Parenting the old fashioned way.....

“If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will the heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him!" Luke 11:13


As I read through this morning’s Gospel, I was struck by what I thought was hopefully, a novel and interesting topic: Biblical parenting skills. In this passage we have Jesus making some rather telling observations on parenting from a man who was, as far as we know, childless. He talks about keeping the doors of the house locked up when the kiddoes are in bed. Good idea. He then goes on to talk about feeding children some interesting things: snakes and spiders. I have known some fussy eaters in my time, but I have to say baiting and switching on the dinner menu was never a good mealtime strategy.


Now, I think Jesus’ suggestions on how to parent your child are interesting suggestions in a very long line of actions on the part of Biblical parents whose own parenting skills were, well, questionable to say the very least. There is quite a list of parental behaviors that are real head scratchers, and just plan psyche damaging if we really think about it.


I mean, we have those original rivaling siblings: Cain and Abel. Now, I will grant you that Adam and Eve may NOT have had any real help or example of how to be a parent, but raising two sons who were such polar opposites could not have been easy. and they really could have used some heavenly assistance and guidance in helping these two learn to deal with each other.

Raising Cain.... and Abel, for that matter, ended up in disaster….you know how that story ended.  And that was just the beginning of a long list of parental gaffs and missteps.


Then there is Lot, you may recall him as a relative of Abraham who lived in the debased city of Sodom. The one whose wife would later turn into salt, but that is a story for another day and another relationship. Lot just did not have a real handle on what were healthy familial relationships. As he shelters three angels in his home, he offered to send out his daughters and a concubine who just happen to live with him to be ravaged by the mob that gathered outside his home demanding that he hand over his angelic visitors instead.


And then there is Abraham himself. When his wife, Sarah, realizes she is barren and unable to conceive a child, she hands over her maid to Abraham who bears his oldest son, Ismael. When Sarah’s jealousy rises to unbearable levels, Abraham sends his son and his mother, Hagar, out into the dessert with only a limited amount of water knowing full well that he was condemning them to certain death. Only by divine intervention did Hagar and Ismael find redemption and did not perish in the heat and the sand.


Abraham did not fare so well with his second child: Isaac, the child of Sarah’s old age. When commanded by God to bring Isaac to the mountain top to offer as a sacrifice, with a heavy heart, Abraham was ready to sacrifice his son, bound him, laid the him on the bed of sticks and wood on the altar and was about to plunge his knife into the boy as an angel of the Lord stilled his hand for this was a test of faith. I always wondered what kind of relationship those two had after that encounter. I am sure it had an impact on how Isaac parented his children those raucous twins: Esau and Jacob.


Rebecka, Isaac’s wife, gave birth to two very different sons in this set of twins. Esau was a rough and tumble kind of guy and his younger brother, Jacob, was more cerebral. Jacob was his mother’s favorite, and he knew it. He was smart and crafty, and at the rare age of 15 had “swindled” his older brother out of his birthright.  When their blind father was close to death and asked for his firstborn con to enter his tent for his blessing, Rebecka disguised the younger twin who was able to trick his father into bestowing the special blessing on him instead of his elder brother. This resulted in a real family feud, and Jacob took exile in the land of his mother’s birth and then wound up marrying not one, but two of his cousins….Talk about a troubled family…this one really put the “fun” in dysfunctional! 


And remember, these were the righteous ancestors of Jesus. No wonder he struggled with fitting examples of good parenting, there was plenty of questionable parenting in that family tree.


But the crux of today’s Gospel is not how poorly some parents have done in helping their children to grow and thrive. It is about our relationship to the living and loving God who has created us all and who is ready to bestow his Holy Spirit on us all. We are but mortals who struggle in our everyday lives, in our relationships with family, friends, spouses and children. We need to stop, sit quietly, breath deliberately and make the time and place for the Spirit, that the Father is waiting to give us; can find that space in us where it can dwell, grow and nurture us in ways that will help us nurture those around us as well.

Flags, Flaps, and Fighting

So, I am currently seeing someone who is an avid soccer fan. Well, actually he is a fanatic "football" fan whose understanding and use of that term is vastly different than this American-born person's. To me football is played in the fall and winter with an oddly shaped ball that looks more like a loaf of bread then the spherical shaped orb one normally envisions when making the mental connection between the word "ball" and the image that pops into one's head.

To him football is what I think of as soccer, and players run around in shorts and knock the ball around with their feet and sometimes their heads...no hands allowed. And whilst I grew up with images of Super Bowls with all the surrounding hoopla that has come to be expected on that super of all Sundays, he follows the games of the World Cup. I have heard many times how the World Series that Americans embrace is not a global event, and how the World Cup truly is, yet I still haven't given much thought or time to following what some have dubbed "The Elegant Game".  Just so you know, I don't really care about the World Series either, but I have started to follow the brouhaha swirling around the winning USA Women's World Cup Soccer/Football team more as a social, political and economic conundrum.

First of all, I believe in "equal pay for equal work", an economic dream for most women. In most professions there is still a disparity between what a man makes and what the equally qualified women makes, and that has held throughout my lifetime. The excuses I have heard as to why this happens in the realm of professional soccer starts with the argument that American men don't play professional soccer because the "big boy" sports here are football, baseball and basketball, and end with the argument that soccer is a "girl's" sport in America, so that is why the women's team is better than the men's. I know that neither of those argument hold any water, nor are they credible. But there are people that I know, whom I thought were rational beings, who have stated these and similar arguments since the women's team had such a stunning win.

Much of the swirling uproar is centered on the person of the co-captain of the American team, one Megan Rapinoe, one heck of an athlete. She has lead her team to not one, but two World Cup titles. She has been playing professional soccer for over ten years on three continents for a variety of professional teams. She is the consummate player and inspires her team mates and others to hone their skills. She has become a role model for many young women, and has earned the ire of others.

Ms. Rapinoe, besides being one heck of an athlete who has appeared in the famed Sports Illustrated swimsuit cover, is also an out and proud lesbian in a committed same sex relationship. In addition, she has indicated that she would not be visiting the White House if invited....I did think she jumped the gun on that one, since she announced it before the team won the Women's World Cup, but, hey, I think it was a very "jock" thing to do (no way getting around the sexism inherent in that phrase). If a guy made that statement, I don't think there would be as much flak about it. And then there was the flag drop and the "salute" during the National Anthem.

There has been quite a bit of very nasty and negative noise on social media about the often mis-perceived behavior of this one unabashedly loud and proud woman. I have seen folks refer to her as "Purple Head" as if that would bring her to tears...I think "ya gotta" do better than that! We have photos of her on bended knee at the playing of the national anthem...hey, were I can be found most Sunday mornings, that is an act of reverence and submission. And I don't see anything wrong with anyone taking a knee when the anthem is played, but, alas, I am coming from another viewpoint. Other folks are up in arms because they say she threw the flag on the ground and stomped on it....Stop already! The flag fell and was picked up immediately by another player. And, golly, gee whiz, she did not put her hand over her heart when the national anthem was played at the NYC parade. Well, here goes for those of you who were outraged: the hand over the heart "salute" is optional, not mandated.

So, do you want to know what the real deal is here? Dare I say it? Sexism, misogyny, and big time homophobia. Boys and girls, your prejudices are showing.

Interesting experiment...busing NYC

Nativity Bed-Sty

As a retired white woman of a certain age who grew up in a racially segregated city, I was "bused" from my white ethnic neighborhood into an overwhelmingly black neighborhood in Brooklyn, NY. Yes, the segregated city I lived in, and to a lesser extent, still live in, is the largest city in the nation: New York City. In 1957 my parents bought a four bedroom house in the Vanderveer/East Flatbush section of Brooklyn located a healthy ten block walk from the last stop of what was then known as the IRT #4 and #5 train. We had been living in the Fordham section of the Bronx in a fifth floor apartment close to where my parents had grown up. My Dad had a job in Brooklyn, and drove every day to his job along the waterfront in Red Hook. It just made sense for us to live closer to his place of employment.

We would have twice the space with plenty of room for the then seven of us: parents, four kids and my maternal Grandmother who lived with us, a backyard and a garage for my father's car! We moved in late summer, and my mother wanted us enrolled at the local Catholic school as soon as possible. But it was in the middle of the post-World War II baby boom, and seats were tight. After spending a week or two at the local public school; by sisters and I were shoe-horned into spots at a Catholic school. Only one of us would be gong to the local parish school; two of us, including my 8 year old self, would be taking a bus every morning to an underpopulated school in the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn, just under an hour's ride away. 

Bed-Sty, as it is lovingly known, was a neighborhood of brownstone row houses and parks that had flipped over during the post war years from a white population to a prominently black one, many of the newer inhabitants were from the South, the Caribbean or even Africa. The school that I attended, Nativity, had been built by Irish and Italian immigrants in the classic style of San Apollinare in Classe in Ravenna, Italy, a Romanesque building with a high vaulted ceiling and a replica of Michelangelo's Pieta in the back. There were two school buildings a rectory and a convent that created an inner courtyard where students assembled in the mornings and played in during lunch recess.

Nativity's school was underutilized since the shift in population resulted in a decreasing number of Roman Catholics in the neighborhood. The Diocese of Brooklyn looked at this as an opportunity of sorts, and began sending the overflow from other more whiter local parish schools into what some would consider to be "The Hood". So, like Senator Kamala Harris, I was part of a busing experiment. Unlike many white ethnic parents who balked at sending their children into minority neighborhoods and minority schools, my parents sent two of their soon to be five children into what those parents would consider to be an undesirable situation. And guess what? We thrived.

My sister who attended the local parish school sat in a classroom of fifty students; I was in a class of thirty. Her classmates all looked alike, white ethnic New Yorkers: Italian, Irish, German-American. My classmates were from all over: Hungarian and African refugees, Puerto Ricans, Afro-Caribbean, Central Americans, Asians, as well as the kids who looked like me.  We all studied together, ate lunch together, played together, and worshipped together which set us aside from other "forced" bused kids. I spent six years in a multi-ethnic and multi-racial environment, and it formed me in unmeasurable ways, ways of tolerance, inclusivity and an openness to learn and expierence new things. I developed a love of Cuban black bean soup, fried plantains and banana pudding that, thank heavens, I can usually get somewhere in this city when the craving strikes. 

That youthful formation has also resulted in a very unique lens through which I view society. In those early years all of my classmates were smart, bright, eager to learn and valued by our teachers, the good Sisters of St. Joseph. They showed no favoritism; they valued each of us for our personhood, not for how society may have viewed us. This rubbed off on each of us. We treated each other as equals, no one was better than anyone else. We were all held to the same set of expectations, and we met them. We truly liked each other and cared about each other. My expierence was an unexpected outcome in an unintended social experiment. It was an invaluable lesson in the universality of being human. We all got along; we all learned; we all valued each other as uniquely wonderful creatures, and we were friends.