I was a proud and amused dad the other day. The story is, as I arrived
home from work and my wife and I caught up on the events of the day,
she informed me, with some apprehension in her voice, that she'd been
forced to explain the Trinity to our son during the day.
"He's only four!" she said. "Well, he is my son," I
reminded her with a cheeky grin, "In a few years time he'll either be
an atheist or correcting the pastor." Hmmm, she said.
But in truth I was just glad the task fell on her (looks around to
check wife not looking over shoulder) because he was so very close to
asking the hard questions the night before that I'd been getting a
little apprehensive myself. His mind is getting sharper and sharper but
he doesn't yet have the language or life experience to understand what
understanding I have to offer. It's far, far easier to answer older
people. I think he's rapidly becoming my greatest challenge. Anyway,
I'm sure my wife will get revenge one of these days and hand him over
to me for the sex question. Hmmm.
Oh, and in case you're wondering, he did seem reasonably satisfied
with how she explained everything ... for the moment ... till he takes
it to the next level.
I have had many people asking me questions about Christianity lately, but you know, the hardest questions of all are the ones my four year old has been asking. He has this strange way of disarming all my sophisticated answers and forcing me to face my own limitations. He asks me “why?” then “why?” then “why?” forcing me to go deeper, and then asks “where is God?” and suddenly I get this gut response:
Some things cannot be communicated easily
Some times I don’t know how to answer
Some times I don’t know the answer
Some questions are more penetrating precisely for their simplicity
So I find my self asking, what are the things God most wants us to teach our kids? How much can I teach my kids at this age? What does God want me to learn from my kids?
There's a new group blog on the scene that I think I'll be paying attention to: emerging parents blog.
Emerging Parents is a safe place for those involved in the emerging church conversation to explore holistic parenting ideas. We seek to discuss how we can follow Christ as parents, integrating our emerging faith and practices in with how we raise our kids. This is a place to explore, to suggest, to share, to question, and to support. All are welcome (non-parents included!) to join the conversation here.
As a parent of two young boys, questions of how can I nurture my children's emerging spirituality more effectively is an important issue for me, particularly since I have many questions with conventional children's ministries, books, cds, pre-packaging, etc, etc. I would also like to explore how parenting can itself be a spiritual journey with like minded souls. I am anticipating some interesting conversations may come out of this group blog.
As the father of two young boys, questions about how to nurture an awareness of the Spirit in younger ones is something that has become more and more important for me over the last two years, as my own boys have grown in consciousness of the world around them.
I have been meaning for some time to recommend a November iPod broadcast on Speaking of Faith entitled The Spirituality of Parenting, as in listening to it I was struck by some of the excellent issues it raised for spiritually inclined parents and the insightful comments about the emergent faith of children. Here's the synopsis:
"More and more people in our time are disconnected from religious institutions, at least for part of their lives. Others are religious and find themselves creating a family with a spouse from another tradition or no tradition at all. And the experience of parenting tends to raise spiritual questions anew. We sense that there is a spiritual aspect to our children's natures and wonder how to support and nurture that. The spiritual life, our guest says, begins not in abstractions, but in concrete everyday experiences. And children need our questions as much as our answers."
I particularly liked how the program fleshed out that last bit, about the importance of concrete everyday experiences and our questions in nurturing faith in children. Taking the advice of the guest, a Jewish Rabbi with a gift for speaking beyond the boundaries of her own tradition, I reflected on listening for God when walking with my eldest son the other evening and out popped all these questions about God. It was wonderful for me as a father to see just how much awareness was already growing in him.
This also feeds into an article I read two months ago (can't recall where) that noted recent research indicating the spirituality of boys was most impacted by their fathers, not their mothers. Men, this is one nurturing task we cannot delegate to Mums. It's not "girly stuff", it's "bloke stuff". It's initiation stuff.
Since I mention Speaking of Faith I would like to take the opportunity to recommend the weekly broadcast full stop. When I first came across it I expected the usual American Christian fundi rant. But I was in for a pleasant surprise. Though there does seem to be some Christian emphasis, it is of the distinctly more thoughtful variety (this week's is on the new Monastics), and the programming goes way beyond that to explore all sorts of alternative spirituality issues (previous weeks covered Thich Nhat Hanh and Rumi). A wonderfully thought provoking show.
If you liked listening to Rabbi Sandy Sasso you might like to check out some of her books at Amazon. Just follow this link.
Well today marks the end of a very stressful day for me, as part of a very stressful week, and indeed a very stressful quarter. The specific issue today was my 21 month year old son was in for day surgery. He was diagnosed with a condition requiring surgery three months ago, the same weekend I was diagnosed with DVT, and today was the day it came to a head.
We weren't even sure it was going to go ahead today as he had a mild cold yesterday, but we've been praying for him and drugging him up and in the end it did. It all went well - which is a real answer to prayer - but when he woke up, man, it all hit me at once. I am one of those guys who feels the emotional stress only after the crisis is over. Boy do I feel exhausted this evening. But relieved.
When Phil asked me if I’d like to join a gridblog on syncretism in the church, you know, the first thing that came to mind was the contemporary Christian obsession with family values. Family values? Yeah, family values.
What do you think of when you hear the phrase ‘family values’? Generally it is ‘Christian’ teachings on abortion, homosexuality, pornography, how we raise kids, who wears the pants, that sort of thing isn’t it? Generally it’s not discussions on war, global warming or commercial exploitation is it? That stuffs different, that’s public, not private.
It is precisely this bracketing of values into two domains – the public and private – that I find so problematic. If Jesus is Lord, period, then we should just be talking about values, period. The ‘family’ tag should become irrelevant. The values we apply to the private domain should also be applied to the public domain and visa versa. As soon as we start talking about different value systems for different arenas we are effectively denying the universal sovereignty of Christ.
How does this work out in practice? Well simply that if we conclude pro-life is a Christian value, we need to be consistently pro-life in economic arena (agora) and political arena (polis) as well as the domestic arena (oikos). If we think grace is an essential aspect of the Christian life then we need to exercise it in our business relationships as well as our marital relationships. As soon as we concede that the public realm is governed by rationalist principles such as the profit motive, and not something higher, we have marginalized the Messiah.
This popular restriction of Christian ethical focus to family issues should be called out for what it is: a capitulation to consumerism and nationalism; a species of syncretism; an effective confession that Christ's sovereignty does not extend across all areas of life. If Jesus is Lord, period, then we should be striving to live according to his values consistently across all areas of our life, simple as that.
For more reading on syncretism in the church follow the links below:
Slowly but surely I am starting to see God in the noise.
As a contemplative sort of guy I prefer to approach God in silence, in meditative solitude. I love the transfiguration story where the disciples of Jesus see his glory on a wild mountaintop. In my more wildly romantic moments I identify with the desert fathers and celtic monks and Christian sanyasins of the Indian missions. I love to chill in my places of solitude and listen for God's subtle voice.
But as a parent of a three year old and a one year old, with a busy career, that's sometimes a bit of a luxury. So, I've also been working on hearing God in the noise, in intertwining of our life stories with the stories of the ancients, in seeing the image of God written in the faces of screaming babies and demanding stressed company workers.
Today it was my son, Daniel's, third birthday. Lot's of little ones
running around everywhere. Noise, crys and smiles. And now, as the
house has resumed some semblance of calm (yes, you guessed it, I'm the
only one still awake) I thought I'd jot down a few stray thoughts.
and 
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