Reading
I Stop Writing the Poem
Tess Gallagherto fold the clothes. No matter who lives
or who dies, I’m still a woman.
I’ll always have plenty to do.
I bring the arms of his shirt
together. Nothing can stop
our tenderness. I’ll get back
to the poem. I’ll get back to being
a woman. But for now
there’s a shirt, a giant shirt
in my hands, and somewhere a small girl
standing next to her mother
watching to see how it’s done.
Chalice Lighting by Gillie Bishop and Kristi Reeves
Gillie: Last week, as we were getting ready for church, my 4-year-old daughter, Maggie, said, “I hate going to church.” I found myself wondering how Maggie could hate a place I love so much. What is it this place gives me that Maggie’s not getting? I love JUC. I love JUC for three reasons – relationships with wonderful people, interesting and inspiring ideas, and a sense of purpose. For the past several months, Kristi and I have been co-chairs of CURK, Community of Unitarians Raising Kids, which provides many ways of making connections among families with kids. I will soon jump ship to co-chair the Youth Religious Education Committee. Along with many other JUC parents, we have had lots of conversations about how we can make JUC a place where our kids feel connected to people, challenged and inspired by ideas, and driven by a sense of purpose. Here are some of our dreams for this place we love.
Kristi: Our kids need to feel the same joys of connection that so many of us have come to feel at JUC. Kenya, my 8-year-old, found that connection through the Radiance Choir last year. We need more opportunities for connections like this. If we can engage our children from the time they are toddlers—through music, through social action, through thoughtful social programs—by the time they reach college-age, they will be so grounded in our principals and our community that they will take that with them wherever they go. I want our kids to make friends of the heart much like the friends of the heart that I have found here.
Gillie: We want our kids to experience rituals and writings from world religions and to learn about meaningful spiritual practices from JUC members who practice them. We want to give parents more information about what their kids are doing at church and more resources for following up at home. We want to provide more classes for parents to help us raise our kids in ways that are consistent with our UU principles and values. We want our kids to engage in the social justice work of the church and to understand the purpose of that work. Last month’s Social Action Weekend was a fantastic example of kid (and adult) mobilization, and plans are already in the works to connect next year’s Sunday morning social action projects to the Sunday School curriculum. Our hope is that our kids’ experiences at JUC will help them change their thinking, their lives, and the world.
Kristi: While much of what we dream of may seem, well, dreamy, one thing I have learned above all else at JUC is true to Margaret Mead’s words, “Never doubt that a small, committed group of people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” Never have I so enjoyed my time at JUC, and I want all our children to find that same joy. Our children are being raised in a village that is dynamic, compassionate, and true. Let’s make the village even stronger, more resilient, more able to hold them up in a world filled with confusion and questions. We light this chalice together, for our children, and for their, and our, futures.
Sermon
Three weeks ago my wife Phyllis and I participated in our all church social action weekend. What a magical day that was! By the way, if you haven’t seen the wonderful video that Steve and Chris Sealy produced, you absolutely must.
We chose to help out building the new community garden at 32nd Avenue just this side of I-70. I was amazed a how much got done in one day. One of the things that made the day special was all the kids there helping out. Even the little ones had tiny wheelbarrows and shovels and rakes. It was criminally cute. They were having a blast. Elementary school aged kids did a lot heavy work, delivering wheelbarrow after wheelbarrow of gravel for the walkways.
And what an important experience it was for kids to be able to work side by side with their parents and other adults. One of the frightening things about kids is that they learn by example. As parents and adults, we are teaching kids all the time by our behavior. Alas, often we teach some pretty bad lessons. But not on this day. On this day we were teaching about the joy of real work, about cooperation, about working together to create something good, about sharing the load. That social action day was JUC at its intergenerational best.
We have always cared deeply about our children. We always will. We need to honor and celebrate all that this community does for and with young people. It begins with a Sunday morning religious education program. Our programs include coming of age programs, the “Our Whole Lives” sexuality program, participation in youth conferences, and much more. While our program is led by staff, it is the dedication of scores of volunteers that makes youth programs possible. By the way, we are recruiting teachers right now. If you have not volunteered to teach, consider it. It really does take a village to raise a child.
And our children desperately need a village. They need our church village. The sad fact is that our children and youth are living in a society that is hostile and dangerous to young people. The shocking reality is that America today is one of the two worst countries in the developed world in which to be a child.
Let me share with you the deplorable results of a recent international study conducted by the United Nations. The study looked the well being of children in affluent nations along six major dimensions: material well being, health and safety, education, family and peer relationships, behaviors and risks, and subjective well-being. Actually, the United States is ranked on only five of the six dimensions because, unlike European countries, we don’t collect sufficient data on the dimension of subjective well-being.
In the five dimensions on which the United States has data, we rank dead last in one dimension, second to the last in two dimensions, and fourth from the bottom in one. In only one dimension, education, does our country rank in the middle of the pack (twelfth out of 21).
We do not rank in the top half on a single dimension.
We like to think we value children in our culture, but compared to other countries, we are simply doing a terrible job. And this is the world into which we send our children day after day, week after week.
Let’s look at some of the disturbing data. In the area of health and safety, the U. S. is dead last. The measures for this dimension are such indicators as the percentage of children who die in the first year of life, death from accident or injury, and the percentage of children immunized. It is simply more dangerous to be a child here than in far poorer countries like Greece, the Czech Republic or Poland.
In fact, one of the clear findings in this large study is that the per capita income of a country does not predict how it treats its children. Several months ago in a sermon I spoke about how social science studies show that increased wealth does not buy happiness. Here we see another example of this. In America, increased wealth does not buy health and safety for children.
Now, you and I might think that while these health and safety numbers are terrible, they don’t apply to our children. Those unfortunate kids who don’t get immunized are probably poor and minority kids. They live in another part of town. There is much truth in that, though I find these facts shameful. The fact that a child is more likely to be safe and healthy in Poland, which is one of the poorest countries in the study, makes me ashamed of our country.
But what about a dimension like family and peer relationships? We rank second to last. Our kids are more likely to live in a single parent family than in any other country studied. Our adolescents are among the least likely to find their peers kind and helpful. Our 15 year-olds are among the least likely to eat the main meal of the day with their parents. Among these 21 nations we have the highest percentage of children living in stepfamilies. These are all indications that children in America lack a network of relationships that support them.
The data about youth and their health and risk behavior are especially troubling. American kids are the most likely of all to be overweight. Ironically, our kids are among the least likely to eat breakfast. Our kids are among the most likely to use drugs. Our 15 year-olds are the most likely to have had sex and (what a surprise), American teenagers are the most likely by far to give birth.
Now, we cannot protect our children from the culture around them. We especially cannot protect our adolescents. We must find ways of preparing and equipping our kids for life in a culture that has a profoundly distorted sense of priorities.
When we hold our child dedications we commit ourselves as a congregation to support our children. What does it mean to support children in a culture like ours? What can we do as parents? What can we do as a religious community that loves its children and wants the very best for them?
This is a huge, huge, challenge. And I don’t pretend to have all the answers. Creating a place where children and their families can thrive is a job for all of us. It is going to take not only our collective effort, but our collective wisdom.
I want to share some reflections with you. And I do so in a spirit of humility. I do not speak as a model father nor as an expert in child development. (On the optimistic side, my children are living proof that kids can survive huge doses of nagging and fatherly crankiness.)
Let’s begin first with those of us who are parents. One of the most important things we can do for our children is to make time. And space. And energy. Being a good parent is a spiritual discipline. It takes love and it takes attention. This is made a lot harder by the fact that every child is different. Anyone who has had more than one kid—heck, anyone who has been around more than one kid—understands that each one is different and each one needs something different.
My two kids are almost 12 years apart in age. I often joke that we had two “only” children. My son Miguel could hardly be more different from my daughter Marcela. Miguel was pretty easy going and, truth to tell, kind of spacey. He would entertain himself for hours building elaborate LEGO contraptions. He grew up to be a astrophysicist—sort of turning spaciness into a career path. Marcela could not be more different. She is one of the most extroverted people on the planet. She never spent five minutes playing by herself. Raising my son did not prepare me for being the father of my daughter. As parents (or grandparents or just as family friends), we must start with each child where he or she is. We must deal with the unique reality of every child. We must be attentive enough, and spend enough time, to learn what each child needs.
We do know this: every child, whether space cadet or chatterbox, whether introvert of social butterfly, needs a village. The villages that nurture children in America are almost all gone. We have to create new ones.
A village is what we can create as a congregation. We must be the village for all our children. We need to learn to be an ever better village. We do a lot. We should build upon all we do. Yet we need to do much more.
I see a new generation of parent leaders emerging here. We heard from two of them in our chalice lighting. I am thrilled to see this. For the truth is, despite our good efforts, we often fall short of being the village our children need. This is especially true as our children get older. Like so many other churches, we tend to lose contact with our teenagers. A good colleague of mine said once that as a movement we practice youth abandonment and call it youth empowerment. Ouch! There is just way too much truth in that. We need to find better ways to engage our young people. This is a huge challenge for us and for most churches in our movement. Our volunteers and staff who work with our youth are dedicated and bright. But it takes a village. We are part of an American middle class culture that has lost its sense of how to relate to young people.
Just this past week I was in a meeting to discuss some ideas for changing our youth program. We need some deep conversations that include youth and their parents. I am so pleased that Dana Lightsey will work with us next year in YRUU, our youth program. However, creating a culture that more fully engages our youth is a long term issue that involves the entire congregation. This is not a problem a few people can solve.
Finally, part of our ongoing social witness must include advocacy for children. The children who come here on Sunday morning are certainly better cared for than most. Parents in this congregation work hard to be the best parents they can be. But all the children in America who are not immunized, who live in among broken relationships, who are not safe—these, too, are our children. Surely we can make our society as good a place to be a child as Poland or Portugal. Sadly, children do not have a powerful lobby. They are not a voting block. They need good and responsible people to be their advocates. We must do our part.
Our children and youth are at risk. They need us. They need more than just good parents. They need a real community, a loving and caring village. They need a place where they can be themselves. Children need a place where they can learn respect and compassion. They need a place to share. They need a place where they are loved and accepted. They need a place to develop their spirits, to learn to go deep within themselves. They need a place where their parents can come together with other adults. Raising a kid is too much for any person or any couple. Parents need help.
The good news is that we can do this. We are doing a lot of it already. We need to do more. There is enough commitment here. There is enough wisdom. There is enough energy.
Let us rededicate ourselves to being the religious home, the religious village, our children and their families need. Together, let us create such a place for all our children.