praying the particulars: wrangling children at church

A Prayer for Wrangling Small Children at Church:

God of infinite patience,

Help me not to lose my mind at Mass today.

When my son falls off the kneeler for the umpteenth time and howls at me indignantly, let me not say I told you so! but I love you.

When the baby gets so fussy during the homily that no one within six pews can hear the priest, let me not sigh with irritation but distract him with smiles.

When I miss every word of the readings (again) because I was fishing books out of the diaper bag, let me not brood about what I lost but notice the small service I gave to the least among us.

When I spend communion time pacing the floor of the gathering space, or trying in vain to nurse the baby in a corner of the cry room, or taking the toddler to the potty for the tenth time, help me to see that this is Eucharist, too – the gift of self in love.

When that older couple behind us, the ones I worried about the whole time – that we were annoying them and distracting their prayer and giving them reason to think the future church is going to hell in a handbasket – when they tap me on the shoulder after the final song and tell me we have a beautiful family, help me believe them. And even thank them graciously.

And when we’re tempted to skip Mass next Sunday because it’s just so hard in this crazy season of life, and it throws off nap schedules for the rest of the day, and what are we getting out of it anyway, let me remember the importance of coming. Because children are part of the Body of Christ. Because I need community and they need me. Because much of what is important about parenting isn’t easy anyway.

God, you promised that wherever two or three are gathered in your name, you are in their midst. That means our pew, too. The one covered with spit-up that two boys are trying to climb over.

Bless my hyper, healthy kids. Bless our diverse, dynamic church. Thank you for the weekly reminder of what matters most.

With gritted teeth behind that laughing smile,

A mama in the third row

leap day and lessons from l’arche

I planned to seize the year’s extra day with all the gusto I could muster.

When the Winter-That-Wasn’t lobbed one last Hail-Mary of a storm, cancelling my meetings and leaving us with a snow day to enjoy, I envisioned curling up with the boys, a cup of tea and a pile of good books. An idyllic day of at-home mothering.

Instead I woke up to one boy who wet the bed and another who leaked all over the changing table. Two giant piles of laundry and two hungry children cried for my attention. After a long night (used in the loosest sense of the term by those who don’t sleep), a longer day loomed.

I felt as stuck as the car’s tires spinning at the end of the driveway.

How would I turn this day around? It seemed to promise nothing but cranky children and crummy chores. As I stuffed the stinking sheets in the washer and the baby wailed, my poor brain scraped together one lone theological thought: I need a spirituality for stuff I don’t want to do.

And that’s when I remembered Bernard. And Michel. And Claude. And Philippe.

When I lived in France after college, I worked in a L’Arche community. In our house four assistants lived side by side with six adults with developmental and physical disabilities. We shared the daily rhythms that mark French life – eat, work, play, rest – but with a unique spirit of acceptance and inclusivity.

I didn’t have any experience working with people with disabilities before I came to France. When I learned L’Arche would be part of my volunteer placement, I was uneasy. How would I know how to act? What to do? How to help?

And it turned out that I didn’t need to know anything about Down syndrome or schizophrenia or degenerative disorders to serve at L’Arche.  Tale as old as time, it turned out that I was the one who was taught, who was helped, who was transformed.

The way of life at L’Arche is a daily spirituality of stuff no one wants to do. Wiping drooling mouths. Cleaning up messes. Helping someone learn to eat. Or use the bathroom. Simply sitting with a person who cannot speak.

But this spirituality of stuff no one wants to do becomes a beautiful inversion of the normal way of living, in which speed and success rule the game. L’Arche taught me to slow down, to simplify, to see Christ in the beautiful brokenness around me.

I spent my time at L’Arche doing nothing glamorous. Changing Philippe’s soaked sheets each morning. Helping Claude to get dressed. Cooking with Michel every Wednesday night. Listening to Bernard tell the same incomprehensible stories.

Simple tasks like preparing meals and setting the table took twice as long. Getting out the door was an epic event: struggling with coats, shoes, last-minute bathroom needs. People didn’t sit down when they were supposed to, and they hit others out of anger or frustration, and they broke into loud laughter whenever you were trying to have a serious conversation about something important.

In short, L’Arche might have been the best preparation for my life as a mother of little ones.

Life behind closed doors with those whom society dismisses as dirty or demeaning or a drag can sometimes be stifling. But it can also surprise with pure, rich joy.

Living as a family, living as community – these are schools of humanity. Where we learn that simply being made in the image of God is worth enough for our dignity. Where we set aside success and embrace faithfulness. Where we recognize each other’s brokenness but celebrate the fullness of sharing life together.

No matter how much food gets spilled in the process. No matter how many times the bed gets soaked. No matter how many times we struggle to stay patient.

It’s a spirituality of stuff no one wants to do. But it also opens a way to encounter the God we long to love.

learning as a family: the new translation

Bet you thought I forgot about this one…

Back when the new translation of the Roman missal was front-page news, I wrote about my struggles in coming to terms with the change. I celebrated words I loved and would miss. And I promised I’d turn to what I could embrace in the new prayers at Mass.

And then life – and work and holidays and travel and illness and everyday chaos-with-kids – interrupted. And I never got to that third post, the hopeful one. Despite its persistent nagging at me every time we slid into the pew on Sunday.

But as the weeks passed and I guiltily thought of how I hadn’t made good on my promise, I started to see that perhaps it was better this way.

I needed time for the new words to bounce off my ear, roll off my tongue, rattle around in my head. I needed space to accept the awkwardness of “chalice” instead of “cup,” “consubstantial” instead of “one in being,” “was incarnate” instead of “born.”

I needed to grumble a bit. I’ll always miss “protect us from all anxiety,” among others.

I needed to stumble a lot. I still mangle the “enter under my roof” prayer every single Sunday.

And through my grumbling and stumbling, I came to realize something important about the new words we now say and pray at Mass each week:

We are learning them together.

It’s rare for a whole family to learn something brand-new. Usually the expert teaches and the novice learns. But as a young family in today’s Catholic Church, we find ourselves in the unique position of learning right alongside our children.

At this point I don’t know the words of the Mass any better than my toddler. We both scramble for pew cards: he pretends to read them, I pretend to memorize. He chimes in on the creed; I jump in late to stutter ”and with your spirit.” We each make mistakes, and what can we do but smile? We’re learning as a family. Adults and children alike, back to the beginning together.

Our kids will never know anything but this Mass. For a while that brought me sadness. I liked the words I knew and I didn’t like the reasons behind the change. But now I find myself turning to hope, because that is our Christian calling. I hope that my children will come to love church: listening to Scripture, breaking bread, going forth to serve. I hope that our praying together as community will both comfort and challenge our family. And I hope that my wrestling with the new translation will give my kids a glimpse of what it means to be Catholic.

Our faith is beyond words. It is lives given in love and service to God and each other. You can call that by a thousand different names, but it remains truth. And yet all we have are words – imperfect, human words – with which to pray and wonder and celebrate and question. So without further ado, here are a few of the new words I’m learning to love.

We praise you, we bless you, we adore you, we glorify you, we give you thanks for your great glory, Lord God, heavenly King, O God, almighty Father. The words of the Gloria have been inverted. We used to address God first (“Lord God, heavenly King, almighty God and Father”) and state our praise second (“we worship, we give you thanks, we praise you for your glory”). But now we explode into this exultation of verbs – praise! bless! adore! glorify! give you thanks! – which crescendos into an explosion of God’s names. I love the build-up of phrases, heaping glory upon glory.

I also celebrate, here and elsewhere in the Mass, the change from “worship” to “adore.” More loving, more intimate, “adore” reminds me of the way I love my husband and my boys: with such sweet joy I can’t help but grin. I like the reminder to love God like that, too.

Let us give thanks to the Lord our God. It is right and just. We used to respond to the priest’s opening of the Eucharistic Prayer by saying, “It is right to give God thanks and praise.” Which I always liked. Except that the addition of the word “just” has brought echoes of justice into the liturgy. We need more words that call us to justice, so I’ll take this small step.

I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son is adored and glorified, who has spoken through the prophets. I can’t be the only faithful feminist out there who noticed that every “he” in the Creed which referred to the Spirit got replaced with “who”? Probably not the translators’ intention (ha!), but I celebrate it nonetheless. I love Spirit as Spirit – creative, powerful, life-giving, beyond-gender Spirit – so I secretly delight in stringing together clauses of “who.” Leaves a little to mystery and imagination, which are the root of faith.

I look forward to the resurrection of the dead and the life of the world to come. At the end of the Creed we used to say, “We look for the resurrection of the dead,” which for me evoked images of running around the house, searching for my keys (“What are you looking for?” “THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD! I CAN’T FIND IT ANYWHERE!” “Well, where did you last see it?”)

One directional adverb later, and suddenly I switch from scanning the horizon to focusing on the attitude with which I search. I look forward: I anticipate, I hope, I eagerly await. I like looking forward to things – Christmas, birthdays, my youngest child sleeping through the night - much more than I like looking for my keys. So Amen to moving forward.

How about you? What words of the new translation are you coming to love?

(And does anyone else just love the new Mass settings we’re singing? All praise to those liturgists who slogged through tangles of translation to create beauty out of unfamiliar territory. Our parish’s settings of the Hosanna and the Mystery of Faith are simply gorgeous – I’ll have to find out the composer and note it here…)

the gift of other-mothers

The package was ripped apart the instant I told S it was for him.

“What’s dat?” he asked, cocking his head to one side as he clenched in his chubby fist the silver cross he’d found inside.

“That’s a cross for you and your brother from Aunt G!” I smiled, delighted at the surprise. A treasure from her trip to Rome, the cross draws the Trinity together in a lovely and unusual pose.

But before I could wax eloquent on the nature of the Triune God, he raced across the kitchen dragging the cross along the cabinets, leaving a jagged silver line I then spent twenty minutes scrubbing off.

Later that night, S proudly slammed the cross against the wall at his height when I asked him where he’d like to hang it. “Right ‘dere,” he proclaimed.

A week later he and I were sharing an afternoon snack when F brought the mail inside. “Look who sent you a letter!” he exclaimed. When I saw the return address was the convent, I tore it open with a toddler’s enthusiasm.

“S, it’s a letter from your godmother! A real, live letter!” (From the postulant who only gets to send one letter a month, this was no small surprise.) I soaked in her words with February sunlight streaming over my shoulder. Such a gift, especially her words of love for her godson and his baby brother.

My boys are blessed with family near and far who adore them. But every so often, I’m reminded of how blessed they are to be loved by friends who aren’t even related. By their other-mothers.

Many of us had one growing up. Maybe a parent’s college roommate or a family friend without kids of her own. Women who embraced a role of nurturing that went beyond biology or blood ties. We called them “aunt,” and over the years they became a part of the family. They took us seriously, and we basked in their affection. We couldn’t imagine growing up without them.

This article - which in a God-incidence arrived on our doorstep the very same week as mail from the other-mothers – calls them PANKs: professional aunt, no kids. No matter the moniker, their role in children’s lives is real and important. They widen the family circle, stretch the boundaries of love, and broaden the tent of the village that raises the child.

Thanks to my babies’ many other-mothers – best friends from college, dear friends from grad school – they will know a world that is bigger than our family’s ways. And for their growing in faith, this is of utmost importance.

The two dear friends who blessed us with surprises in the mail this week could not be more different, or more dear to my heart. One reminds my boys to pray the rosary; the other reminds them to seek Christ in the margins. One other-mother Marches for Life; one marches on the School of the Americas. Through these two women who wrestle with their callings in vastly different ways, my boys will be loved into a faith that is more active and contemplative, more liberal and conservative, more vibrant and colorful than anything their two parents could show them alone.

As more women choose paths other than motherhood, perhaps the ranks of PANKS will swell. While I know many in their number mourn the loss of their own parenting experience, I also honor what their presence can mean for children who crave role models. The power of positive adult influences in a young person’s life cannot be underestimated.

Tonight I see a cross on the wall and a letter on the table. I think of a quilt in the nursery and a picture of Jesus on the shelf. Gifts to my children from their aunts-by-love, signs of the real presence of other-mothers in our home.

Their devotion to our boys is their true gift. They who do not deal with tantrums or teething or toilet training can cherish the heart of a child with a pure love, unfettered by the daily drain of parenting, much like the adoration of grandparents or the fierce loyalty of uncles.

It’s a good reminder that we’re all called to care for children who are not – by blood or bond – “our own.” Because they are still our own.

As any cherished aunt will tell you.

Women without children are also the best of mothers, often, with the patience, interest, and saving grace that the constant relationship with children cannot often sustain. I come to crave our talk and our daughters gain precious aunts.

Women who are not mothering their own children have the clarity and focus to see deeply into the character of children webbed by family. A child is fortunate who feels witnessed as a person, outside relationships with parents, by another adult.

- Louise Erdrich, The Blue Jay’s Dance: A Birth Year

parenting & scripture: 4th sunday in ordinary time

“Brothers and sisters: I should like you to be free of anxieties.”

(1 Cor 7:32)

Parenting, thy name is anxiety.

This week I heard a mom joke that she tossed and turned for twenty minutes last night, mentally trying to design multiple escape routes from her home in the event of a fire.

“I thought, ‘What if the fire breaks out between my room and my daughter’s?’ What would I do then? So I had to come up with yet ANOTHER plan.”

We laughed, but behind the smiles lay a nod of affirmation: Yes, I’ve been there. Yes, I’ve worried about that. Yes, I’ve lost sleep, too.

Whether anxiety starts during pregnancy or flares during the teenage years, worry goes hand-in-hand with being responsible for a child. Parents cannot protect their babies from all the dangers in the world, and they toss and turn wondering how to make choices that will keep kids safe.

Today’s reading from Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians speaks directly to our anxieties, both worldly and otherworldly. Yet this passage can seem frustrating: everyone suffers from anxiety; God doesn’t want us to be anxious; so, good luck reconciling those two truths on your own.

But read alongside today’s Gospel, we are invited to see anxiety in a whole new light.

While teaching in the synagogue, Jesus encounters a man with an “unclean spirit.” When the man cries out, Jesus orders the spirit to come out of him, and the man is set free.

A Scripture professor once told me that the stories about “evil spirits” in the Gospels can be read as descriptions of people suffering from mental illness. Lacking today’s clinical language of depression, bipolar disorder or schizophrenia, people in Jesus’ time understood the forces that took over someone’s mind and behavior as evil spirits.

Anxiety falls into this category, too, given how devastating its darkness can become over the mind and body.

So today we hear a story of a man who brings his suffering into a holy place of worship, right to the feet of someone he senses – despite the darkness that has consumed him – can help.

And Jesus does not delay, to the amazement of those who witness the healing.

What if parents could bring their worries to church, in the hopes of being set free?

What if depression and anxiety were no longer cloaked in shame, but bravely revealed in the light of day?

What if we could marvel at the ways God can cast out demons and darkness in each other’s lives, instead of gossiping behind backs about other’s mental states?

Would we worry and agonize a little less, knowing that our faith and our community could help “deliver us from all anxiety and grant us peace in our day”?

My prayer, like Paul’s, hopes yes.

who mothers our mothering spirits?

My sainted mother is driving across the Midwest today, returning home after helping us for nearly three weeks since T arrived. We miss her already: her calm and peaceful presence, her willingness to help in any capacity, and her amazing culinary skills. The pizza man is now on speed dial, and my sanity fears for the shreds it will become as I jump into the messy boot camp of learning to parent two.

But today, in her absence, I simply feel grateful that she was able to be with us and help us in so many ways while we started our new chapter of life as a family of four.

As she folded piles of laundry, sang endless choruses of S’s favorite songs, changed diapers, cooked dinners, and kept us all sane, I found the same thought returning to me day after day: I am so dang lucky. To have full-time help with child care and housework and cooking and cleaning for weeks after a new baby’s arrival – it’s an utter luxury, and I recognize that we are so blessed to have her generosity showered on us.

But at the same time, I felt myself wondering what it would be like if she hadn’t been here. She came to help us in the same way after S was born, so I’ve never known a postpartum time without her help. I shudder to think of the self I encounter in my vision of Newbornhood Without Gramma: exhausted, poorly nourished, weepy, irritable, stressed and probably depressed. Yet I know it is the reality for the first few weeks of life with a new baby that many women face. (And frankly, the version of myself that I’ll encounter in the next few weeks of maternity leave will probably more closely resemble this than I’d like to admit…)

At a La Leche League meeting we attended last week, a group of new mothers shared a common complaint: the lack of community to help young families when in-laws live across the country and we don’t know our neighbors as in generations past. I’ve heard this lament over and over from new parents ever since I had S: I need help, but I don’t know where to turn to find it.

It saddens me to think how much harder and lonelier the early years of parenting have become since most of us don’t have our mothers down the street or our best friends from grade school across town to help us get through the difficult days. As we’ve spread out geographically, we’re connected by phone or Skype, email or text, but we aren’t physically present to each other in the ways that parents – especially mothers – need in those first weeks of life with baby.

If we’re determined – and lucky – we learn to create our own support networks. We join classes and groups to meet others in our same situation. We reach out and connect to people who share our values. We build up a community to replace the tribe that nature intended us to have as we’re raising our children.

It’s not easy. It takes time. And it sometimes means shelling out for a babysitter or a cleaning lady. But I firmly believe we need to do this not just for the good of our families, but for our own well-being as parents.

Our mothering spirits need to be mothered. We need someone to bring us healthy food for our hungry bellies and cool washcloths for our feverish foreheads. We need shoulders to cry on and arms to hold us tight. We need wise women to teach us how to nurse, how to soothe a colicky baby, how to juggle the demands of two or three or more.

If we want to care for our children, we need others to care for us as well. Sometimes it’s our spouse, sometimes a good friend. Sometimes, if we’re lucky, it’s our own mom. But we can’t do it alone. And when we try – because we all inevitably try – to tell ourselves that we don’t need help, that we’re strong enough to make it on our own – we stress out, we lash out, we burn out. I’ve been there; you’ve been there; it isn’t pretty. We’re created for community, made to lean on each other, and admitting this is a strength, not a weakness.

As I hugged my mom last night before she set out at the crack of dawn to journey home, I tried to find the words to tell her how invaluable her help and presence had been to us over the past three weeks. She simply replied, “It was done for me in my time. It’s a joy to be able to do it for you in turn.”

Once again proving that she is one of the wisest mothering spirits I’ll ever be blessed to know.

next up, kindergarten? a long line of births

It’s been a bittersweet week in our household.

The World’s Best Babysitter – who nannied for us this summer and last – is getting married today. With her departure came our first week with the new sitter for the fall. She seems wonderful, and the week went smoothly. But still, she’s not (yet) The Best in our book, and S’s repeated prayers of “God bless C” at every meal remind me that he is missing his beloved sitter, too. We’re in a time of transition, of change upon us and waiting ’round the corner.

Yet I knew this change was coming all summer. It signaled the turning of a page, another chapter that had to be closed before the new baby could arrive. And just as I was on the brink of a life transition, so was the sitter. All summer long we chatted about rings and dresses, in-laws and cross-country moves, weddings and marriages. Our conversations took me back five years, and perhaps my pregnant waddling around our kitchen fast-forwarded her a few years as well.

Serendipitous, then, that in the midst of this week I unearthed a beautiful prayer that a friend from church sent me a few months ago. The last lines of Edward Hays’ “Psalm During Pregnancy” from his Prayers for a Planetary Pilgrim leapt out at me as all these changes-to-come danced around my head:

Please help me, Holy Parent,

To protect my child who’s yours as well;

Bring this baby safely through this birthing

And any other birthings in life.

I realized as I prayed that The Birth which preoccupies my mind each day – the coming contractions and the promise of pushing, the excitement of meeting my child and the fears of what this awesome task will require – is just one in a long line of births I will be called to as a mother.

Guiding my children out the front door to the bus on their first day of school.

Pushing the bicycle back seat as they wobble down the driveway.

Helping them squeeze into the uncomfortable passage of junior high.

Watching the rises and falls of their joys and distresses through high school’s trials.

Releasing them into the wide world of first jobs, first heartache, first loss.

Cutting the cord as they drive off for the first time alone,

as they wave goodbye from the front step of their freshman dorm,

as they pack up the final box from their childhood bedroom,

as they walk down the aisle into someone else’s arms.

Of course, even in my hormonal whirlwind, I realize it’s not always as drastic as all that. We are forever tied to the people from whom we come. And yet I grow ever more aware that each stage of parenting means letting go in new ways.

We are called to birth – to struggle, to push, to give up – not once, but over and over again. Perhaps we come to fear the birthing less, but it still bring pain, leaves us aching.

“Kids need lots of people who love them.” A wise social worker once told me that, in a conversation lamenting the situation of a child who surely did not have enough people in his or her life who loved them. Her words have always stayed with me, forming my early years of parenting in ways she never expected an off-hand comment could.

Because her perspective helped me to realize that my job, my role, my vocation as a parent is not to keep my children in a bubble. Not to shield them from the world. But to help them learn to walk away from me. To explore all that life has to offer. To become the unique, independent, beautiful people God created them to be. To be able to leave me behind.

My kids don’t just need me. They need lots of people who love them. New babysitters, new teachers, new friends. Some that will delight, some that will disappoint. Goodbyes along the way, but always greeted by hellos around the corner.

These are the rhythms of life that start with the first signal of contractions. We push and we pull back; we struggle and we rest; we welcome and we worry; we fear and we rejoice. Sometimes the changes call for a gentle nudge, sometimes a teeth-gritted push with all our power. But the road ahead is long, and the learnings too rich and wild for me to hold my children back.

God must feel like that, too, watching us struggle with change. There is so much to be gained from every birthing, no matter how painful. Perhaps we are never Ready – not the one who births nor the one who is born. But in God’s time we find that we were ready all along.

Help me to gift this child with all the love I can,

Now during this time of pregnancy

And also at each stage of life when I am called

To set my baby free into fuller life.

where do your babies sleep?

For the past few months I’ve been fretting about how we’re going to squeeze two children into one small bedroom. Not being the world’s best spatial reasoner or interior decorator, I struggled to see how it would all fit: a crib, a toddler bed, a dresser, a changing table, plus all those books and toys and clothes – the stuff of childhood.

Our current plan is keep the baby in our room for the first few months, probably longer than we did with S so s/he has some solid nightime sleep habits before we stick two in one room. But beyond that, we have no choice: there’s only one bedroom next to ours and I need the guest-room-turned-office downstairs to keep both its original purposes.

F has been entirely cool about the whole prospect, reminding me that for the vast majority of families in the world, everyone’s sleeping in the same room (or hut) anyway, so even restless toddlers can learn to sleep through a newborn’s cry. But I’ve been stressing about it in the way that only a nesty pregnant mother can.

That is to say, irrationally.

Which is why I was both calmed and chastened to see this photo shoot in the New York Times: “Where Children Sleep.” It’s the work of a documentary photographer who wanted to capture the diversity of childhood across the globe through images of children’s bedrooms. Equal parts familiar and foreign, touching and terrifying.

Certainly the images say much about class and poverty around the world. So it was a welcome reminder that my middle-class dilemma of having two babies in one room is quite a first-world problem. But it also touched me to see the little pockets of beauty in every bedroom: the dolls and the toys, the colors and the curtains, the personal touches that each child had collected to make their small place their own.

It’s true that everybody sleeps, as the author of the article points out. And there’s something comforting to remember that we all let down our defenses each night to become utterly vulnerable as we recharge our bodies and minds for the next day’s work.

But I’m still haunted by the fact that my babies’ work will be to rise each morning to play and learn, while other children go off to work in quarries or dumps or sweatshops.

Maybe it is only in sleep that we find the equality we deserve.

(Ok, now go click on that “first world problems” link to cheer yourself up. Or at least have a good laugh at ourselves.)

to know as we are known

Several times throughout the weekend, I caught a glimpse of S out of the corner of my eye. He’d set down his fork in the middle of a loud and laughing dinner around him and begin to point his chubby finger at each family member, quietly calling them by name.

From the grin on his face, I could see the delight he took in praticing each aunt’s and uncle’s and cousin’s name, pronouncing and pointing that These were His People. He always interrupted his circuit of naming round the table to point at himself and declare his own name, that He was One of Them. Satisfied with his work, he would smile and pick up his fork to begin eating again.

Sometimes one of my siblings or parents would notice S’s work of naming, and our eyes would meet in happy recognition. Other times no one else saw his careful circuit round the table. But each time I watched him, I thought of how yet another baby step was taking shape before my very eyes – the dawn of understanding what it meant to have a name and to belong to a family.

Today we say goodbye to the last of the family after a wonderful reunion. Our numbers at the dinner table tonight will be much smaller: Mama, Babbo, S. But there are two new names that I hold secret and sacred in the back of my mind for a few more weeks. A girl’s name and a boy’s name – one of which will soon become familiar in the mouths and hearts of that circle round the family table. Families change with the names we add.

One can’t help but muse during such a reunion about the people from whom we come – the people who help shape who we are and who we will continue to become. For better or for worse, these are Our People. And part of the beauty of family is that we cannot choose them. Their loveable quirks, their maddenning faults are all realities we have to live with (and truths often not far from our own, if we can be honest). But they teach us about ourselves and they keep us connected to other worlds and worries and wonders beyond our own.

A few weeks ago, one of the theologians at the meeting on vocation I helped to host brought up the issue of names and belonging. We were lamenting the fact that most people in parishes today are disconnected from each other: they know next to nothing about the lives or the work of their fellow congregants in the pews. Our efforts to help people begin reflecting on God’s call in their lives often have to begin with the simple work of getting people to learn about each other, to share something of their own story in order to recognize their own place in God’s story, in the community’s story, in the church’s story. 

Someone brought up the idea of nametags for Sunday worship: an equalizing solution that affirms the welcome of all who enter into God’s house, but removes the anonymity that often plagues our churches (as well as the embarassment of admitting we often don’t know the names of the familiar faces we greet on Sunday mornings). Nametags are an imperfect, even awkward solution to a bigger problem, but they can be a baby step, especially in the giant congregations that are becoming more and more a reality in Catholic parishes, for example.

Regardless of the solutions, however, the bigger issue that concerns me is how we are known in our communities of faith. Are we called by name? Can we find our place there? Do we feel that someone takes delight in our presence, like S’s gentle pointing and naming that drew all the family around him into a circle where he knew he belonged?

Every time I reach the front of the communion line and find a familiar face – a friend or priest or deacon who holds up the host and says, “L, the Body of Christ” – I feel differently about the Eucharist I receive. I know I shouldn’t, that it is the same loving and familiar Christ I receive, both in the bread and in the face of the human being who offers Christ to me. But I do. I feel a closer connection with the community and with the God we celebrate together. I feel that I am known and that I can know more deeply because I have been called by name.

Perhaps nametags can help. But perhaps there is a deeper call here for us to go deeper in our efforts to build relationships throughout our large congregations and communities. Anonymity is too easy, especially in the Internet age. We need to be known for the imperfect, quirky, maddening, loving people we are.

That’s worth pausing from our meals – familial or Eucharistic – to consider.

the wisdom of generations: ordinations and baby showers

A few weeks ago, our parish celebrated the ordination of one of our own: a local son who had grown up in the congregation, attended the parish school, and stayed close to our church throughout his years at seminary. It was a joyful celebration to see him preside over the liturgy, with his family beaming in the front row, bursting with pride.

The moment that surprised me, though, came during the Eucharistic Prayer. Suddenly this new priest was surrounded at the altar by rows of the men who were now his peers: our pastor and associate, teachers and mentors from seminary, priests from around the diocese. As his bright eyes and eager voice began the prayer, I looked around at the circle of men whose presence supported him in his vocation and shared in his joy. Their hands – some weathered and weak, some young and strong – stretched out with his own over the gifts of bread and wine. Their voices –  some soft and shaking, some bold and confident – wove together during the prayers of consecration. 

And I realized that although I had never before been part of a similar celebration at a priest’s “first Mass,” this scene was intimately familiar. The circle of men on the altar, young and old, looked just like the circles of women, young and old, with whom I had shared living rooms and backyard patios. It looked just like a baby shower.

Admittedly, there were no presents with pink and blue bows. No cutesy games, no glasses of sugary punch, no oohs and aahs over tiny outfits. But there was one person whose new vocation was the center of attention and celebration. There was a group of close friends and mentors gathered to share in the joy. There was the wisdom of generations, years of experience in this same vocation, whose very presence promised support for the journey. There was a passing of a torch, a reaffirmation of the goodness of this work of love. There was blessing and hope.

Rites of passage are profound times of transition. Although much of their demands and emotional weight are carried by the individual alone, they are still moments when we need to be surrounded by those who have gone before us. We need their voices to carry the song and the prayer when our own falters. We need their footsteps to follow until our stride becomes confident enough to walk the path ahead. We need their wisdom to calm our fears, to guide our first fumblings in our new role. We need their physical presence affirming our decision, strengthening our weakness, reminding us that we are not alone.

The proud smiles of the priests gathered round that altar reminded me of the delighted but knowing expressions of the mothers, aunts, and grandmothers gathered around a new mother at a baby shower. They rejoice that another generation is now embarking on the adventure of their own life’s work, all the while recognizing that the journey will bring many challenges. Like seasoned pastors, they know the demands of this vocation are many – and often impossible to predict at the happy outset of the path. But they also know the depths of the commitment, the capacity for growth, the inner strength that will be discovered as this young person begins anew the ancient task that lies before them.

The circles that surround us become the blessing of knowing that we are never alone in our vocations. The shape of their strength – whether around an altar or around a wedding dance floor, around a new graduate or around a mother-to-be – remind us of the presence of God in the companions whose care and love helped bring us this far and promise to remain with us in the chapter to come.