Nurturing Your Child's Spiritual Life (Bruce Epperly)

In the fourth essay in his series on parenting from the persective of process theology, Bruce Epperly speaks to the issue of cultivating trust in a child.  I found this to be an interesting and compelling post, especially after recently being with Martin Marty at the Academy of Parish Clergy annual meeting, where he spoke to the topic of his most recent book:   Building a Culture of Trust.  Bruce reminds us that the process begins as soon as children are born. 

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Nurturing Your Child’s Spiritual Life –

Cultivating Trust

Bruce G. Epperly

The world regularly disappoints us. Things don’t work out as we expected and our best laid plans are often thwarted by unexpected instances of Murphy’s Law. Our trust in the essential goodness of life and humankind is, on occasion, betrayed by institutions, employers, friends, and spouses. Illness strikes and our once predictable world is turned upside down. Beyond that, we know only too well the realities of natural disasters and unexpected accidents. We are never ever fully secure or safe in life on a personal or planetary scale.

Yet, trust, even in a world where death can strike at any moment, is essential for creativity, healthy relationships, and personal and community flourishing. Trust in the world and trust in oneself are intimately related. But, how do we cultivate trust in children in a constantly changing and often insecure world?

Erik Erikson spoke of basic or primordial trust as the most essential need of infants. To grow spiritually and emotionally, infants must answer what Einstein called life’s most important question: “Is the universe friendly?” with a resounding “yes” if they are to find personal and relational fulfillment. But, how do parents cultivate trust that lasts a lifetime in the first months and years of life? Obviously, the infant can’t produce her or his trust. This trust must come from the infant’s experience of the goodness of life, at a deep and unconscious level, through positive and supportive relationships with an infant’s most significant people, most especially mother and father.

Nurturing basic trust in an infant is a matter of parental character and spiritual maturity. Trust is nurtured by faithful and trustworthy persons, who can be relied upon to deliver what they’ve implicitly promised to those who are absolutely dependent and completely vulnerable. In fact, I believe that one of the roles of religious and spiritual traditions is to restore and promote the trust we may not have received in infancy. Healthy religion tells us that we are ultimately safe, cared for, and affirmed regardless of our life situation. The apostle Paul captured the essence of trust when he proclaimed that “nothing can separate us from the love of God” – not even persecution, illness, fear, or death. Centuries earlier, the author of Psalm 139 asserted that if we ascend to the heavens God is there and if we descend to the depths God is there. God is there even when we run away from God and cover ourselves in darkness.

Cultivating trust in infants is grounded in trustworthy and faithful parenting. And, this requires parents to cultivate a sense of consistency in care and love. While an infant can’t intellectually articulate the meaning of love, he or she knows love in action – in an available breast or bottle, in a soothing voice in the night, in the reading of books and massaging of skin, in the tone of our voice, and in the touch of loving arms. The Dalai Lama once said that we are blessed to be born into loving arms and later to die into loving arms.

As a grandparent, I seek to be faithful and trustworthy with my six month old grandson. When I’m visiting him and his parents, I wait till later in the morning to take a walk. My grandson tends to be an early riser, so his mother brings him down to me at 5:00 a.m., so she and my son can get a little more rest before facing the challenges of parenting, householding, and professional life. I place his concerns ahead of my morning rituals - writing or even meditating. I have learned that you can’t give a child too much love, nor can you say “I love you” in too gentle a tone. He learns trust as I securely hold him, come to him when he cries (nowadays after letting him cry a moment or two to begin to learn patience). He discovers trust in loving arms and gentle words.

Cultivating trust invites us to develop our own characters and spiritual growth. As parents, we learn to be trustworthy by taking time out for prayer and meditation, by learning to be patient with ourselves – and this is best learned through prayerfulness and trust in God’s care. We need to remember the flight attendant’s counsel, “put your oxygen mask on first” so we have the resources to be faithful through hours of crying, interruptions at night, and changes in old routines. Our own spiritual nurture reminds us that “it’s not about us” and that peace and well-being involve balancing our own needs with the needs of others.

Cultivating trust also requires a “village” not just to raise a child, but support and nurture parents. We are blessed at this time of our lives to be able to spend a couple days each week with our son, daughter-in-law, and grandson. We hope to do this for years ahead to support his professional parents’ balancing a career with family. And, beyond grandparents, a community of friends and a just and supportive social structure, including the government, contributes to an environment of trust.

Ultimately, we need to cultivate our sense that “all will be well” and that even when we reach our limits, we will have the resources to face life’s challenges with hope, courage, and equanimity.

Trust is a gift; the gift of community, of caring parents, and a trustworthy God. Life is challenging, but trust enables us to live through life’s challenges knowing that we have power to shape our lives and that, when are most vulnerable, nothing can separate us from the love of God.

Bruce Epperly is a theologian, spiritual guide, healing companion, retreat leader and lecturer, and author of nineteen books, including Holy Adventure: 41 Days of Audacious Living; God’s Touch: Faith, Wholeness, and the Healing Miracles of Jesus; and Tending to the Holy: The Practice of the Presence of God in Ministry. He has taught at Georgetown University, Wesley Theological Seminary, Claremont School of Theology, and Lancaster Theological Seminary. He is currently theologian in residence at St. Peter’s United Church of Christ in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. He can be reached at bruceepperly@gmail.com



Circles and Safety -- Process and Parenting #3 (Bruce Epperly)

The third installment of Bruce Epperly's take on parenting from the perspective of Process Theology takes us to a place all parents have been.  He speaks to the question of safety and risk.  How do we protect our children while allowing them freedom to explore and grow.  He mentions a book that I read many evenings to my own son; it's a book that serves to remind the child that no matter where he or she runs, the parent is there.  Runaway Bunny is a favorite of parents and small children for it speaks to the kind of relationship we all envision.  It is, of course, also a relationship that God envisions for us to have with God.  I invite you to reflect and comment on Bruce's essay about drawing circles of safety around our children.

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Circles and Safety

Bruce G. Epperly

In the Celtic tradition, travelers often begin their daily journey with a prayer and the encircling (or “caim”) in which the traveler rotates in a clockwise direction, inscribing a circle with her or his index finger. Whether we do this through movement or in our imagination, the encircling reminds us that wherever we are, we are in God’s circle of protection. In the spirit of Romans 8, we discover that nothing – none of our deepest fears for ourselves or our loved ones – can separate us from the love of God. With the author of Psalm 139, we discover that if we descend to the depths, God is there; if we ascend to the heights, God is also there. Like the story of the Runaway Bunny, even when we run away, or clothe ourselves in darkness, God is there to embrace us.

I have found the practice of encircling to be a spiritual aid, especially when I find myself struggling with stressful situations or caught up in fear and anxiety. When I experience myself in God’s circle of love, I know that despite my fears that all will be well.

Being a parent can be frightening. We fear for our children’s safety and place in the world. We are constantly bombarded by news alerts and commercials that remind us, often unrealistically, that we, and our children, are always at risk. There are no guarantees in life, even for spiritual persons.

While parents can practice many common sense safety practices, the issue of safety is spiritual as well as practical. Parenting is about expanding the circle of our children’s experiences and this always involves risk. At five months, my grandson’s parents have 24/7 awareness of where he is and what he’s up to. They stay in contact with him by: being in the same room and through baby monitors. As he grows older, his circle of experience will grow to closing the door of his own room for privacy to playing alone in the backyard and to going on walks and bike rides with friends or all by himself. Eventually, he will go away to college, making a life of his own.

Parents and children alike need sufficient “primordial” or “basic trust,” enabling us to face uncertainty with confidence in our own abilities and the basic benevolence of the universe. Process theology sees trust as growing out of the dynamic divine-human relationship. God is involved in each moment of experience, providing possibilities and the energy to achieve them. God does not and cannot determine everything or provide an absolute safety net, but in every situation, God is providing resources for our well-being and safety, both in our experiences and by inspiring others toward acts of care and protection. We are always in the circle of God’s love and our calling is to create circles of love that expand to embrace others and that promote others’ creativity and freedom. This applies to parenting as well as to mentoring, marriage and friendship.

Parents need to join order and novelty in their parenting. Order describes the safe circles of life, of responsibility to protect our children with all the resources we can muster in terms of presence, household safety and security, diet, and health promotion. Novelty relates to allowing surprising and serendipitous moments to occur. These always involve a degree of risk. For example, in teaching my son to ride a bicycle 25 years ago, I put him at a small degree of risk as I pushed him forward and then let go so that he could ride on his own. He fell several times and then – voila! – Off he went, having learned to ride on his own without training wheels. The move from crawling to toddling and walking involves pain and failure; and yet it is necessary for growth and maturity. New ideas are threatening – and at times, painful – and yet without new idea, we stagnate intellectually, spiritually, and emotionally.

As a parent and grandparent, I take the Celtic encircling seriously as essential to my intercessions on behalf of my son and grandson. I circle them in God’s care whether I am visiting them in Washington DC or taking a walk in my Lancaster, Pennsylvania neighborhood. The encircling reminds me that we are always connected and that my prayers make a difference. There are no guarantees in life – the sun shines and the rain falls on all of us. But, through the interplay of smart and safe parenting and a constant expanding of the circle of experience, we can balance safety and risk in ways that support our children’s well-being.

A Spiritual Practice for Parents: Regularly inscribe the Celtic circle (or “caim”) around your children and teach them to practice it as well. In your imagination, visualize yourself drawing a circle around your child as you pray for their safety, well-being, and creativity. Invite them to simply draw a circle around themselves by movement or in their imagination.

Bruce Epperly is a theologian, spiritual guide, healing companion, retreat leader and lecturer, and author of nineteen books, including Holy Adventure: 41 Days of Audacious Living; God’s Touch: Faith, Wholeness, and the Healing Miracles of Jesus; and Tending to the Holy: The Practice of the Presence of God in Ministry. He has taught at Georgetown University, Wesley Theological Seminary, Claremont School of Theology, and Lancaster Theological Seminary. He is currently theologian in residence at St. Peter’s United Church of Christ in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. He can be reached at bruceepperly@gmail.com

Parents and Playgrounds (Bruce Epperly)

Bruce Epperly returns for the second installment of his series on process theology and parenting, by looking at the way parents are present with children at the playground.  He raises the ever present question of how we balance safety and risk, so that children can soar.  There is a connection here between our own parenting skills and the way in which we envision God being present to and with us as parent.  I invite your reflections in response to Bruce's very provocative and helpful essay.

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Parents and Playgrounds

Bruce G. Epperly

When our son was small, the father of his best friend and I took the boys to the school playground every evening to ride their Hot Wheels three wheelers and play on the Jungle Gyms. My adult companion and I often engaged in animated conversations about literature and philosophy, but I always kept an eye on the boys. My task was to stay out of the way of their games and even some of their conflicts, to them let tumble and fall, but always be on the alert for real danger and run to the rescue if need be! The proof of my balance of distance and safekeeping is that both boys are still alive, married, and great friends.

Watching my infant grandson reminds me that good parenting involves intimacy and distance, order and chaos, safety and appropriate risk, immediacy and waiting an extra moment to intervene or respond to a cry. We parents feel our children’s pain, but good parenting involves appropriate distance so that children can learn self-reliance, patience, and problem-solving. Just recently my own son and his wife – and the grandparents, to a lesser extent – experienced this balance of intimacy and distance as they made the transition from their child sleeping in a co-bed in their room to him going to sleep in his own room. We all had to resist going in for a few moments to allow him to learn to soothe himself to sleep. (Of course, we did not leave him alone with his tears for too long!) This was tough since every cry broke our hearts.

Process theology sees life as a dynamic balance of order and novelty, and safety and risk. Disorder and pain are inevitable in a world in which there are many agents, each with her or his agenda. Not even God can control the outcome of every situation. As a matter of fact, the philosopher Alfred North Whitehead, the parent of modern process thought, says that God’s vision, God’s action in any given situation, is the “best for that impasse.” Good parenting involves that right blend of order and predictability and innovation and surprise. In the evolving parent-child relationship, parents optimally encourage creativity and freedom appropriate to the child’s age. This isn’t always easy for either parent or child.

I recall the experience of encouraging our son to walk to school. Although most of the time, I drove him the circuitous route to his elementary school, I decided at one point that he should walk part way. We lived on a busy street so I always crossed the street with him. At the right time, we decided to experiment with walking to school. Over the course of a week, I gradually extended the circle of his freedom and agency – the first day, he just walked 50 feet by himself; the second day, 100 feet; the third day, the length of a football field. By the end of the week, he could walk the block and a half to school. Now, throughout this time, I always remained at the top of the hill watching him all the way to the school yard, always ready to sprint down the hill if I saw the slightest hint of danger. My son and I coined a phrase “I’ll watch you home” to describe any occasion where he was “on his own,” but I was there to provide the safety net, reassurance, or a virtual playground within which he could feel secure.

Parenting, like divinity, is about playgrounds and balancing safety, innovation, and risk. We hear a lot about “helicopter parents,” who even try to shape their children’s lives and insure their success in college. Such hyper-vigilance eventually makes a prison out of a playground, and prevents children from soaring on their own. Now, I belong to the “careful parents” and “careful grandparents” union! I am an intimate parent who still is involved at times as a coach and mentor, occasionally, an alternative voice in my own son’s life. (Of course, now that he is an adult, he gives me plenty of advice, too! And, he began to advise me on my clothes and public behavior nearly twenty years ago!) But, I realize that he is the ultimate decision maker now. I need to let go of being too good an advisor. My influence is in his bones and conscience, in his values and aspirations. My words are consultative, whether they relate to work or parenting, and given with a dash of humility since he now knows things and has expertise in some areas beyond my own. He is developing his own parenting style and his own way of navigating adult relationships; something we are always learning.

From a process perspective, there are many good ways of parenting, and good parenting is always situational and grounded in the relationship of the child’s experience and the parent’s gifts. Still, in the spirit of an evolving universe, good parenting – imitating the divine – is about expanding freedom and creativity and encouraging imagination and its embodiment in daily life. It is about nurturing a child’s own experience and uniqueness, mirroring God’s own movements in her or his life. It is about the intimacy of care and mentoring, and privacy of self-creation and growth. Imagine “all the places you’ll go.”

Today’s Spiritual Practice: Take some time to be still resting in the safety of the Universe. After breathing in a sense of peace, visualize your child or grandchild (or the child you are expecting). Imagine them as healthy, whole, and safe. Now, visualize them as growing in ability, resourcefulness, and courage. See them expand their circle of freedom. Imagine ways that you can encourage their freedom and creativity, while preserving their safety.

Today’s Affirmation: I nurture the right balance of safety and freedom in my child’s life.

Bruce Epperly is a theologian, spiritual guide, healing companion, retreat leader and lecturer, and author of nineteen books, including Holy Adventure: 41 Days of Audacious Living; God’s Touch: Faith, Wholeness, and the Healing Miracles of Jesus; Reiki Healing Touch and the Way of Jesus; and Tending to the Holy: The Practice of the Presence of God in Ministry. He may be reached for questions and engagements at bruceepperly@gmail.com.

Process and Parenting: Beauty and Breathing (Bruce Epperly)

Bruce Epperly returns with a new series of guest posts.  As a new grandfather, Bruce brings his theological foundations to the practice of parenting.  This is the first of four essays.  Enjoy!

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Process and Parenting:

Beauty and Breathing

Bruce G. Epperly

My recent adventures in grandparenting have inspired me to reflect on the role of parents as agents of creative transformation and growth in the lives of our children. While there are many pathways to creative and healthy parenting, I believe that the process-relational vision of life can provide parents with both practices and insights. These insights provide a context for the array of good materials on parenting, spiritual development, relationships, and healthy diet penned by psychologists, pediatricians, theologians, and holistic nutritionists.

Alfred North Whitehead once asserted that the aim of the universe is to bring forth beauty. John’s gospel captures this same insight in terms of Jesus’ affirmation that the goal of his ministry was abundant life. God wants us to live beautiful and abundant lives. That’s good counsel for parents – bring beauty into the lives of your children – and claim beauty for yourselves!

Perhaps, no human act shares in God’s activity as much as parenting. Just as God seeks the greatest good in every moment of experience, working with the many factors of life, so we humans in our role as parents are challenged to work within the many events of life – DNA, environment, and gifts and talents – both ours and our child’s. The question for parents is: how do we nurture beauty and abundant life in our role as parents? This is as much about us as our children!

Over the next few weeks, I will be reflecting on parenting from a process perspective, focusing on abundance, beauty, creativity and innovation, relationship, and character and courage. Children born in the twenty-first century, like my own grandson, will face a world of unprecedented change; indeed, they will face changes in planetary climate, the distribution of power, communication and medicine, and economics. The quest for beauty and abundant life will involve, in such circumstances, agility of spirit, the ability to initiate novelty – to make innovations – in response to the constant novelty of 21st century life. This will be, as Whitehead suggests, not just a matter of living – of sustaining life – but living well and living better. Today’s children will need to balance the global and local as they discover that individual well-being must include the well-being of the whole planet and the communities of which they are a part.

Today, I just begin with a simple affirmation: As a parent, I seek to nurture beauty of experience for my child, myself and significant others, and for other children. Beauty has many definitions, but it involves a dynamic interplay of unity and diversity, contrast rather polarization, plurality rather than monotony. As a parent, I seek to create from which our ability to experience beauty emerges – and that is simply trust in the goodness of life. Process theology affirms that God is present in every encounter, seeking the highest good in every situation. As parents, we seek to embody the same values: providing enough vision, support, and safety for a child’s exploration. Just as God provides spiritual nurture and overall consistency to the universe, we parents seek to join order and novelty as the basis for beauty of experience.

Order involves providing a basic safety net, a sense of security that enables a child to feel comfortable with her or his explorations. With infants this means an immediacy of love, care, and nurture. It involves parents cultivating patience as well as endurance to respond to midnight feedings, tears and fears, and the constant need for attention, especially in the first months of life. In many ways, parents and caregivers need to be omnipresent at life’s beginnings, responding immediately to every need, and only later cultivating a creative distance which allows the infant to grow in her or his own patience and ability to wait for gratification and others’ responses. The quest for beauty and personal growth involves nurturing freedom and creativity in the context of safety and every expanding circles of order.

As parents, we are challenged to see the world with eyes of wonder – to have the beginner’s mind just as an infant does, seeing the world and our child as if for the first time. With infants, every moment is a “thin place” – a place of holiness – as they encounter the world and parents are invited to share in this moment by moment novelty. This isn’t an easy task, because we have already established our own ways of orienting the world. But, the coming of an infant calls us to spiritual growth in which we learn to live moment by moment - in this now, considering the lilies as well as our child’s next breath.

Parenting truly is a spiritual discipline – it involves vision, patience, and self-care. Self-care almost seems impossible to new parents; but parents who realize that “it takes a village” will call upon grandparents, close friends, and occasionally paid companions in the first weeks of a baby’s life just to get a moment of self-nurture, rest, and prayer. Parenting involves an expansion of care – of altruism – such that the well-being of my child is as important as my own. I suspect that this is both a matter of nature – of the deeply-rooted desire to preserve the species – as nurture – the cultivation of practices of love, patience, and wholeness. We can’t control a child’s crying initially, but – as Viktor Frankl suggests – we have freedom in our response.

A Spiritual Practice for Parenting: The easiest spiritual practice for mothers and fathers is simply breathing. We can breathe intentionally, opening to the calming resources of the universe. We can see our breath as a way of connecting with our highest wisdom and calm, our insights. Breath inspires and connects with greater wisdom and peace. Breath enables us to be more patient and awakens our own energy when we are fatigued. It centers us so that we can provide a healthy center for our child. So, begin the day with conscious breathing and take a deep holy breath whenever you become stressed or impatient with your child.

Beauty and breathing are today’s words for process parenting along with opening to the resources of your community for your self-care and the care of your child.

Bruce Epperly is a theologian, spiritual guide, healing companion, retreat leader and lecturer, and author of nineteen books, including Holy Adventure: 41 Days of Audacious Living; God’s Touch: Faith, Wholeness, and the Healing Miracles of Jesus; Reiki Healing Touch and the Way of Jesus; and Tending to the Holy: The Practice of the Presence of God in Ministry. He may be reached for questions and engagements at bruceepperly@gmail.com.

 

Children, Worship, and Sermons

A long time ago, in my first stop as a parish pastor, I did children's sermons.  We had about five or so children, my son being the oldest -- he was eight when we moved to Santa Barbara.  The people wanted us to have the sermons "for the" children.   The argument for having children's moments or children's sermons is that it lets the children know that their welcome.  I did them for several years, though I can't say I did them well.  I am by training and inclination, more geared to talking to college students and adults.  Trying to get the message into a form that has a useful take away for the kids has always been difficult.  Finally, after consulting with the children, including my own son, we abandoned the idea.  They didn't enjoy being paraded up to the front so that they could talk to the pastor, or rather so the pastor could try to talk to them (with all the adults looking on).  I've not done these things at the last two churches, in part because we've not had children of the requisite age.  Of course, in my first church there were some older folks that said they missed the children sermons.  I think they liked the brevity of those "sermons."

Having opened with this confession of past sins, I want to bring into the conversation none other than Will Willimon.  It so happens that Will is in agreement.  From his experience (he tried them a few times, rather unsuccessfully), he's not sure that children's sermons are either for the children or are sermons.  For the most part they end up being little more than morality plays, reminding the boys and girls to be good and mind their parents. 

Willimon writes in a Theolog posting:

From what I observe the most effective children’s sermons are delivered by laypersons who are called and equipped by God to communicate with children. A stiff, uncomfortable, age-inappropriate lecture by a pastor sends the wrong message to children and congregation. True, it is important for the congregation to see the pastor as relating well to children (our aging church desperately needs more young families and children), but there are numerous ways to do this more effectively than in exclusively verbal, abstract communication. For instance, every time the church celebrates a baptism, why not call all the children down front and have them gather about the font so they can see what’s going on? Try to explain one thing we believe about baptism to the children. They may have difficulty knowing what to make of “redemption” but they all know about water! Jesus communicates with us through ordinary, everyday experiences like eating and drinking, bathing and singing, all activities that are accessible, though at different levels, to children.

I believe that children should be included and that pastors should engage the children.  I try my very best to connect with the children in the churches I pastor, I just don't think a 2 minute "children's moment" is the best way to do this. 

 

Willimon points out that we would never invite all the over 65 members to come down front for a special message from the pastor, so why should we expect that children would find this any more attractive.  So how do we include and engage children?  Well, find ways of incorporating them in worship in ways that are age appropriate, from reading scripture to lighting candles.  I grew up in the Episcopal Church and from an early age served as an acolyte.  I lit the candles, carried the cross, and later served at the altar.  Now less liturgical churches, like my current tradition, have fewer such options, but children can read scripture, the call to worship, take up the offering -- the kinds of things the adults participate in. 

 

I will admit that I've reluctantly agreed to/with the decision at my current church to have children's church during the worship hour.  I'd rather they experience the fullness of worship, but I understand that many of the young ones find it difficult to stay tuned for 60 minutes.  My only concern is about the future. 

 

I remember back when I was teaching at a bible college, a goodly number of my students had rarely darkened the door of the main worship service.  From an early age they'd been shunted off to children's church and then youth services.  They'd rarely heard the senior pastor preach -- having had contact only with the youth minister.  I'm not sure that this is healthy.  But I'm open to hearing from others.  As for me, I think Willimon is spot on!