A couple months ago, I suddenly realized that I am older than Jesus. Christian tradition teaches that Jesus was about 30 when he began his ministry, which means he was somewhere around 33 when he was crucified. At 44, I’ve got more than a decade on Jesus, which means that my children may be right when they say that I am “older than God.”
Of course, 44 hardly means I have one foot in the grave, whatever my kids think. Since Americans are living longer and I have two great-aunts who lived to be 99, I may not even realistically be middle-aged. Still, I’m also very aware that I no longer qualify as an up-and-comer. When magazines publish lists of people who are going to change the world, they choose “30 under 30” or maybe occasionally “40 under 40,” but once you get past those milestones, you’re assumed to be either prominent in your field or… well, not going to be.
Jesus would have made a list like that, I’m sure. And there was a time when I might have too -- at least in the jewelry industry where I worked. In the first six years of my career, I was promoted every year or two, going from editorial assistant to associate publisher by the time I was 27. It was heady stuff. I started working on an MBA, and began eyeing the corner office. I loved my job.
And then I left it. I got pregnant, and after much soul-searching, I decided at 29 to stay at home with my newborn son and launch a freelance writing career instead.
At the time, I didn’t think I was giving up my ambition. If anything, I figured I was delaying my trip to the corner office by a couple years. But now, 15 years later, when some of the people I graduated with are being promoted to prominent positions, I find myself on a very different path.
Sometimes I wonder what I’d be doing if I hadn’t quit my job. Maybe I’d be CEO of some non-profit in Washington or New York -- I think that’s what I would have pursued if I hadn’t gone to seminary instead. And some days, I regret the life I gave up. I can’t help but wonder if I’m wasting the gifts God gave me. I wonder if on the day I was baptized, God was hoping that by this stage of my life, I’d be bringing together international organizations for a major new initiative on Haiti, or leading the charge against gun violence as head of a national association, or something equally important.
But when I look back, I’m also astounded at the ways each step in the path prepared me for what I am doing today. I’m amazed at the way each opportunity led me to develop gifts that I use daily as a parish priest, even though most of them never appear on priestly lists of essential skills. I feel gratitude for what I learned, and the ways in which I use all that knowledge and all those gifts in my current ministry. When I was 27, I would never have imagined that managing a magazine was excellent preparation for being a priest -- but every time I draw on what I learned from that experience in my ministry at St. Mark’s, I realize that I am, indeed, using all the gifts God has given me.
And then I also think, maybe God had plenty of candidates for the kinds of jobs that land you on the cover of TIME. God is a generous giver, after all, and the gifts needed to bring together international organizations to solve big problems do seem to be surprisingly abundant -- witness all those lists of talented young professionals. And surely, God has every bit as much need for the ministries we do without fanfare or fame, the gifts we use in small but important ways. Maybe God didn’t need me to change the whole world; maybe my gifts were always intended to be used simply to make my corner of it a more compassionate, more loving place. Maybe that’s not a small thing after all. And maybe the contentment I feel in living into that calling is a sign of having listened to God’s voice.
On Ash Wednesday, we kneel to receive ashes with the words, “Thou art dust, and to dust thou shalt return.” It’s a reminder of our mortality, and an invitation to reflect on the ways we have fallen short of God’s gifts in our lives. But falling short is not the same thing as unfulfilled ambition. The question to ask is really, “How am I using my gifts in God’s service -- or failing to?” not, “Have I achieved what God wanted me to achieve?” Because on the day of our deaths, what will matter is how we have loved and served God and how we lived generously into the use of our gifts, not whether or not our obituaries appear in the New York Times. By that measure, perhaps I am living up to my potential.
Tuesday, March 4, 2014
Sunday, December 22, 2013
Fitting In
For in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith. As many of you as were baptized into Christ have clothed yourselves with Christ. There is no longer Jew or Greek, there is no longer slave or free, there is no longer male and female; for all of you are one in Christ Jesus. ~ Galatians 3:26-28
Somewhere in the middle of the weeks leading up to Christmas, Fox news anchor Meghyn Kelly generated a small firestorm of controversy by asserting on her program that both Santa Claus and Jesus were “white men.” Even leaving aside the question of Santa Claus -- whose reputed European heritage is hardly the most incredible claim made about him anyway -- the description of Jesus as “white” provided ample fodder for television comics. Late night TV was quickly filled by comedians gleefully pointing out that as a Middle Eastern Jew, Jesus likely looked more like an Arab than a Swede, and probably would have been profiled as a potential terrorist by airport security.
But as a friend pointed out, what got lost in the controversy over Kelly’s words were the real story, which was about the struggle to fit in when the dominant culture incessantly and insistently tells us we are “other.” The black woman Kelly was replying to was making a point about how isolated and alone she felt as a child, surrounded by white Santa and white Baby Jesus, when her own family looked very different. It’s a struggle familiar to anyone who lives in the midst of people whose race, language, or religion is noticeably different from one’s own.
And it’s not just differences of race and ethnicity that can make us feel isolated and alone, my friend adds. Being unable to afford Christmas gifts when everyone is talking about Christmas shopping and the airwaves are wall-to-wall commercials for gifts to buy; being alone, without family or friends nearby, when everyone is asking about holiday plans; being in mourning for a loved one recently lost when everyone else is laughing and merry -- all can leave us wrestling with how to “fit in” in an world that feels alien and strange. You can probably add other examples from your own life. Sooner or later, all of us have the experience of not belonging.
But as it turns out, Jesus was one of those people who didn’t “fit in,” too. A Jew from Palestine under Roman occupation, a hick from a rural backwater called Nazareth, the son of a woman who had not been married to his father when he was conceived -- Jesus would certainly have known what it was like to be disregarded by the “in” crowd. What’s more, people who didn’t “fit in” were exactly the people Jesus befriended. Lepers, tax collectors, prostitutes, Samaritans -- these were the people Jesus lived among and ministered to, and scandalized the authorities of the day by associating with. People who didn’t “fit in” -- the blind, the lame, the sick and the poor -- were exactly the ones the Good News was intended for.
That is where Meghyn Kelly’s response to her guest failed. In asserting Jesus ‘s difference from “those others,” she missed the point of Jesus’ message -- that in God’s kingdom, we all belong. No one is a stranger. No one is an outcast. Leper and lawyer, black and white, Greek and Jew, male and female, all “fit” in the Body of Christ, by virtue of God’s love for each of us. Whether Jesus is “white” or not, he is always and undeniably for those who don’t fit in, those left out, those who are alone and on the margins, with no power and little hope. For those, like Kelly, used to viewing Jesus as “one of us,” it may be strange to say Jesus is “one of them.” But if we want to be like Jesus, it’s not our race or our gender we should compare: it’s our willingness to stand alongside those who don’t “fit in.” And maybe that would be easier if we imagined Jesus as black, or gay, or a woman, or an immigrant now and then.
The church must always strive to be a place where those who don’t “fit in” finally do: Not because we make them like us, but because we have learned from Jesus how to truly welcome those who are different. We must recall our baptismal vows, and be willing to see Jesus not just in those who look and act like us, but also those who look, or speak, or act very differently. We must be willing to hear the voices of those who have not felt like they belonged, so that we can expand our understanding of what God’s Kingdom is like until we see that the Good News is truly Good News for everyone.
Was Jesus white? Probably not, but that’s far less important than realizing that we are welcome and loved as we are -- and the same is true for people who are not like us at all. It’s time we set aside whatever need we have to see Jesus only as “one of us,” and realized that God’s Kingdom -- and God’s church -- is for all of us, in all our variety and all our differences, and in all the ways in which we don’t fit in.
Somewhere in the middle of the weeks leading up to Christmas, Fox news anchor Meghyn Kelly generated a small firestorm of controversy by asserting on her program that both Santa Claus and Jesus were “white men.” Even leaving aside the question of Santa Claus -- whose reputed European heritage is hardly the most incredible claim made about him anyway -- the description of Jesus as “white” provided ample fodder for television comics. Late night TV was quickly filled by comedians gleefully pointing out that as a Middle Eastern Jew, Jesus likely looked more like an Arab than a Swede, and probably would have been profiled as a potential terrorist by airport security.
But as a friend pointed out, what got lost in the controversy over Kelly’s words were the real story, which was about the struggle to fit in when the dominant culture incessantly and insistently tells us we are “other.” The black woman Kelly was replying to was making a point about how isolated and alone she felt as a child, surrounded by white Santa and white Baby Jesus, when her own family looked very different. It’s a struggle familiar to anyone who lives in the midst of people whose race, language, or religion is noticeably different from one’s own.
And it’s not just differences of race and ethnicity that can make us feel isolated and alone, my friend adds. Being unable to afford Christmas gifts when everyone is talking about Christmas shopping and the airwaves are wall-to-wall commercials for gifts to buy; being alone, without family or friends nearby, when everyone is asking about holiday plans; being in mourning for a loved one recently lost when everyone else is laughing and merry -- all can leave us wrestling with how to “fit in” in an world that feels alien and strange. You can probably add other examples from your own life. Sooner or later, all of us have the experience of not belonging.
But as it turns out, Jesus was one of those people who didn’t “fit in,” too. A Jew from Palestine under Roman occupation, a hick from a rural backwater called Nazareth, the son of a woman who had not been married to his father when he was conceived -- Jesus would certainly have known what it was like to be disregarded by the “in” crowd. What’s more, people who didn’t “fit in” were exactly the people Jesus befriended. Lepers, tax collectors, prostitutes, Samaritans -- these were the people Jesus lived among and ministered to, and scandalized the authorities of the day by associating with. People who didn’t “fit in” -- the blind, the lame, the sick and the poor -- were exactly the ones the Good News was intended for.
That is where Meghyn Kelly’s response to her guest failed. In asserting Jesus ‘s difference from “those others,” she missed the point of Jesus’ message -- that in God’s kingdom, we all belong. No one is a stranger. No one is an outcast. Leper and lawyer, black and white, Greek and Jew, male and female, all “fit” in the Body of Christ, by virtue of God’s love for each of us. Whether Jesus is “white” or not, he is always and undeniably for those who don’t fit in, those left out, those who are alone and on the margins, with no power and little hope. For those, like Kelly, used to viewing Jesus as “one of us,” it may be strange to say Jesus is “one of them.” But if we want to be like Jesus, it’s not our race or our gender we should compare: it’s our willingness to stand alongside those who don’t “fit in.” And maybe that would be easier if we imagined Jesus as black, or gay, or a woman, or an immigrant now and then.
The church must always strive to be a place where those who don’t “fit in” finally do: Not because we make them like us, but because we have learned from Jesus how to truly welcome those who are different. We must recall our baptismal vows, and be willing to see Jesus not just in those who look and act like us, but also those who look, or speak, or act very differently. We must be willing to hear the voices of those who have not felt like they belonged, so that we can expand our understanding of what God’s Kingdom is like until we see that the Good News is truly Good News for everyone.
Was Jesus white? Probably not, but that’s far less important than realizing that we are welcome and loved as we are -- and the same is true for people who are not like us at all. It’s time we set aside whatever need we have to see Jesus only as “one of us,” and realized that God’s Kingdom -- and God’s church -- is for all of us, in all our variety and all our differences, and in all the ways in which we don’t fit in.
Thursday, August 2, 2012
Can I buy you lunch?
“You know, I still believe marriage is between one man and one woman,” the 80+ year old man I had been visiting fired at me as we walked toward the door. It was a challenge: how would I respond?
“Yes, I know,” I told him. “And I honor and respect that that’s your view. I’d be surprised if you felt any other way.”
And I would. He had earlier that evening commented that he wasn’t going to vote for Obama, despite being perfectly comfortable with the idea of an African-American president. I had laughed and said that if he voted for Obama, I would start looking over my shoulder for the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, because we were surely in the End Times. Charlie would have no trouble voting for a black man -- but it’d be a cold day in hell before he voted for a Democrat. He had laughed along with me, and then told me another story of his service in World War II.
The parting shot was a test. He likes me, even though having known me for a year, he’s figured out that we don’t agree on much theologically, and even less politically. He appreciates that as his pastor, I’ve been a regular visitor as he’s struggled with several major upheavals in his life. He knows I pray for him, and he likes that I laugh at his jokes, even when they’re slightly off color. But he needed to know, could he trust me? Would I turn hostile and angry, and demand he conform to my view on what is, to him, a moral question? He didn’t want to debate it or discuss it -- if he had, he wouldn’t have waited until he was showing me to the door. He just wanted to know: would I still love him even if he opposed same sex marriage?
I was thinking of this exchange this morning as I read my Facebook feed and my friends lined up on both sides of the Great Chick-Fil-A Debate. A couple declared that those who had lined up on the other side could no longer be their Facebook friends -- or their friends at all.
And I thought of Charlie. I thought of what I didn’t say to him. I didn’t tell him he was a bigot who was attacking the wonderful and faithful marriages of my friends. I didn’t tell him he was an unfaithful Christian because he would vote to deny the rights of people I care about. I didn’t even tell him I thought he was wrong.
Maybe I should have. Maybe I lost an opportunity to proclaim the Gospel that God loves and accepts all people, regardless of their gender or orientation. Maybe I surrendered my chance to take a prophetic stand and speak truth to power, or at least, to Charlie.
But my church has been down that road before, and I can’t think of any good that came of it. No one changed their minds. Some people left, some people came, and a whole lot of angry and vitriolic words were thrown. More people left, many deeply wounded by the bitterness and downright nastiness that had infected the congregation as people took sides. No one new came, because who wants to be part of a congregation that’s fighting like that?
And the truth is, I do honor and respect Charlie’s viewpoint. I don’t agree with him, and perhaps it’s worth noting that I went from my visit with Charlie to a vestry meeting where, in a discussion about General Convention’s actions, I had declared unambiguously that if I were asked, I would gladly officiate at a same-sex wedding. If Charlie had asked for my opinion on the matter, I would have been equally unambiguous in declaring my own support for marriage equality.
But that isn’t what Charlie asked for that evening: he asked to be accepted despite what he knows is my very different understanding of the subject. He asked me to respect that it was thoughtful consideration that had led him to his own view, even if I didn’t agree with it. He asked me to make space for disagreement about this important topic in our relationship.
And I made space, because I don’t suppose I’m any more right about everything than Charlie is. And maybe if we journey together, we’ll both be able to discover the things we are wrong about, and see more clearly the Gospel that God reveals in us. Maybe the Holy Spirit will work through both of us to help lead the church into all truth.
I didn’t eat at Chick-Fil-A yesterday, although that’s a fairly meaningless boycott because I wouldn’t have eaten there anyway, since I don’t like fast-food fried chicken and there isn’t a Chick-Fil-A within 50 miles of my house. But if you did, well, that’s OK. We can still be friends. Maybe we can even talk about why the boycott is so disturbing to you, and why Chick-Fil-A’s support of anti-gay groups is so disturbing to me. Maybe from there we can talk about how we both deeply value First Amendment freedoms and the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection under the law. Maybe I’ll concede that I admire Chick-Fil-A’s commitment to honoring the sabbath by closing on Sunday and its tuition-reimbursement programs for its employees. Perhaps you’ll admit that the vitriol and hatred spewed towards gays by some of the groups Chick-Fil-A supports is absolutely contrary to the Gospel of a God who loved us enough to die for us while we were yet sinners. Maybe we can even talk for awhile about what the Gospel means to us, and what we think it means to the whole world.
Odds are, I won’t change your mind, and you won’t change mine. But let’s journey together, and see what the Holy Spirit leads us into. I know there are sharp rocks in that road, and I know what I hear will pain me, as what you hear will pain you. I know speaking my truth, and hearing your truth, may not resolve our differences, and we will have to learn to live with the rocks. But let’s journey together anyway. Because I do believe God loves us both, and that the Holy Spirit really is trying to lead us into all truth, however hard and long the road. And I think it actually has very little to do with whether I buy a chicken sandwich, or not.
“Yes, I know,” I told him. “And I honor and respect that that’s your view. I’d be surprised if you felt any other way.”
And I would. He had earlier that evening commented that he wasn’t going to vote for Obama, despite being perfectly comfortable with the idea of an African-American president. I had laughed and said that if he voted for Obama, I would start looking over my shoulder for the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, because we were surely in the End Times. Charlie would have no trouble voting for a black man -- but it’d be a cold day in hell before he voted for a Democrat. He had laughed along with me, and then told me another story of his service in World War II.
The parting shot was a test. He likes me, even though having known me for a year, he’s figured out that we don’t agree on much theologically, and even less politically. He appreciates that as his pastor, I’ve been a regular visitor as he’s struggled with several major upheavals in his life. He knows I pray for him, and he likes that I laugh at his jokes, even when they’re slightly off color. But he needed to know, could he trust me? Would I turn hostile and angry, and demand he conform to my view on what is, to him, a moral question? He didn’t want to debate it or discuss it -- if he had, he wouldn’t have waited until he was showing me to the door. He just wanted to know: would I still love him even if he opposed same sex marriage?
I was thinking of this exchange this morning as I read my Facebook feed and my friends lined up on both sides of the Great Chick-Fil-A Debate. A couple declared that those who had lined up on the other side could no longer be their Facebook friends -- or their friends at all.
And I thought of Charlie. I thought of what I didn’t say to him. I didn’t tell him he was a bigot who was attacking the wonderful and faithful marriages of my friends. I didn’t tell him he was an unfaithful Christian because he would vote to deny the rights of people I care about. I didn’t even tell him I thought he was wrong.
Maybe I should have. Maybe I lost an opportunity to proclaim the Gospel that God loves and accepts all people, regardless of their gender or orientation. Maybe I surrendered my chance to take a prophetic stand and speak truth to power, or at least, to Charlie.
But my church has been down that road before, and I can’t think of any good that came of it. No one changed their minds. Some people left, some people came, and a whole lot of angry and vitriolic words were thrown. More people left, many deeply wounded by the bitterness and downright nastiness that had infected the congregation as people took sides. No one new came, because who wants to be part of a congregation that’s fighting like that?
And the truth is, I do honor and respect Charlie’s viewpoint. I don’t agree with him, and perhaps it’s worth noting that I went from my visit with Charlie to a vestry meeting where, in a discussion about General Convention’s actions, I had declared unambiguously that if I were asked, I would gladly officiate at a same-sex wedding. If Charlie had asked for my opinion on the matter, I would have been equally unambiguous in declaring my own support for marriage equality.
But that isn’t what Charlie asked for that evening: he asked to be accepted despite what he knows is my very different understanding of the subject. He asked me to respect that it was thoughtful consideration that had led him to his own view, even if I didn’t agree with it. He asked me to make space for disagreement about this important topic in our relationship.
And I made space, because I don’t suppose I’m any more right about everything than Charlie is. And maybe if we journey together, we’ll both be able to discover the things we are wrong about, and see more clearly the Gospel that God reveals in us. Maybe the Holy Spirit will work through both of us to help lead the church into all truth.
I didn’t eat at Chick-Fil-A yesterday, although that’s a fairly meaningless boycott because I wouldn’t have eaten there anyway, since I don’t like fast-food fried chicken and there isn’t a Chick-Fil-A within 50 miles of my house. But if you did, well, that’s OK. We can still be friends. Maybe we can even talk about why the boycott is so disturbing to you, and why Chick-Fil-A’s support of anti-gay groups is so disturbing to me. Maybe from there we can talk about how we both deeply value First Amendment freedoms and the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection under the law. Maybe I’ll concede that I admire Chick-Fil-A’s commitment to honoring the sabbath by closing on Sunday and its tuition-reimbursement programs for its employees. Perhaps you’ll admit that the vitriol and hatred spewed towards gays by some of the groups Chick-Fil-A supports is absolutely contrary to the Gospel of a God who loved us enough to die for us while we were yet sinners. Maybe we can even talk for awhile about what the Gospel means to us, and what we think it means to the whole world.
Odds are, I won’t change your mind, and you won’t change mine. But let’s journey together, and see what the Holy Spirit leads us into. I know there are sharp rocks in that road, and I know what I hear will pain me, as what you hear will pain you. I know speaking my truth, and hearing your truth, may not resolve our differences, and we will have to learn to live with the rocks. But let’s journey together anyway. Because I do believe God loves us both, and that the Holy Spirit really is trying to lead us into all truth, however hard and long the road. And I think it actually has very little to do with whether I buy a chicken sandwich, or not.
Tuesday, March 1, 2011
Join the Union!
I’ve been thinking about my grandfather a lot this past week, as I’ve watched the country wrestle with the questions raised in Wisconsin as Gov. Scott Walker seeks legislation that would eliminate collective bargaining rights for public union employees. I wish I could hear my grandfather’s take on events.
My grandfather was a staunch Republican, a fan of Ronald Reagan and a “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” kind of guy. He believed government shouldn’t buy what it couldn’t afford, and was deeply suspicious of government “giveaways,” particularly programs that he thought promoted dependence.
He was also a union man, through and through. A small businessman, he ran a union shop, and was proud to be a member of the printer’s union. His advice on almost any subject was to “join the union,” so much so that it got to be a running joke in his old age.
I am not certain how he reconciled those two things, because I was in my early 20s when he died and did not yet have the wisdom to see that they needed reconciling. Our political arguments (and there were many, because Grandpa taught me to love a good political argument) were mostly about his commitment to self-reliance and my youthful enthusiasm for using government to fix what is wrong in the world. As I’ve watched events unfold in Wisconsin and elsewhere, though, I’ve been thinking more about that question, and I think I have an idea of how being a Republican union man might have made perfect sense to my grandfather.
Unions level the playing field. They help balance the vast differentials in power that occur when one side has all the cards -- money, influence, desperately needed jobs to offer or take away. Unions are the only way the working class can play the one card they have -- the fact that without their toil, everything the company’s owners have built is worthless. Unions brought us the 40-hour workweek, the minimum wage, unemployment insurance, disability insurance for those injured on the job, and industrial safety standards so there would be fewer injuries. In other words, unions made it possible for hard-working people to gain a toehold and build better lives for themselves. The union movement gave them bootstraps to pull themselves up with.
Sadly, unions do not always champion such righteous causes. Sometimes they stand in the way of needed change, and become champions of mediocrity, defending the jobs of people who probably deserve to lose them. They have sometimes carried an “us vs. them” mentality into a world where there’s now a much bigger “them” out there than company management. Public employees’ unions have sometimes championed the good of their members at the expense of the good of the people.
Alas, that’s the problem with human organizations -- they are never perfect. But getting rid of the unions is throwing out the baby with the bathwater. It favors those who already have power and influence, and if you think *that* doesn’t lead to greater problems than flawed unions, you need to read up on 19th century American history. Be sure you place yourself firmly in the working class, unless your last name is Rockefeller or you come from a long line of Boston Brahmins. I doubt you’ll come away wishing the world were the way it was before the labor movement.
I think we need *more* unions, not fewer. I listen to my professional friends talk about working 60 hours a week while being paid for 40, because they are afraid they will lose their jobs if they don’t. I hear them griping about the loss of benefits they feel powerless to stop. I hear about paid vacation time that “expires” because management refuses to approve vacations, again and again, because there’s too much work to get done. I read constantly about CEOs and upper management who collect multi-million dollar bonuses on top of their multi-million dollar salaries, while talking about “shared sacrifices” and insisting workers making $50,000 a year pay the cost of their health care.
These are just the kinds of corporate greed and individual powerlessness that unions empower workers to address, fairly and equitably, through collective bargaining. Unions force companies to share the benefits of their success with workers as well as shareholders. So I say, let’s have more unions, not fewer. Let’s have unions for engineers and accountants, as well as assembly line workers and electricians. Let’s force those with money and influence to sit down at the table and figure out how to fairly and equitably share out the pie. Let’s work on fixing union short-sightedness and greed, instead of simply handing the whole pie to those who are already getting the biggest piece of it.
I sympathize with the frustrations of those who have come up against immovable unions, and spent too much time defending against ridiculous grievances. There’s no doubt that we need to keep working on better ways to maintain a balance between the needs of employers and employed. But if an occasional shift in the balance of power towards the employed is the price we pay for keeping a place at the table for those who otherwise have little influence or voice, I’m willing to live with the union system’s flaws. I guess that makes me a “union man” through and through. I think my grandfather would be pleased.
My grandfather was a staunch Republican, a fan of Ronald Reagan and a “pull yourself up by your bootstraps” kind of guy. He believed government shouldn’t buy what it couldn’t afford, and was deeply suspicious of government “giveaways,” particularly programs that he thought promoted dependence.
He was also a union man, through and through. A small businessman, he ran a union shop, and was proud to be a member of the printer’s union. His advice on almost any subject was to “join the union,” so much so that it got to be a running joke in his old age.
I am not certain how he reconciled those two things, because I was in my early 20s when he died and did not yet have the wisdom to see that they needed reconciling. Our political arguments (and there were many, because Grandpa taught me to love a good political argument) were mostly about his commitment to self-reliance and my youthful enthusiasm for using government to fix what is wrong in the world. As I’ve watched events unfold in Wisconsin and elsewhere, though, I’ve been thinking more about that question, and I think I have an idea of how being a Republican union man might have made perfect sense to my grandfather.
Unions level the playing field. They help balance the vast differentials in power that occur when one side has all the cards -- money, influence, desperately needed jobs to offer or take away. Unions are the only way the working class can play the one card they have -- the fact that without their toil, everything the company’s owners have built is worthless. Unions brought us the 40-hour workweek, the minimum wage, unemployment insurance, disability insurance for those injured on the job, and industrial safety standards so there would be fewer injuries. In other words, unions made it possible for hard-working people to gain a toehold and build better lives for themselves. The union movement gave them bootstraps to pull themselves up with.
Sadly, unions do not always champion such righteous causes. Sometimes they stand in the way of needed change, and become champions of mediocrity, defending the jobs of people who probably deserve to lose them. They have sometimes carried an “us vs. them” mentality into a world where there’s now a much bigger “them” out there than company management. Public employees’ unions have sometimes championed the good of their members at the expense of the good of the people.
Alas, that’s the problem with human organizations -- they are never perfect. But getting rid of the unions is throwing out the baby with the bathwater. It favors those who already have power and influence, and if you think *that* doesn’t lead to greater problems than flawed unions, you need to read up on 19th century American history. Be sure you place yourself firmly in the working class, unless your last name is Rockefeller or you come from a long line of Boston Brahmins. I doubt you’ll come away wishing the world were the way it was before the labor movement.
I think we need *more* unions, not fewer. I listen to my professional friends talk about working 60 hours a week while being paid for 40, because they are afraid they will lose their jobs if they don’t. I hear them griping about the loss of benefits they feel powerless to stop. I hear about paid vacation time that “expires” because management refuses to approve vacations, again and again, because there’s too much work to get done. I read constantly about CEOs and upper management who collect multi-million dollar bonuses on top of their multi-million dollar salaries, while talking about “shared sacrifices” and insisting workers making $50,000 a year pay the cost of their health care.
These are just the kinds of corporate greed and individual powerlessness that unions empower workers to address, fairly and equitably, through collective bargaining. Unions force companies to share the benefits of their success with workers as well as shareholders. So I say, let’s have more unions, not fewer. Let’s have unions for engineers and accountants, as well as assembly line workers and electricians. Let’s force those with money and influence to sit down at the table and figure out how to fairly and equitably share out the pie. Let’s work on fixing union short-sightedness and greed, instead of simply handing the whole pie to those who are already getting the biggest piece of it.
I sympathize with the frustrations of those who have come up against immovable unions, and spent too much time defending against ridiculous grievances. There’s no doubt that we need to keep working on better ways to maintain a balance between the needs of employers and employed. But if an occasional shift in the balance of power towards the employed is the price we pay for keeping a place at the table for those who otherwise have little influence or voice, I’m willing to live with the union system’s flaws. I guess that makes me a “union man” through and through. I think my grandfather would be pleased.
Wednesday, February 2, 2011
Tiger Moms and Me
When my daughter was born, I held my tiny baby girl in my arms, and hoped she would one day play Little League baseball.
This is particularly strange when you consider the fact that I did not think about future baseball teams at all when my son was born, two years earlier. Eric could play baseball or not, and I would be content. But my daughter... I wanted sit in the stands and cheer my daughter on as she helped lead her Little League team to victory.
The reason is that I never got a chance to play Little League baseball. I loved baseball when I was in third grade. I had a baseball glove, which my father taught me to use, and I practiced hitting and catching with my cousins and best friend’s brothers. I watched the Red Sox every chance I got. But I didn’t play Little League, because in the 1970s in my hometown, girls just didn’t. My mother suggested that when I got to high school I could play softball, like my cousins, but no one ever suggested I challenge the boys-only assumptions of Little League, and I probably wouldn’t have done it if they did. By the time I got to high school, it was clear I lacked my cousins’ athletic prowess, so I never did play organized sports.
So when my daughter was born, the first thing I wished for her was the opportunity I hadn’t had. I imagined myself sitting in the summer sun cheering her on as she deftly fielded ground balls and hit line drives that made the boys duck out of the way.
As it turned out, Becky had other ideas. I convinced her to try T-Ball when she was 5, and she hated it. She was bored by the waiting and discouraged by the difficulty of hitting and catching. What she loved was gymnastics and dancing, those eminently girly-girl pursuits, with pink leotards and cute little skirts. Sigh. So I dutifully sat outside the dance studio and the gymnasium at the YMCA while Becky took her lessons, and have had to content myself with sitting in the baseball bleachers to watch my son play Little League -- because baseball turned out to be his favorite sport.
This probably tells you a lot about my parenting style -- and it’s not that of the Tiger Moms everyone seems to be talking about right now. If I were a Tiger Mom, my daughter would have played baseball, by gum. And she’d have been good at it, because I’d have thrown balls at her for hours, and spent all winter with her in the batting cages at the local indoor practice arena. I’d have sent her to baseball camp for weeks on end. I wouldn’t have let her wimp out after that first season because baseball was “boring.”
It is quite possible that if I had made her stick with it until she got good at it, Becky would have come to like baseball. And I’m betting she would have learned a lot by being the only girl on her team, and beating the boys at their own game. It certainly would have been good preparation for a successful career in a competitive world. Maybe the Tiger Moms have a point. These are, after all, the parents who produce concert pianists and Olympic swimmers, not to mention students that get into Harvard, which is currently one of Becky’s ambitions. It may be that in my lack of Tiger Momishness I am failing her -- that if I’d just pushed her harder when she was in kindergarten to excel at baseball, she’d have a better chance to fulfill her dreams when she’s 18.
But the truth is, I just don’t have it in me to be a Tiger Mom. I am just not very good at the kind of intense, demanding, fiercely detail-oriented, utterly child-centered approach Tiger Moms are supposed to adopt. I’m lucky if I remember to check and see if Becky has remembered to practice the piano at all, much less give it the kind of intense focus that perfection demands. The reality is I’d just be a bad Tiger Mom, because you can’t be a Tiger Mom if you sometimes forget to take the child to piano lessons.
Does that make me a failed parent? It occurs to me that the question, itself, is what’s wrong with the whole debate. The furor over the Tiger Mom is just another example of our national obsession over the “right” way to be a parent. Working vs. stay-at-home, demanding vs. relaxed, strict vs. not, Tiger Moms vs. whatever I am: Inherent in all these arguments is the assumption that one way is right and the other is wrong. And while there are clearly some parenting approaches that are wrong -- abuse and neglect are never OK -- I think a lot of our parenting controversies are less about right vs. wrong than they are “it depends.” I think the best parent you can be is the one that reflects who you are.
I may be a lousy Tiger Mom, but I think I'm a pretty good mom-who-plays-D&D-and-talks-about-almost-anything-you’re-interested-in. My parenting traits are curiosity, willingness to engage in discussions about almost anything, and eagerness to learn new stuff. I’m the mom who delights in museums and travel to new places, and doesn’t get upset when creative exploration in the backyard results in mud-covered children and a knee-deep hole. I may not be a mom who produces Olympic athletes or concert pianists, but I am the mom my son's friends hang around the kitchen with because they know they'll be taken seriously. They complain that every topic ends up coming back to religion, but they keep coming back with new questions.
In other words, maybe instead of the "right" way to parent, what we need to know is who *we* are as parents. Maybe there is no "right" way to parent anymore than there is a "right" way to pray. Will my style of parenting shape my children in particular ways? Absolutely. But what if there isn’t a “right” shape for human beings, either? What if it doesn’t really matter if they go to Harvard or become Olympic swimmers?
Little League was my dream, not Becky’s. She will be a different person because I didn’t force her into fulfilling my dreams, for better and for worse. It may be that her dreams will have more power because of it -- Becky is already mapping out how she will get into Harvard, after all, while I bemusedly look on. And whatever college she goes to, she’s learned to dream her own dreams and take responsibility herself for making them come true. And I’m really proud of that, even though sometimes I feel guilty that she’s learned self-reliance because I’m so bad at even the basic Tiger Mom stuff.
In the end, parenting is more about relationship than it is about a puzzle to be solved, or clay to be sculpted. And just as all the other relationships in my life have good parts and not-so-good parts, so does my relationship with my children. Parenting, for me, means giving my children the best I have to offer -- and letting them learn to cope with me at my worst. And really, that’s all any of us can do, Tiger Mom or not. Maybe we are so anxious about parenting styles because we are so afraid of that “worst,” so afraid that our children will end up the sum of our weaknesses. But we cannot make our weaknesses go away by trying to be something we’re not: Mostly, doing so only accentuates our weaknesses and buries our strengths. And one thing my children have taught me is that sometimes, my weaknesses allow them to develop their own strengths.
Ideally, in parenting we learn how to be what we truly are, and to teach our children to be what they truly are. So I think it will turn out just fine that Becky and I muddle along while we figure out what it means to be a Priest/Writer Mom and her Tiger Daughter. And I’ll wait for a granddaughter to come along who loves baseball as much as I did.
This is particularly strange when you consider the fact that I did not think about future baseball teams at all when my son was born, two years earlier. Eric could play baseball or not, and I would be content. But my daughter... I wanted sit in the stands and cheer my daughter on as she helped lead her Little League team to victory.
The reason is that I never got a chance to play Little League baseball. I loved baseball when I was in third grade. I had a baseball glove, which my father taught me to use, and I practiced hitting and catching with my cousins and best friend’s brothers. I watched the Red Sox every chance I got. But I didn’t play Little League, because in the 1970s in my hometown, girls just didn’t. My mother suggested that when I got to high school I could play softball, like my cousins, but no one ever suggested I challenge the boys-only assumptions of Little League, and I probably wouldn’t have done it if they did. By the time I got to high school, it was clear I lacked my cousins’ athletic prowess, so I never did play organized sports.
So when my daughter was born, the first thing I wished for her was the opportunity I hadn’t had. I imagined myself sitting in the summer sun cheering her on as she deftly fielded ground balls and hit line drives that made the boys duck out of the way.
As it turned out, Becky had other ideas. I convinced her to try T-Ball when she was 5, and she hated it. She was bored by the waiting and discouraged by the difficulty of hitting and catching. What she loved was gymnastics and dancing, those eminently girly-girl pursuits, with pink leotards and cute little skirts. Sigh. So I dutifully sat outside the dance studio and the gymnasium at the YMCA while Becky took her lessons, and have had to content myself with sitting in the baseball bleachers to watch my son play Little League -- because baseball turned out to be his favorite sport.
This probably tells you a lot about my parenting style -- and it’s not that of the Tiger Moms everyone seems to be talking about right now. If I were a Tiger Mom, my daughter would have played baseball, by gum. And she’d have been good at it, because I’d have thrown balls at her for hours, and spent all winter with her in the batting cages at the local indoor practice arena. I’d have sent her to baseball camp for weeks on end. I wouldn’t have let her wimp out after that first season because baseball was “boring.”
It is quite possible that if I had made her stick with it until she got good at it, Becky would have come to like baseball. And I’m betting she would have learned a lot by being the only girl on her team, and beating the boys at their own game. It certainly would have been good preparation for a successful career in a competitive world. Maybe the Tiger Moms have a point. These are, after all, the parents who produce concert pianists and Olympic swimmers, not to mention students that get into Harvard, which is currently one of Becky’s ambitions. It may be that in my lack of Tiger Momishness I am failing her -- that if I’d just pushed her harder when she was in kindergarten to excel at baseball, she’d have a better chance to fulfill her dreams when she’s 18.
But the truth is, I just don’t have it in me to be a Tiger Mom. I am just not very good at the kind of intense, demanding, fiercely detail-oriented, utterly child-centered approach Tiger Moms are supposed to adopt. I’m lucky if I remember to check and see if Becky has remembered to practice the piano at all, much less give it the kind of intense focus that perfection demands. The reality is I’d just be a bad Tiger Mom, because you can’t be a Tiger Mom if you sometimes forget to take the child to piano lessons.
Does that make me a failed parent? It occurs to me that the question, itself, is what’s wrong with the whole debate. The furor over the Tiger Mom is just another example of our national obsession over the “right” way to be a parent. Working vs. stay-at-home, demanding vs. relaxed, strict vs. not, Tiger Moms vs. whatever I am: Inherent in all these arguments is the assumption that one way is right and the other is wrong. And while there are clearly some parenting approaches that are wrong -- abuse and neglect are never OK -- I think a lot of our parenting controversies are less about right vs. wrong than they are “it depends.” I think the best parent you can be is the one that reflects who you are.
I may be a lousy Tiger Mom, but I think I'm a pretty good mom-who-plays-D&D-and-talks-about-almost-anything-you’re-interested-in. My parenting traits are curiosity, willingness to engage in discussions about almost anything, and eagerness to learn new stuff. I’m the mom who delights in museums and travel to new places, and doesn’t get upset when creative exploration in the backyard results in mud-covered children and a knee-deep hole. I may not be a mom who produces Olympic athletes or concert pianists, but I am the mom my son's friends hang around the kitchen with because they know they'll be taken seriously. They complain that every topic ends up coming back to religion, but they keep coming back with new questions.
In other words, maybe instead of the "right" way to parent, what we need to know is who *we* are as parents. Maybe there is no "right" way to parent anymore than there is a "right" way to pray. Will my style of parenting shape my children in particular ways? Absolutely. But what if there isn’t a “right” shape for human beings, either? What if it doesn’t really matter if they go to Harvard or become Olympic swimmers?
Little League was my dream, not Becky’s. She will be a different person because I didn’t force her into fulfilling my dreams, for better and for worse. It may be that her dreams will have more power because of it -- Becky is already mapping out how she will get into Harvard, after all, while I bemusedly look on. And whatever college she goes to, she’s learned to dream her own dreams and take responsibility herself for making them come true. And I’m really proud of that, even though sometimes I feel guilty that she’s learned self-reliance because I’m so bad at even the basic Tiger Mom stuff.
In the end, parenting is more about relationship than it is about a puzzle to be solved, or clay to be sculpted. And just as all the other relationships in my life have good parts and not-so-good parts, so does my relationship with my children. Parenting, for me, means giving my children the best I have to offer -- and letting them learn to cope with me at my worst. And really, that’s all any of us can do, Tiger Mom or not. Maybe we are so anxious about parenting styles because we are so afraid of that “worst,” so afraid that our children will end up the sum of our weaknesses. But we cannot make our weaknesses go away by trying to be something we’re not: Mostly, doing so only accentuates our weaknesses and buries our strengths. And one thing my children have taught me is that sometimes, my weaknesses allow them to develop their own strengths.
Ideally, in parenting we learn how to be what we truly are, and to teach our children to be what they truly are. So I think it will turn out just fine that Becky and I muddle along while we figure out what it means to be a Priest/Writer Mom and her Tiger Daughter. And I’ll wait for a granddaughter to come along who loves baseball as much as I did.
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Guests at the Banquet
This week’s sermon on Luke 14:1, 7-14... for those friends who were curious how I might put together Achievement, Wedding Banquets, and Grace. :-)
A couple weeks ago, while driving to church, I drove past a fitness center that had one of those little sandwich-style signboards out on the side of the road. In an effort to drum up business, they were putting cute, pithy little sayings up. This particular week, the saying was something like, “Discover the meaning of life: ACHIEVEMENT.”
I suppose most people probably didn’t even slow down. Those sorts of pithy sayings are almost always chosen for their universal agreeableness – the kinds of inspirational verbiage that doesn’t offend anybody. But maybe because I was on my way to church, it hijacked my attention completely.
Is it true? Can true meaning in life be found through achievement? Certainly it’s what our culture holds up as the highest good: My children’s educational success is measured through their performance on achievement tests. Job promotions usually focus on what we have achieved in the past year. We turn on in huge numbers for the Academy Awards and other awards show that focus on the achievements of actors, actresses, movie directors and producers. We hold parades and send trophies touring to celebrate the achievements of championship sports teams.
And yet… reading today’s Gospel, I get the distinct sense that achievement is not what Jesus is pointing to as the true meaning of life. Despite the fact that he sounds like Miss Manners, I think Jesus is trying to point his listeners towards something much more significant than questions of etiquette. This isn’t the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. It’s a glimpse of what the Kingdom of God looks like.
In Jesus’ world, social status was perhaps even more important than it is today. The seating arrangements at a casual dinner party were more carefully choreographed than most modern weddings. Where you sat sometimes even determined the food you ate: those at the head table would not uncommonly be served a better wine and more gourmet dishes than those at the lower seats.
So Jesus’ instructions here sound like simply good sense and manners. Don’t embarrass yourself by claiming a space too high: better to let your host reseat you higher than to be asked to humble yourself by moving down below the salt.
But taken in their full context, they push beyond simply good sense. Because Jesus goes on to instruct his hosts in who to invite, and it’s not the leading citizens of the town. It’s the poor, the crippled, the lame and the blind – in other words, people without prestige, without status, and without achievement. What are you supposed to do if you go to this banquet? Even here, are you supposed to seat yourself below the salt? Surely here, at least, you can feel confident of your superior status? If achievement is a valid way of measuring the meaning of a life, then it’s not hard for almost all of us to feel confident that we deserve a place higher up the table than the blind, the lame, and the beggar.
And I think that is Jesus’ point – our achievements don’t matter at all. At the Heavenly Banquet – which all our earthly banquets are foreshadows of – the last will be first. This is not just a veneer of humility, designed to exalt us in the eyes of others when we are asked to sit higher at the banquet. God means it – the people we are uncomfortable with, the people we regard as failures, the people who don’t have much in the way of achievement are the ones who will be welcomed first, and shown to the highest seats.
Jesus is not giving us a set of achievements to strive for in order to earn an appropriate seat at the Heavenly Banquet. It is easy to focus on the instructions part of this passage – don’t take the highest seat, invite the poor to our dinners – and miss what it is truly about. It’s about grace. It’s about God’s love that invites us to the banquet and exalts us even though we haven’t earned it. We are the poor, the lame, the blind, and the crippled who are invited to the banquet, who are led past the well-connected and the successful to take a seat at the head table.
In his book What’s So Amazing About Grace?, Philip Yancey tells the story of a young woman and her fiance who book a wedding reception at one of Boston’s fanciest hotels. The deposit alone is several thousand dollars, but they’re in love and they gladly hand over the money. But as the big day approaches, the groom gets cold feet. “I’m not sure I’m ready to make this kind of commitment” he tells his bride, and breaks the engagement. The bride goes to the functions manager at the hotel and pours out her sad tale, and finds the woman sympathetic and kind, but unable to refund the money already paid for the reception. “You signed a contract,” she apologizes, “and we can’t refund your money. So you have two choices: you can just walk away from the deposit, or you can go ahead and have the party.”
Rather than waste the thousands of dollars already spent, the former bride decides to throw the party anyway. Years before, she herself had been homeless. And even though she now had a good job, a nice home, and excellent prospects, she remembered what it had been like to live in a shelter. So she sent invitations to every homeless shelter and soup kitchen in Boston, inviting the homeless and the lonely to her high-class celebration. Tuxedoed waiters served boneless chicken – in honor of the groom – to a ballroom full of Boston’s homeless and hungry.
It is, Yancey says, exactly what it means to be a recipient of God’s grace. We are the guests at the feast, even though we have no claim on the host. The meaning of life is not about our achievements – not even those of mercy and charity – it is about being invited guests at a great Banquet. We are the ones who are served by tuxedoed waiters and thanked for coming -- not because we have earned our right to sit down to dinner, but because the host is amazingly generous.
It is this generous outpouring of grace to us that we are called to remember as partake of this Eucharist, this foretaste of the Heavenly Banquet. In our lives together as disciples of the Risen Christ, fed as we are on his Body and Blood, we become the hosts, the people Jesus addresses in his instructions, telling them who to invite. It becomes our task to share the feast with everyone we meet – young and old, famous and unknown, successful and down-and-out. Because that’s what the Heavenly Banquet, the Kingdom of God is like. All are welcome at this feast. All are welcome at this table.
Achievement, when it is a reflection of our joyful offering of our gifts to God, is a good and joyful thing. But it is not the meaning of life. The true meaning of life is found in knowing that whatever our failures, we have already been invited to the feast by the Host who loves us regardless of our achievements – or lack thereof. The Heavenly Banquet awaits us, and the last shall be first, and the humble shall be exalted. Amen.
Saturday, July 24, 2010
Just sitting and thinking...
The cover story in this week’s TIME magazine is a story warning us against the romantic attachment to summer vacation because “that downtime is making our kids fall behind.” I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised, really. The corporate world already considers any kind of vacation a criminal waste. Too many professionals brag about how they never use up all their days off, boast about how much vacation time they lost last year. They’ve convinced many of us to react with resentment toward anyone who gets (and can actually take) paid vacation, or who only works 40 hours a week.
To be fair, the TIME article has in mind far more than just another 30 days sitting in the classroom doing more math sums and grammar drills. What TIME envisions is more like the greatest summer camp ever, particularly for kids from tough neighborhoods and other low-income areas, who often lack resources for “stimulation.” There is certainly great value in suggesting that we could do far better by kids with few resources than we do now, especially when it comes to offering them fun and interesting alternatives to sitting inside playing video games while their parents work two jobs and tell them to stay put because going down to the playground means risking getting shot.
But I am wary of a “one-size-fits-all” solution, and I do think we have a tendency to overemphasize the value of “stimulation.” While doing nothing but playing video games all summer is hardly enriching, not every child will spend the summer trapped in a stuffy apartment. By all means, offer great summer programs for all kids, and make them free and available to all. But there is value in the boredom of summer vacation as well. And getting rid of summer vacation entirely, eliminating a good, long break where kids have enough time to get bored, would be a terrible mistake.
What message do we send when we fret about “falling behind” and ditch vacation time to improve test scores? It makes perfect sense if we say, as the corporate world would like us to, that the meaning of life is economic productivity. But there is much more to life than hours spent toiling to make stuff, in order to earn money to buy more stuff. The more hours spent working, the better, because then there is more stuff we can buy (though never enjoy, because we are too busy working).
The prevailing view in the campaign against summer vacation seems to be that summer vacation is good only for emptying our children’s heads of the useful and important information we spent 10 months stuffing into it. Summer vacation teaches our children to be lazy!
Well, yes. It does. It gives them time to learn all kinds of things that have nothing at all to do with economic productivity. They may learn to sit silently, watching a dragonfly or a frog. They might dig a hole, not for any particular purpose, but just to see how deep they can make it. They spend time with friends. They make crafts that have no purpose other than the joy of creating. They swim. They play games. They may even be forced to spend some time with family. They sleep. They rest.
In other words, they learn what gives life meaning. They learn about sabbath. They learn the wisdom of slowing down and resting from hard labor. They learn to do it in a slow way, not in a frantic rush to cram all the fun they can stand into the one week allotted by the Powers That Be. You can only learn to sit and listen for the still, small voice when you have no place else to be, or something to do. Constant enrichment could actually impoverish children, who will never learn to endure boredom long enough to wait upon God.
Summer vacation is not just the remnant of a time when most people lived on farms and were needed for agricultural labor in the summer months. It’s a remnant of a time when people didn’t move quite so quickly, when there was time to notice the passing of the seasons, when Sunday was a day of rest even for farmers, when sundown meant time to sleep. It’s a reminder of a time when hard work was valued, but so was time for prayer, worship, and rest. It’s a reminder of what a balanced life could be -- one with time for study and learning and accomplishment, as well as time for rest and reflection and just sitting there doing nothing.
In our 24/7 world, we have been taught to view every moment not spent accomplishing something to be wasted time. We multitask, and brag about how many things we can do at one time. And we look with horror at summer vacation as a pit of squandered time, when our children’s hard-earned academic accomplishment somehow leaks out their ears.
But corporate values should not be our values. The meaning of our lives is not to be found in how many documents we create, or widgets we build, or money we make. It does not rest in our ability to do calculus in our heads, or in having higher test scores than kids in Japan. The corporation may value us in dollars produced per man hour, but God values us for the wonderful, unique person God created. We cannot fully become that person if our every hour is governed by another lecture, or another set of flash cards, or more striving to achieve higher levels of economic productivity. To learn who we truly are, to learn what it means to be human, we need to stand on the shore and watch the waves... and watch them... and watch them. We need to sit on the lawn mesmerized by the ants. We need to build relationships not through Carnegie Mellon classes designed to teach us how to manipulate people, but simply by being present to another human being for hours on a hot summer day.
If I thought for an instant the summer programs we’d replace summer vacation with would include long hours for exploring each child’s own creative impulses, for sitting watching the rain, for hanging out laughing with friends, I might be willing to support them. But I know it would take perhaps 30 seconds before corporate values of accomplishment would take over, and school committees would demand to see results from those extra 30 days. We spent all that money, and all you did was sit around watching ants? How can you waste time like that, when you could have done MCAS practice questions?
What good is summer vacation? Why, it’s only where we learn who we are separate from the work we do, the unique person that God created. That’s something the corporate world would rather we didn’t know -- and it’s why kids need summer vacation now more than ever.
To be fair, the TIME article has in mind far more than just another 30 days sitting in the classroom doing more math sums and grammar drills. What TIME envisions is more like the greatest summer camp ever, particularly for kids from tough neighborhoods and other low-income areas, who often lack resources for “stimulation.” There is certainly great value in suggesting that we could do far better by kids with few resources than we do now, especially when it comes to offering them fun and interesting alternatives to sitting inside playing video games while their parents work two jobs and tell them to stay put because going down to the playground means risking getting shot.
But I am wary of a “one-size-fits-all” solution, and I do think we have a tendency to overemphasize the value of “stimulation.” While doing nothing but playing video games all summer is hardly enriching, not every child will spend the summer trapped in a stuffy apartment. By all means, offer great summer programs for all kids, and make them free and available to all. But there is value in the boredom of summer vacation as well. And getting rid of summer vacation entirely, eliminating a good, long break where kids have enough time to get bored, would be a terrible mistake.
What message do we send when we fret about “falling behind” and ditch vacation time to improve test scores? It makes perfect sense if we say, as the corporate world would like us to, that the meaning of life is economic productivity. But there is much more to life than hours spent toiling to make stuff, in order to earn money to buy more stuff. The more hours spent working, the better, because then there is more stuff we can buy (though never enjoy, because we are too busy working).
The prevailing view in the campaign against summer vacation seems to be that summer vacation is good only for emptying our children’s heads of the useful and important information we spent 10 months stuffing into it. Summer vacation teaches our children to be lazy!
Well, yes. It does. It gives them time to learn all kinds of things that have nothing at all to do with economic productivity. They may learn to sit silently, watching a dragonfly or a frog. They might dig a hole, not for any particular purpose, but just to see how deep they can make it. They spend time with friends. They make crafts that have no purpose other than the joy of creating. They swim. They play games. They may even be forced to spend some time with family. They sleep. They rest.
In other words, they learn what gives life meaning. They learn about sabbath. They learn the wisdom of slowing down and resting from hard labor. They learn to do it in a slow way, not in a frantic rush to cram all the fun they can stand into the one week allotted by the Powers That Be. You can only learn to sit and listen for the still, small voice when you have no place else to be, or something to do. Constant enrichment could actually impoverish children, who will never learn to endure boredom long enough to wait upon God.
Summer vacation is not just the remnant of a time when most people lived on farms and were needed for agricultural labor in the summer months. It’s a remnant of a time when people didn’t move quite so quickly, when there was time to notice the passing of the seasons, when Sunday was a day of rest even for farmers, when sundown meant time to sleep. It’s a reminder of a time when hard work was valued, but so was time for prayer, worship, and rest. It’s a reminder of what a balanced life could be -- one with time for study and learning and accomplishment, as well as time for rest and reflection and just sitting there doing nothing.
In our 24/7 world, we have been taught to view every moment not spent accomplishing something to be wasted time. We multitask, and brag about how many things we can do at one time. And we look with horror at summer vacation as a pit of squandered time, when our children’s hard-earned academic accomplishment somehow leaks out their ears.
But corporate values should not be our values. The meaning of our lives is not to be found in how many documents we create, or widgets we build, or money we make. It does not rest in our ability to do calculus in our heads, or in having higher test scores than kids in Japan. The corporation may value us in dollars produced per man hour, but God values us for the wonderful, unique person God created. We cannot fully become that person if our every hour is governed by another lecture, or another set of flash cards, or more striving to achieve higher levels of economic productivity. To learn who we truly are, to learn what it means to be human, we need to stand on the shore and watch the waves... and watch them... and watch them. We need to sit on the lawn mesmerized by the ants. We need to build relationships not through Carnegie Mellon classes designed to teach us how to manipulate people, but simply by being present to another human being for hours on a hot summer day.
If I thought for an instant the summer programs we’d replace summer vacation with would include long hours for exploring each child’s own creative impulses, for sitting watching the rain, for hanging out laughing with friends, I might be willing to support them. But I know it would take perhaps 30 seconds before corporate values of accomplishment would take over, and school committees would demand to see results from those extra 30 days. We spent all that money, and all you did was sit around watching ants? How can you waste time like that, when you could have done MCAS practice questions?
What good is summer vacation? Why, it’s only where we learn who we are separate from the work we do, the unique person that God created. That’s something the corporate world would rather we didn’t know -- and it’s why kids need summer vacation now more than ever.
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