling through attempting to interrupt the narrative about police in myself and my kids for awhile, I still find it helpful to hear new ideas. For example I found a post from the Oakland Public Library on Evaluating Children's Books about Police very helpful and applicable beyond just book and beyond just children. It offers language and questions to test when watching, reading or encountering other media. I also found the teaching guide created by Penguin Classroom helpful; the questions it asks of the books (it includes the author/illustrators other two collaborations as well) are questions we could ask of our own experiences and assumptions as well.

My learning curve now with myself and my family is in trying on ideas about alternatives to police and punishment. It's continuing to build alternatives to policing by creating stronger communities and connections, building empathy and resilience, practicing alternatives to punishment and adopting transformative practices in my own life. I look forward to our congregation continuing to deepen our understanding of the movement to abolish prison and policing.

I will certainly be engaging with the MCUSA curriculum and will likely adapt it to use with youth in fall or winter. I'd be curious if there are parents interested in working through it together with an eye toward how we talk to our children.If you are interested in practical alternatives to police and punishment you can use right now, check out Seattle Area Alternatives to Calling 911 and If You See Something, DO Something: 12 Things to do instead of calling the cops . May we all work together for a just peace!

We voted! Now what?

One of the fascinating things about having the classroom in my living room has been the window into what teachers and students talk about and how teachers are building a classroom culture and community. It's also been a huge learning experience for me in pedagogy. How do you respond to questions? How do you encourage taking turns? How do affirm ideas and encourage critical thinking.

This week and last, I've been listening in on the Southshore kindergarteners talking about voting and the election. They started with the book Grace for President, in which Grace notices that there are no women in the row of pictures of presidents, decides to run for president of her class and then shows her leadership ability through her contributions to her school and community.

The kindergarteners were encouraged to notice in the words and pictures the kind of person Grace is, what good leadership looks like, how her words matched her actions. In subsequent days their class moved on to comparing real life candidates. First for Washington's 37th district and then for president. She presented points of the candidates platforms and then the children were invited to think about who they would vote for. I appreciate the respect that our schools teachers have for children's opinions and the way they encourage them to say more, ask questions and challenge each other - even in kindergarten.

Two years ago I wrote about voting and the election with annoyance. I was annoyed both because at the time I couldn't vote and because I was frustrated with what I felt was the implication that voting is the only way one can participate in democracy or enact change. My opinion has changed somewhat - at least a little and at least in part because I can vote now - but I stand by a few of the things I said then.

What has changed in 2020 is that, yes I can vote now but also there truly is much more at stake. What hasn't changed is my understanding how much more there is to engaging in change for justice than voting. I think this is a message particularly important for children and youth to hear. After all, they can't vote. And yet their voices are so important to our communities. Even kindergarteners have opinions about what's important. And they can march and make signs and write reps and get educated and post to social media.

The other thing that hasn't changed and that will never change is that nationhood is not what defines us as followers of Jesus. And it's our desire for a just peace is rooted in the Biblical call to justice. And that something that none of our kids aren't going to get in their classrooms, no matter how well they're being formed as citizens.

It's up to us as families and as a church family to tell the stories of Jesus and other biblical characters who interrupted for the sake of justice: Jesus' crossing boundaries to sit with the woman at the well and telling stories of good Samaritans. Peter sharing God's love with the Ethiopian eunuch. The prophets demanding justice that rolls like water. Whatever this week brings, our work as citizens and as disciples continues in our families and in our communities. May God bless us in this holy calling.