Show Your Childfree Friends the Love

I sometimes listen to the podcast "Mom and Dad are Fighting" in which listeners write in to the show's three hosts to answer parenting questions. I subscribe to a few different advice podcasts, though I usually gravitate more toward the comedic. In this case, though, while the hosts Zac, Elizabeth and Jamilah don't take themselves too seriously, (especially when sharing their parenting fails), they do take their listeners seriously. They often agree and support each other but come at parenting with different experiences and perspectives.
In a recent episode, they heard from a person who does not have kids but who wants to support their friends who do. The writer reflected with disappointment and grief their experience of feeling uncared for and unsupported by their friends with children after a big accomplishment in their life. This hurt in a particular way because of the care they have always tried to show their friends and their friends' children. (I mean, this person without kids listens to a parenting podcast!) They wanted to know: is this just their friends? How should they talk to their friends about it?

I immediately thought about the church's history of either wringing out or hanging out to dry people in the church who don't have children. Weird how these two laundry metaphors both get at the way we take our childfree folk for granted, either assuming that because they don't have kids they have all the time and energy in the world for all the church tasks and roles OR planning events and activities only with children and their nuclear families in mind.

I think we do okay in our congregation at not making assumptions about people based on their age and/or life stage. I think we try to be inclusive. But I have had conversations with people in our church who feel like they have not been celebrated in the same way as their peers who are having babies or left out of conversations about aging when their peers are entering empty nest phase. I feel personally implicated. It's too easy to get busy with all the kid stuff and to gravitate to other parent-friends because our paths cross at kids' activities or in the school drop-off line.

If you are a parent, I hope you reach out to someone in your life who doesn't have children to ask what's been up with them lately, celebrate a milestone or offer encouragement. Having people in my own family's life and in our church who do not have kids, whether by choice or by circumstance, is a gift! Beyond the ways these child-free folks share themselves in love and care for us, they model for our children multiple ways of living full, connected, meaningful lives as adults that have nothing to do with raising children. It is so important to name their belovedness.

Elizabeth, Zac and Jamilah of "Mom and Dad" encouraged the letter writer to share their disappointment and hurt directly with their friends. But I hope that our friends and siblings in the church won't have to say something before we let them know how beloved they are in God's eyes and in ours.

Jesus Came to Live, Not to Die

I made my child cry this Easter when I acknowledged that the Easter Bunny does not exist. I'm not sure where he got the idea that the Easter Bunny would bring him Easter goodies. It has always been pretty clear that I am the one who prepares the Easter baskets, write the treasure hunt clues and hides the eggs in the back yard. But there we were, a crying kid who's asking me, if Easter isn't about the bunny and candy and baby chicks, what is it about?? I did scramble a little to explain.

I've been in conversations with a few people recently who have been confounded about how to explain what Easter means to the young children in their lives. They haven't wanted to replicate the harmful and violent stories of God making Jesus die sacrificially or even as an example of Jesus' great love for humanity. So many of us had it drilled into us: you're a sinner and Jesus died for your sins! But if it's not about that, then what is the death of Jesus about?

The most succinct way of responding is by reframing the idea altogether: Jesus didn't come to die, he came to live!

I've been impressed by the work of Traci Smith and her approach to faith formation with children and families, so I really appreciated her conversation with two other folks who have been reconsidering how we frame Jesus' death. She, Daneen Akers and Herb Montgomery talk about the cross in way that both rejects the violent and harmful understandings we may have been taught and distills it in a way can be understood by children.

My own distillation of their conversation is this:

• Stick to the story - Find a good children's book or bible that sticks to what the bible says or use the Bible itself. There's not much need to extemporize if you say: "This is the story that Easter celebrates," and then read or tell it. (I'll include some suggestions below)
• Acknowledge Jesus' death as execution - God didn't kill Jesus, people did; scared, angry people who were worried that his power might mean they wouldn't be powerful any more. God is never please when a person is harmed or killed.
• Speak the good news of new life - the power of the Gospel story is that God raised Jesus from the dead. That doesn't mean that those who we love who have died will live again, but it does mean that Jesus' story wasn't over. Jesus lived again to keep preaching about God's love and to send his disciples to share God's message of love, forgiveness and new beginnings.

The reason for the eggs and bunnies and flowers, I told my distraught child, is that all of those things show us about new life. Plants and the earth around us have been cold and dark and dead all winter. In spring, when plants are growing, and animals are being born, we remember the new life that Jesus experienced and that God's love brings us new life and new beginnings too. (I actually wasn't quite as eloquent as that, that's the gist.)

I think that an Easter that celebrates the newness of life, the power of God's love over the violence of the world can engender empathy for the pain and suffering of the world in a way that believing God required suffering does not. May we all understand ourselves to be loved and blessed by this God who brings life.

Books for telling the Easter story:

• Children of God Storybook Bible - Desmond Tutu
• Growing in God’s Love: A Storybook Bible - edited by Elizabeth Caldwell
• Jesus is Risen - Augostino Traini
• Miracle Man - John Hendrix
• This is the Mystery of Easter - Amelia Dress Richardson

For a more middle/high grade look at the theology of atonement through a non-violent lens, the profile of Herb Montgomery in Holy Troublemakers and Unconventional Saints sums up Herb's approach. (There are several other free profiles there as well, including Bayard Rustin and Gustavo Gutierrez.) And if you want to go even further down that rabbit hole, check out his talks on nonviolence and the cross, where he draws heavily on liberation and womanist theologians.

Seize Joy Where It May Be Found

"What if I was in Sophie's body and Sophie was in my body?"

Sophie is our big, goofy dog. I am not a dog person. I did not particularly want a dog, but my family wore me down and I'll admit, she's a very good girl. Like all dogs, she loves treats, gets very excited about going for walks, snarfs up any crumb that falls on the floor, goes nuts for a squeaky toy and licks her butt. She was doing this last one as I was asked the question above by my six-year-old.

I said, because what six-year-old doesn't like to talk about butts, "Do you think you would lick your butt like Sophie does?"

"What? No!"

"Would you wait at my feet while I'm cooking, just in case I drop something?"

That one he thought about a little more. I started laughing, thinking of how silly it would be if my child acted like a dog and if Sophie started acting like a human child. Together we giggled as we thought of the different scenarios and ways that it would be funny and ridiculous to experience a human/dog body swap.

Even in the best of times, I have a personality that tends more toward curmudgeonliness than the whimsy. I lean more toward critique than appreciation. More staid than silly. Even more so than usual, in the interminable days of the pandemic, I find myself struggling to engage in delight and gratitude and affirmation.

To fend off the panic and sorrow, I turn the radio off when another doom-laden news item is being reported on. I try and sometimes succeed in not being entirely critical and demanding with my children and spouse. I use screens for escape. I get outside. Still, I haven't found anything that truly feeds and nurtures a sense of joy that is hard for me to come by at the best of times.

So I was surprised to find myself not only enjoying the ridiculousness of our little flight of imagination but returning to that moment in my mind all the next day. That moment - and it truly was only a short interaction - got me thinking about how I can seize moments of joy when the Spirit presents me the opening. I could have said, "Oh, you're so silly, Dogs can't be people." and that would have been that.

I did have that inclination a day or so later when I was asked, "What would you wish for if you could wish for anything." Just at that moment, the conflict in the Ukraine was being reported and true to form, my first thought was, How can I choose between world peace and the end to the climate crisis and for the pandemic to be over and, and, and... So I said something boring and dumb like, that all people would care about each other and the earth.

But then I backtracked. I said, "But really, if it's just for myself, I wish for a swimming pool."

"Where would we put a swimming pool?"

"How about on the roof?"

And again, we were off. Imagining how we'd get to a pool on the roof, deciding that actually a hot tub would be better in this weather, that definitely we'd some very good floaty toys.

"God’s Spirit blows wherever it wishes. You hear its sound, but you don’t know where it comes from or where it is going. It’s the same with everyone who is born of the Spirit." These moments when I let myself seize the tiny moments of joy were a gift of that same Spirit - blowing in unexpectedly.

I pray that you all may also find and seize the joy that the Spirit want to offer you
--
Photo by Dominika Roseclay from Pexels

Year in Review, 2022

Have you ever felt bad for not writing a year-end letter like all those put-together families who dependably send an annual year-end card? A card that's filled with beautiful pictures of their family along with a note or letter that shares what's happened in the past year. I have. I have also absolutely delighted in the pictures and the updates from some y'all or friends I'm mostly not in touch with anymore. Some of them are propped up on my desk or stuck to my fridge.

If you've felt the pressure to conform with the Christmas-letter masses, I'm here to release you; sending the letter or card isn't going to make you more worthy or interesting or lovable. You are all those things no matter what. If sharing a family picture and letter gives you joy, yay! Keep it up; your friends appreciate it. If you'd like to try a low-ish pressure letter-writing method that I started a couple of years ago which makes this task feel a less like a chore and more like a Spiritual practice, keep reading.

Real quick, though, here's a hot tip: a "Christmas" letter doesn't have to be at Christmas. I recently received an All-Saints Day letter (by email - a letter also doesn't need to be in the mail) from someone that included both her life update and gratitude to people who were her 'saints' in 2021. And I've sent both a Valentine's Day Letter and a Lunar New Year letter when those were the holidays nearest when I got around to sharing updates to my family and friends.

Okay, here's what I really want to share. I learned it from another family's annual letter. No point keeping secrets - it was Rex and Lenae. They shared (and still share) interesting or eventful or fun things about each month and I wondered how they remembered all the details. Turns out they were keeping track! Simple as that. So I started to keep track too. With no set schedule or routine, just whenever I think of it, I write down events or achievements or things of note that have happened that day or that week. I try to do it at least once a month.

I might take note of the start of school in person, a birthday, a funny thing someone said. Maybe it's getting vaccinated or planting a garden or a new interest someone's getting into. I also try to think about what I've been thankful for each month and to notice what's felt especially hard. No surprise there was a lot of Covid-related and things-we-did-at-home content in my 2021.

At the end of the year (or at Lunar New Year) I take a look back over the notes I've made. Not everything makes it into the letter. I edit things down a bit. But part of the beauty of this way of doing the letter is the opportunity to remember where we were and what we were doing throughout the year and giving thanks. This year especially I was thankful for all we made it through!

You might already be a journaling type and have a place to put these little notes. But a notes app on a phone would probably work pretty well. Last year I set aside a couple pages in a notebook I use for doodles and hand-lettering. The year I just tucked a couple pieces of printer paper into my planner that I'll move along to wherever I am at the moment.

I also include pictures in my letter, which seems slightly redundant in the age of social media, but it does liven up the page a little. May you find grace and blessing in the moments of 2022, whether or not you are writing them down.

A Wombat, A Nativity and A Mystery

 I've been pulling from my pile of Christmas stories for use in worship during Advent.  In one of my very favorites Australian animals put on a nativity play.  Wombat is eager to try out for a part.  Not only do we learn that a numbat and a bilby are animals (both - no surprise - marsupials), we see these adorable animals comfort poor Wombat when none of the roles is quite right for him.  Until...they all realize that there's one role that's just perfect.  

Oh. My. Goodness.  This book will definitely make your heart grow three sizes.  Pastor Megan read it on Sunday because I was keeping my coughs and sneezes at home.  You can see that portion of worship on our YouTube channel.

Another one of my favorites for Christmas is The Nativity.  This gem takes the King James Bible version of the nativity story (I edit liberally while reading) and adds Juli Vivas' gorgeous illustrations.  I wrote about it a couple years ago and many of our families received one with their Advent materials last year, thanks to the generosity of Rex and Lenae, who also love it.  If your family didn't get one yet, please let me know!

Finally, I'm currently on Day 7 of The Christmas Mystery by Jostein Gaarder.  This one's not a picture book, though it does have lovely chapter illustrations by Rosemary Wells, whose style I recognized immediately from the Max and Ruby and Yoko books. In a little bookshop in Norway, Joachim discovers an old advent calendar label "Magic Advent Calendar." Each day when he opens a door he's thrown into the story of another child - a little girl from 50 year ago.  In the company of an angel, a lamb, a shepherd and likely other characters I haven't learned of yet, a little girl named Elisabeth is running backward in time and space to the stable in Bethlehem where Jesus was born. 

I love a story within a story. I love a little magical realism.  I love fiction that takes faith seriously. And I love that at this moment there isn't much that interests both my teen and my six-year-old but so far they're both into it!  The chapters are short, fun to read aloud, and I could totally see this becoming an Advent tradition in our household.  One that's way better than chocolate - however fairly traded it is.  I offer gratitude and appreciation to Cindy Spencer for introducing me to this one. 

A blessing on your Advent reading and other activities.  

Breath and Bones

Our bodies are pretty amazing. It is a marvel to me when I really reflect on it, that these bags of meat and bones become bodies that breathe and balance upright, never mind do all the beautiful things they can do! The text from Ezekiel that we're hearing in worship this week speaks to specifically to the breath of God enlivening dry, dead bones. His experience with the breath of God got me thinking about a favorite craft from when I was a kid: turning my name into a body of bones.

I'm pretty sure we'd have done it on Halloween, but I like connecting it with this story and the prophecy of Ezekiel to the bones: Let these bones live! It's a fun way to introduce the bonkers story of Ezekiel to someone while getting your fingers a little sticky together.

I put the instructions to the bones craft below. Before you jump there, I want to offer you a moment to breathe. Do it now! Take a deep breath. Now, if you want to keep breathing, you can use these words as a prayer:

Breath in: Breathe upon these bones.
Breath out: Let these bones live.

Repeat as necessary.

It's, like, science or something that when we still ourselves and breathe we decrease our heartrates and reduce our stress. Breath makes space. May this prayer make space for the life of the Divine in you and give your weary bones new life. Now onto the craft...

Here's what you need: A piece of colored paper or construction paper, a have sheet of white paper, scissors, glue and a pencil.

Fold the white paper in half the short way and write your name with the bottom of the letters on the fold. Then fatten out the letters, making sure they touch each other.

Cut around the letters and unfold.

Glue down the unfolded letters to make the rib-cage of the living bones, pencil side down. Use strips cut out from the remaining white paper to make legs and arms and an oval for the head.

Voila! May your bones be enlivened by the Spirit of God within you.

Opting Out: Chosing NOT to Register for Selective Service

Thursday is Veteran's Day. Some of our kids might be encountering assignments in school that invite them to write about and celebrate veterans, assemblies that either glorify military or recruitment visits by armed forces representatives. When I was a kid in Canada, we glued crepe paper poppies to construction paper and copied out the poem "In Flanders Fields" by Canadian poet John McRae. It memorializes fallen veterans and invokes the living to "take up our quarrel with the foe." Honestly, I hadn't re-read that poem for many years and yikes!

As peace-making followers of Jesus, who want to encourage our children to encounter calls to militarism or even to remembrance with alternative kinds of activities. In the past, some of our parents have worked with their children on alternatives like researching heroes of peace in their families or communities, or excusing their children from attending Veteran's Day assemblies. We will not take up the quarrel, thank you. But until recently, many families haven't felt like they had an alternative for registering for Selective Service.

The Selective Service System is a program by which young men who have turned18 are required within 30 days to join a registry that names them as eligible for military service in the case of the draft. There is no way to register as a conscientious objector pre-emptively. There are almost no exceptions, though one of the things that is a part of my work with youth in our congregation is returning periodically to a Conscientious Objection registration, which helps young people (of all genders) record their beliefs about war and violence and the call of Jesus to peacemaking. In the case of a draft, those young people would have their beliefs documented should they claim CO status.

There is good news! I learned earlier this year that those who refuse to complete registration to the Selective Service System are no longer excluded from receiving federal financial aid. Until now, failing to register meant that access to FAFSA was barred. This has been one of the major hang-ups of many young people who are trying to decide whether or not to complete the application. Choosing to opt out of adding your name to the list of those willing to be "take up the quarrel" doesn't seem like much of a choice if it means that you then won't have money for higher education.

That doesn't mean there aren't still some consequences: those who are of age "must register to be eligible for state-funded student financial aid in many states, most federal employment, some state employment, security clearance for contractors, [some federal] job training...and U.S. citizenship for immigrant men."

And "failure to register with Selective Service is a violation of the Military Selective Service Act. Conviction for such a violation may result in imprisonment for up to five years and/or a fine of not more than $250,000." (More on all that here). However, my understanding about those consequences - particularly the legal implications - is that no one has been prosecuted for decades.

One additional tidbit that I learned is that in some states, any application for a state learner’s permit, driver’s license or renewal, or I.D. card equates consent to have information automatically transferred to Selective Service for registration if you are between the ages of 18-26. But Washington is not one of those states! So that's an additional heads up to look carefully at those forms to make sure you're not opting in when filling out those first forms for learners permits or renewing drivers' licenses.

Folks, however your spending this Veteran's Day, may the peace of Jesus light your way.