Being a Good Host to Children

Our neighbor Oscar enjoys our fountain.

With schools closed during the pandemic, parents and children are spending a lot more time together, and so I thought this entry from my book, Henri’s Mantle: 100 Meditations on Nouwen’s Legacy, might be helpful.

Children carry a promise with them, a hidden treasure that has to be led into the open through education (e=out; ducere=to lead) in a hospitable home. It takes much time and patience to make the little stranger feel at home, and it is realistic to say that parents have to learn to love their children. –Reaching Out by Henri Nouwen, 56-57.

Both experience and science suggest that there is a parental inclination to nurture and protect offspring. But love is also a matter of choice. Parental love and especially maternal love is likely to want to hold on to the child; but it is the parent’s will that recognizes and values the child as an independent soul, not an extension of the parental self.

I truly wonder at my parents’ extraordinary ability in the midst of life’s demands and stresses to make my sister, brother, and me feel “at home,” as well as “to lead us out” into our own unique self-expressions. True, stereotypically, my father was more distant and my mother held on more tightly. And, like all people who love each other deeply, we wounded one another in various ways. Yet I am grateful for the comparatively safe environment my parents provided even as they worried about paying bills, the state of the world, as well as what we were up to. I don’t mean just safe from abandonment, neglect, or abuse. I mean also safe for us to cultivate identities, embrace values, and pursue goals different from their own.

With similar awe, I have watched my sister raise three sons, largely on her own, and serve as proud matriarch of an extended family that now includes three daughters-in-law and seven grandchildren—all while pursuing two different professions.

In my view, parenting is the most important task an adult may do, yet it is the one for which most receive the least training. To understand parenting as a spiritual movement, as Henri does in Reaching Out, is a beginning. He places it in the context of the movement from hostility to hospitality, transforming enemy (hostis) to guest (hospes), in this case, stranger to friend. Parents act as hosts and children as guests.

A host has not only the right but the responsibility to set the boundaries of a guest in the host’s home. We are not to welcome another with an “ambiguous presence,” Henri says. We are to be clear about who we are and what are our limits. At the same time, to be good hosts, we are to welcome the guest and the promise or gift inherent in every guest, encouraging the fulfillment of the promise they hold deep within themselves, enabling the development of the gifts every guest brings into the home. As such a movement toward hospitality, then, parenting is as delicate and vital and as fraught with danger as welcoming any guest into one’s home.

Just as we learn through experience to become good hosts in relation to other guests, we learn through experience to become good parents, uncles, and aunts. By the time I came along, I believe my parents were more experienced, relaxed, and secure in their avocation than when rearing my older siblings. And grandparents may be the most experienced of all, especially when they grasp that now their own guests, their children, are hosts in their own homes.

+Help me to be a good host to all children, welcoming their promise, encouraging their gifts, reminding them they are beloved by God.

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Copyright © 2002 and 2020 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. 

The Disruption of a Child

God has been imagined in a myriad of ways, but for me, one of the most profound images of the deity is fantasizing God as a child.

Almost any parent will tell you that having a child will disrupt your life, waking you at all hours, interrupting your plans for the day or your life, on occasion breaking your heart with their discoveries of human limitations and frailties—including your own—and their willfulness and resistance to your best of hopes.

All this, and yet a child has promise, promise of companionship, promise of an unbreakable bond, promise of a better future for the world.

That’s why the Christmas nativity stories speak to me.

And to think of God as vulnerable, weak, needing care and protection, so that the promises of God may be fulfilled! This is the spiritual life for the followers of Jesus: to be attentive to Jesus’ incarnation of God as compassionate, fatherly and motherly (think of the “Our Father” and the mother hen gathering her brood), creating and nurturing the birds of the air and the lilies of the field, feeding the multitudes, healing the sick, raising the dead, forgiving the crucifiers—remember, all these things Jesus asked of God in prayer. Jesus was the embodiment, God was the inspiration.

These thoughts came to me Sunday as I was part of a cluster of congregants (alongside similar clusters) creating Chrismons, symbols of the Christ, for our “Chrismon tree” at Ormewood Church: chalices, crowns, crosses, and more. Half of our cluster would be identified as “children,” but we were all children, both at heart and in reality: somebody’s children as well as children of God. We enjoyed the interruptive playfulness of creation in the midst of worship.

Children are welcome in our services, and though their drawing and coloring can sometimes distract from our pastor Jenelle’s or our seminary interns’ theological insights, many of us believe that their “disruptions” open our hearts to the serendipity, creativity, refreshing playfulness of God.

A dropped crayon rolling on the floor can be as much an occasion for joy as a spiritual insight.

And yet we did not miss a central message in Sunday’s sermon, that despite everything going on in our troubled world, we are to lift our heads in hope, in action, in resolve. “Stand up and raise your heads,” was the repeated sermonic refrain from Jesus in Luke 21:28, to which Jenelle would plaintively but rhetorically ask, “Really?” in a kind of litany contrasting the admonition with one trouble after another in our world.

Raising our heads in hope, in action, and in resolve is the ultimate disruption of the status quo, “the powers that be,” the way things are.

Jesus was the great Disruptor, challenging empire, income inequality, self-righteousness, political and religious authority, vengeance, and indifference.

May we follow his lead.

Photo courtesy of  The African American Lectionary.

This Sunday, December 9, 2018 I will be speaking for the 9:45 service of Emerson Unitarian Universalist Congregation in Marietta, Georgia, on “Christmas for the Spiritual but Not Religious.” The public is welcome!

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Copyright © 2018 by Chris R. Glaser. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Other rights reserved. 

Why Must Politics Intrude on Our Faith?

Join me near Chicago this Saturday for a 4 p.m. lecture on “Creating Community” (based on Henri Nouwen) and Sunday 9:30 a.m. worship “Discerning the Body of Christ” at St. Paul’s UCC in Barrington, IL.

A few days after Christmas  I picked up our morning paper and, before I put on my reading glasses, I saw on the front page a child on a sled in the snow, confirmed by the caption that began, “Heavy sledding…” I wondered where in the world the photograph was taken.

As I drew the paper closer and put on my reading glasses I was stunned by my mistake. This was no child laughing as he rode a sled through snow—no, this was a child crying out in pain, being carried on a stretcher over a caption that read not “heavy sledding” but “Heavy Shelling…” as in “Heavy Shelling Reported Near Damascus.” What I imagined was snow on the boy’s clothing must have been debris from the blast.

I felt much the same way when I read the Gospel lesson for the Sunday following Christmas. After spending Christmas Eve hearing and singing about the holy infant Jesus, so tender and mild, enjoying a silent and holy night in which all is calm, all is bright, I found Matthew’s text about the slaughter of the innocents disturbing and violent (2:13-23).

Here Jesus had just been born to Mary and Joseph, and was lying in a manger, sleeping in heavenly peace, visited in Matthew by three spiritual sages from another country who brought gold and frankincense and myrrh and, in the Christmas carol, Silent Night, visited by shepherds enjoying the “radiant beams from his holy face” that meant “the dawn of redeeming grace.” The only thing that had disturbed their silent night earlier had been angels in the heavens singing “alleluia to our King; Christ the Savior is born.”

Why, oh why, must this beatific image be shattered by political realities? Escaping from King Herod, who, if he can’t find this baby that threatens his political power, chooses to slaughter all the innocents—infants the age of Jesus, causing wailing and lamenting in his birthplace of Bethlehem. And why, upon their return from Egypt, must Mary, Joseph, and Jesus go into hiding once more, this time in Galilee, to escape the even more heinous son of Herod, Archelaus, who had ascended the throne upon his father’s death?

Why can’t we just have a nice little Christmas? Why can’t we all just get along? And why must politics intrude on our faith, disturb our praise and worship, interrupt our contemplative mantra of “peace on earth, goodwill to all”? Why must we read of slaughtered innocents and wailing mothers? Why must I pick up a newspaper and see such a disturbing scene as a terrified child in pain after the president of Syria has bombed his hometown?

If we learn nothing else from the subsequent life of Jesus, it is that spirituality is never an escape—it is always an engagement with reality. Jesus’ prayer “forgive us our debts” meant a lot to his poor, impoverished fellow Israelites. “Thy kingdom come” meant the end of the Roman Empire. If a Roman soldier compels you to carry his gear one mile, carry it two miles, because “Loving your enemies” is a revolutionary act.

“Give unto Caesar that which is Caesar’s, but give to God that which is God’s.” “Don’t be like these Pharisees…,” rather, “consider the lilies of the field.” Whether waiting for the bridegroom or your master or the owner of the vineyard, be strategic in your preparations. “Be wise as serpents and gentle as doves.” “If a town (or church) does not welcome you, shake its dust from your feet.” “Sell your possessions and give to the poor, and come follow me.”

“Go and learn what this means: I desire mercy and not sacrifice.” “Let the one without sin cast the first stone.” God’s “house shall be called a house of prayer for all peoples, but you have made it a market place!” All of these quotes bring to mind real world applications of Jesus’ gospel.

And then there’s the cross: a political execution awaiting our “holy infant, so tender and mild.”

So I wrote this prayer for the children of the world: 

In the name of Jesus who lifted children to his lap

and said “of such is the kingdom of heaven,”

we pray for the children of the world:

We pray for those who live in poverty,

            from our own neighborhood to those in hidden corners of the world.

We pray for those who live in danger

            of abuse, exploitation, violence, war, and disaster.

We pray for those who live in hunger and thirst,

            those who starve and those who are malnourished,

those enduring droughts and those whose water is polluted.

We pray for those who suffer illiteracy or disease, those who are refugees,

those who are illegal immigrants, those with disabilities,

those who are oppressed, those whose religion, culture, tribe, or nation distort their view of themselves and the world.

Your child, Jesus, suffered with all the children of the world

“because all are precious in his sight.”

In the name of Jesus who lifted children to his lap

and said “of such is the kingdom of heaven,”

we pray for the children of the world. Amen.

Related Posts:

Mohammad’s Child

Meanings of Christmas

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Newtown to Newcountry? "We Must Change."

Working from home a week ago, Wade mentioned he had received a CNN news flash on his phone that there had been another mass shooting. Busy finishing up the duties of my online course on sexuality and Christianity, I acknowledged this latest shooting with an “uh-huh” and continued working.

Only toward the end of the day did I learn the victims were children and the site an elementary school. I lost it. Tears immediately came to my eyes. First graders, six- and seven-year-olds, are particularly precious innocents to me. “Thy childish essence was from God,” Charles Dickens wrote of another such child. I lost it again when it was reported that wails could be heard coming from inside the fire station when their parents learned their fate. And the educators—principal, teachers, teacher’s aide—who  lost their lives, trying to protect “their kids”: OMG, OMG, OMG.

Moments of silence are being observed the day I write this, one week later, in memory of those so brutalized. Silence is good; it reminds us that there is nothing to be said adequate to this occasion. It gives us a chance to catch our breath and remember theirs. It gives a chance to reflect. But I’ve needed more than a moment. I’ve needed a week, which is why this wasn’t last week’s post. And even now it seems presumptuous, even dangerous to venture thoughts on the incomprehensible tragedy. I felt sorry for all those pastors and rabbis and imams who had to preach that weekend.

In his public reflections, President Barack Obama said of us Americans, “We must change.” Having both worked and volunteered in congregations, on campuses, and in community organizations, I have learned that those are the three most challenging and most resisted words. “We must change.”

Psychologist M. Scott Peck defined evil as “the unquestioned self,” which he saw at work both in institutions and individuals, an inability even to imagine one’s self or one’s group being wrong. I have used it to describe the church’s resistance to gay people. Whereas gay people, like all outsiders, usually grew up questioning ourselves, the church resisted questioning its prejudice and exclusion.

“We must change” is predicated on questioning ourselves and our institutions and overcoming our inertia, something we are reluctant to do. For Christians, this means also considering how Jesus would view us.

On departure from the presidency, Dwight D. Eisenhower famously warned of the “military-industrial complex,” which he had earlier warned would take food from the hungry. But his original draft warned of the “military-industrial-congressional complex.” He was persuaded to take “congressional” out, but how needful the warning is today, as we witness congressional impasse and collusion with weapons manufacturers, other major corporations, and the National Rifle Association. (See the New York Times editorial explaining that the NRA actually represents gun manufacturers, not gun owners. Btw, in my view, the NRA’s proposal of a guard in every school is the solution of a third-grader [apologies to third-graders] that would only add to the body count and further burden insufficiently-funded schools.)

When the Virginia Tech mass shooting occurred years ago, I led a prayer for that campus during a regularly scheduled prayer service of a church I was serving in another part of the country. I was stunned to have another progressive Christian offer what amounted to a “rebuttal” prayer, deriding our horror at that violence when things like that happened all the time in Iraq and Afghanistan. Of course we frequently prayed for Iraq and Afghanistan in that service. But that night, I felt particularly close to those on the Virginia Tech campus because I had spoken there, made friends there, one of whom I called to see how everyone was coping and if any I knew were among the casualties.

Similarly, I felt close to those on the campus of Sandy Hook Elementary School because my mother spent her entire professional life teaching first-graders, and I remember every day after school seeing how those innocents hung affectionately on my mother, even when they had moved to upper grades, because they loved her so and she loved them so. I could see her also putting her body between the shooter and those innocents.

At the same time, I am mindful of the ten Afghanistan schoolgirls, all under 12 years of age, killed in the blast of a Soviet-era landmine as they collected firewood for their homes on the Monday following the Newtown shootings.

“We must change.” That means me, and you, this nation and the world.

Copyright © 2012 by Chris R. Glaser. All rights reserved. Permission granted for non-profit use with attribution of author and blogsite. Suggested uses: personal reflection, contemporary readings in worship, conversation starters in classes.  This ministry is entirely funded by your donations. Please click hereto make a tax-deductible contribution. Thank you!