Being a new parent has opened up new possibilities for discovery of God and humanity and truth and love.
I share here a passage from one of my class readings this week which I found thought-provoking. It explores the sacramentality of parenting. By "sacrament" I mean something visible and tangible that is a means or sign of God's "invisible" presence and grace. I thought other parents might appreciate this as they journey through the riches and challenges of parenthood (or reflect back on them).
"If we see children as gifts to the human community and not simply to their genetic or "social" parents, parenting arguably brings human beings close to a sense of divine grace and generosity...
...For every human person should receive at their most helpless the long-term nurture and protection they need not merely to enable them to survive, but, most promisingly, to flourish, and they should receive it from all adults, both male and female, in equitable relationships sharing the demands made by the young. They arouse in their parents the affections central to human well-being, and learn receptivity and intradependence as in the divine-human inter-relationships we explore via the notion of sacramentality...
...This has nothing to do with being unrealistic about the young, or about the traumas of relationship with their parents that may occur. The young can be insatiably demanding, smelly, spotty, runny-nosed, crying, cross and sleepless, willful and argumentative and impossible to please...
...However exasperating children are at times, however, if healthy they may be spontaneous, eager and curious, enjoying play of all kinds, imitating, singing, dancing, making things for sheer pleasure--the sort of habits that may develop into...many kinds of creativity...
...They are capable of eliciting the best from those around them, not least by way of time and attention, and sometimes their very presence can help relieve conflict, for it is in care for them that adults learn to soothe distress and anger, ask for help, help the helpless and show kindness, as well as to develop the patience which results in genuine respect for and tolerance of others...
...What we know of the attitude of Christ to the young indicates his willingness to be identified with them in their "littleness", given the way in which they and their interests are so readily overlooked...
...They continuously represent before us vitally important characteristics of adult life and of life in engagement with God. For the care of the young requires those most fundamental acts of washing and feeding without which no child can survive, transformed as they are into the specific sacraments of baptism and Eucharist; and the constant "letting go" of mistakes that makes it possible to continue life with one another and to open up the human future, which the young bear with them as they edge toward maturity...
...So much is shared with them before either we or they quite know what we are doing, which says much too for our relationship with God."
--
Ann Loades, "Sacramentality," in The Blackwell Companion to Christian Spirituality, ed. Author Holder (West Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), 259-60.
I share here a passage from one of my class readings this week which I found thought-provoking. It explores the sacramentality of parenting. By "sacrament" I mean something visible and tangible that is a means or sign of God's "invisible" presence and grace. I thought other parents might appreciate this as they journey through the riches and challenges of parenthood (or reflect back on them).
"If we see children as gifts to the human community and not simply to their genetic or "social" parents, parenting arguably brings human beings close to a sense of divine grace and generosity...
...For every human person should receive at their most helpless the long-term nurture and protection they need not merely to enable them to survive, but, most promisingly, to flourish, and they should receive it from all adults, both male and female, in equitable relationships sharing the demands made by the young. They arouse in their parents the affections central to human well-being, and learn receptivity and intradependence as in the divine-human inter-relationships we explore via the notion of sacramentality...
...This has nothing to do with being unrealistic about the young, or about the traumas of relationship with their parents that may occur. The young can be insatiably demanding, smelly, spotty, runny-nosed, crying, cross and sleepless, willful and argumentative and impossible to please...
...However exasperating children are at times, however, if healthy they may be spontaneous, eager and curious, enjoying play of all kinds, imitating, singing, dancing, making things for sheer pleasure--the sort of habits that may develop into...many kinds of creativity...
...They are capable of eliciting the best from those around them, not least by way of time and attention, and sometimes their very presence can help relieve conflict, for it is in care for them that adults learn to soothe distress and anger, ask for help, help the helpless and show kindness, as well as to develop the patience which results in genuine respect for and tolerance of others...
...What we know of the attitude of Christ to the young indicates his willingness to be identified with them in their "littleness", given the way in which they and their interests are so readily overlooked...
...They continuously represent before us vitally important characteristics of adult life and of life in engagement with God. For the care of the young requires those most fundamental acts of washing and feeding without which no child can survive, transformed as they are into the specific sacraments of baptism and Eucharist; and the constant "letting go" of mistakes that makes it possible to continue life with one another and to open up the human future, which the young bear with them as they edge toward maturity...
...So much is shared with them before either we or they quite know what we are doing, which says much too for our relationship with God."
--
Ann Loades, "Sacramentality," in The Blackwell Companion to Christian Spirituality, ed. Author Holder (West Sussex, UK: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), 259-60.
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