ordinary time

It was an ordinary moment, during an ordinary day, in an ordinary week.

(Which, in the midst of life with littles, means complete chaos.)

Ordinary is never boring, never dragging these days. Our ordinary is unexpected, our mundane is a mess.

With each new dawn, schedules get shifted and plans get changed. One boy rises early, the other sleeps late; one naps like a dream, one wrestles like a nightmare; one gobbles three plates, the other shoves the spoon away. The next day they switch roles and everything changes again. Never a dull moment.

It was one of these everyday-crazy moments that I paused, my attention caught by turning leaves on the tree near our window, flashing orange in afternoon sun. Ordinary, I thought, such an ordinary day.

Even in the midst of mania – one child spilling CDs from the cabinet, the other pulling paints from a drawer – my thoughts tended theological, as they often do.

I thought about ordinary time, where the church spends most of its year. I thought about all of Jesus’ ordinary time, the years before his public ministry. So much of what matters is ordinary – the regular season, the everyday work.

In a season of life when so much seems ordinary, preparation for what’s ahead or maintenance of what’s right now, I sometimes think about all the ordinary years that Jesus spent. Scripture goes silent on the subject; the Gospels skip from twelve-in-the-temple to thirty-in-the-desert in the flip of a page. But those long lost years must have held quiet growth, careful learning, hard work, cultivated relationships, deep prayer. It made all the difference how Jesus lived his ordinary years.

So many days I dream, amidst the cries and chaos, about the years to come. When the house is finished. When my kids are in school. When I have more time to write. I often wrestle with the waiting, the reality of so much ordinary stretching out in front of me.

But when I stop, seized by an extraordinary ordinary like autumn leaves in October sun, I realize how much God must love ordinary. Because all of life is wrapped around it.

The sacred ordinary of every day.

40 weeks: God’s womb & mine

The baby is nine and a half months old.

I could say I don’t know where the time flew, but I do. Newborn blur, life with two littles, the months when he stopped sleeping, the months when we started moving. Since his arrival on this spinning planet, we’ve been whirling fast.

But the nine month marker makes me stop and take notice.

He’s now been on this side of life – the bright, busy, bustling side – for as long as he grew in silence and darkness within me. It’s the tipping point towards life ex utero.

When I marvel at how much he’s changed since last August, I realize it’s matched only by the astonishing growth that took place in his first nine months, the ones wrapped in mystery. Before my eyes he’s learned to smile and laugh, crawl and creep. But before I ever glimpsed him, he transformed from two cells into a complete, complex human being. A holy mystery.

In Scripture, the Hebrew word for mercy is related to the word for womb. Thus, to live within God’s compassion is to rest within God’s womb. A reassuring image of God’s mothering love.

Yet as I reflect on my son’s nine months within and nine months without, I realize that God’s womb is also a challenging place to be.

We think of the womb as a place of protection, creation and nourishment. But it is also a place of transition and tremendous change, from which we are thrust out into a world that is bigger and brighter and more terrifying than anything we ever imagined inside. The mercy and compassion of God in which we live and move and having our being sends us forth to something more, something beyond. The love of others. The sacrifice of self. The challenge of forgiveness. The struggle for justice.

I remember in the last weeks of both my pregnancies when strangers and friends would remind me that it’s easier to care for a baby while he’s still inside. And it’s partly true. While I was pregnant, my babies slept and ate and grew all on their own – without my having to rouse for 2 am feedings, change their diapers or wash their clothes. But while I loved them then – with the intimate, mysterious fire of a woman for the child within her – I love them so much more this side of birth. It’s harder and messier to parent them now, but more beautiful and rewarding, too.

I watch my baby now, starting to pull himself up (and toys down), feeding himself (and trying to eat things he shouldn’t). With every milestone he passes, he increases his capacity for learning but also his vulnerability for getting hurt. The world can be a painful and destructive place, too. But he still lives within God’s womb. A womb that cradles him close but also pushes him out.

Perhaps, like a parent, God longs to hold us safe but delights in our going forth. Knowing that we are always carried within love larger than ourselves.

“The Hebrew work for a woman’s womb and the word for compassion are related, and both are related to the word for mercy. Thus, the mother’s intimate, physical relationship with her newborn is the prime image for compassion and, hence the compassion of God in Christ. To speak of the compassion of God is to speak of God’s quivering womb — a womb that trembles at the sight of the frailty, suffering and weakness of the child.”

Michael Downey, Altogether Gift: A Trinitarian Spirituality

an un-mother’s day

You know those years when you just don’t feel like celebrating your birthday?

Such was my attitude toward Mother’s Day this go-round. I was just not all that into it.

My mothering lately has been grumpy, impatient and frazzled. It’s a stressful season of our family’s life, so I’m trying not to take it too seriously. But I still didn’t feel much like celebrating. Even though I believe firmly that Mother’s Day isn’t something we earn, I decided I’d rather have a normal, quiet, low-key Sunday than a Hallmark holiday.

But as I nursed Grinch-like sentiments this past week, the notion of Alice in Wonderland’s un-birthday wryly popped into my head. What would it mean to celebrate an un-Mother’s Day instead of the normal flowers-chocolate-&-brunch festivities?

First I thought it might mean indulging in a day of activities that had absolutely nothing to do with mothering. For example, uninterrupted sleep! Adult conversation! Spa treatments! Wine! Gourmet meals that someone else cooked! Plenty of geographic distance from one’s progeny!

But I realized that is, in fact, the perfect Mother’s Day. And I got it last year. Whoops.

So then I started from a truly unconventional standpoint. What if I spent the day thinking of un-mothers instead?

Un-mothers could be fathers, the paternal yang to the maternal yin. So yesterday I prayed for fathers – for their work outside the home to provide for their families and for their work at home to nurture their children.

Un-mothers could be children, the necessary and opposite other half of the mothering relationship. So I prayed for children who daily seek the love of a mother to help them grow.

Un-mothers could be women who want desperately to have children, those who suffer through infertility, miscarriage and failed adoptions. So I prayed for the women whose hearts break as the years pass, whose stomachs sink when strangers ask questions, whose hands ache to hold a baby.

Un-mothers could be women who have chosen not to have children, those who feel called to different paths. So I prayed for women whose vocations lead them to other nurturing relationships, rewarding work, and life-giving commitments.

Un-mothers could be women who have suffered the loss of a child, whose motherhood has been broken and reshaped by pain and death. So I prayed for women who grieve for their children, who struggle to redefine themselves as mother after loss, who seek to go on living after the life they held closest to their heart has stopped.

Un-mothers could be women who do not want the children they have. So I prayed for women whose motherhood was forced on them, or who made decisions to end their child’s life, or whose deep sorrow and anger at the world causes them to hurt their children.

In the Christian tradition, one way to describe God is the via positiva: what God is like. God is like a mother. Another way to describe God is the via negativa: what God is not like. God is not like a mother.

One way to understand mothering from a spiritual perspective is the via positiva – what it is to be a mother. Much of my thinking and writing in this space takes this slant. But another way to understand mothering is the via negativa – what it is not. Broadening my perspective to embrace those who are not mothers helps me to understand my own parenting better, situating my cares and concerns within a wider view.

And praying for those whose lives and loves differ from mine reminds me that all of us, mothers and un-mothers, are swept up into the mystery of who God is.

Which is a question well worth pondering, no matter what day it is.

what name do you give God?

My son’s favorite is Ancient One. Mine is (no surprise) Mother. But on frazzled days I remind myself of Source of Peace.

Sandy Eisenberg Sasso’s lovely book In God’s Name has become a recent naptime favorite. Strangely my young son is smitten with the most ancient of God’s names. Every time we reach the page that describes how “the grandfather whose hair was white with the years called God Ancient One,” the boy with blond curls squirms happily in my lap. It’s a mystery why this name has captured his attention, but he can’t get it out of his head: he delights at its reading and asks all day long about its spelling. He wants to know everything about Ancient One.

I’ve loved this children’s book ever since it fell into my pregnant lap (literally) as I rummaged through cast-offs at a kids’ consignment sale. The illustrations are bright and charming, and the fable that describes how each person names God out of their own life is even more beautiful. At the end of the story everyone gathers around a lake that is God’s mirror and proclaims their different names for God all at once, a joyful sound reflecting the unity-in-diversity at the heart of God’s self.

In an era when our churches seem as polarized as our political parties, I can’t help but wonder at the relevance of this book’s message. Far from a wishy-washy relativism, the truth it gently preaches is important to remember: my understanding and image of God were formed by my upbringing, education and experiences of church. So they aren’t necessarily shared by others who share my faith.

As we each seek to approach the unknowable mystery of God, we name aspects of the divine that speak to us. Hopefully we can also open our hearts to others’ journeys towards the same God, no matter how foreign they may first seem. I can learn from your name for God, just as you can learn from mine.

Quite often I ponder this question of how we image God as it relates to parenting. Developmental psychologists and faith formation experts agree that parents influence a child’s first image of God. It’s only natural that as we begin to wonder about a Being greater than ourselves, we look through the lens of the dominant figures of love, power and authority in our lives.

I want to help my children see God as loving, compassionate, forgiving and just. So when I lose my temper and yell too loud, the startled look in their eyes reminds me that the way I mother matters not only to their emotional and intellectual development, but their spiritual growth as well. (Hence my need to sit at the feet of God who is Source of Peace!)

And when I soothe their cries, teach them patiently or laugh long and hard with them, I pray they are picking up small pieces of the best of what a parent’s love can be – and what it reveals of the God they may come to know as Father or Mother.

Different names for God have been important throughout the changing seasons of my life. When I was younger, Christ as companion captured my heart. As I learned about pneumatology in graduate school, God as Spirit opened my mind. After becoming a parent, God as Mother has taken on a powerful new depth of meaning.

As In God’s Name reminds me, there is no single name for God. Even Scripture is bursting with different images: God as potter, builder, midwife, gardener, servant and redeemer. Today it is “Ancient One” that mysteriously captures my child’s heart. Who knows what names and images will shape him as he grows?

What names for God speak to you today? What names have been important in the past?

tantrums in the arms of a loving God

My son is currently going through what I’ve dubbed a “contrarian” stage. Our conversations often consist of nothing but clashing over basic facts.

[Editor's note: the child is also stuck in a fascinating yet aggravating stage of linguistic development in which he reverses "you" and "I," thus speaking in rhetorical statements all day long.]

Upon greeting him when waking…

Me: “Good morning, sweet love! Mama’s here to see you!”

S: “Do you NOT want Mama to be with you?”

Mathematical inquiries over breakfast…

S: “What is 5 plus 8?”

Me: “13.”

S: “Do you NOT want 5 plus 8 to be 13?”

Spelling agonies over snack…

S: “How do you spell ‘Mama’”?

Me: “M-A-M-A.”

S: “Do you NOT want it to be spelled M-A-M-A?”

His refutations of my every statement are often accompanied by whining, whimpering or wailing. As if all the NOs weren’t already enough to grate like fingernails on a chalkboard.

These are the BASIC FACTS OF THE UNIVERSE, I want to laugh (or yell). 55 will always follow 54. Sacramento will always be the capital of California. Wednesday will always come after Tuesday. Why are we wasting our time arguing about unchangable truths?

After losing my temper over one too many similar exchanges, I found myself fuming as I washed my hands. God, help me to be patient with him, I prayed, my always prayer.

Then I added, Do you have any idea how frustrating it is to have someone say “no” to your every “yes”?

At which point I caught my own eye in the mirror. And heard God give a simple reply: Yes.

My toddler’s constant naysaying is all-too-familiar, if I’m honest. Because it’s exactly what I often say to God, wrestling away from a loving embrace with all the stubborness that free will and even wilder nature bestow.

I say no to moments to love, chances to grow, opportunities to serve. In choosing my own selfish pride, I’m arguing against a basic fact of the universe: the existence of a loving Creator, in whose constant “yes” rattle all my little “nos.” Maybe being contrarian isn’t just a stage of toddlerhood; it’s a condition of being human.

I get his frustration, sympathize with his desire for control. The world can be an exasperating place to figure out. Maybe I need not just more patience, but more empathy. After all, I still refuse to accept basic facts about existence. Like the inevitable mortality of those I love. Or my own limitations. To name but a few.

Karl Rahner called it the supernatural existential – that we exist everywhere and always within God’s free offer of grace. All our yeses and nos echo within God’s one emphatic YES.

This mama calls it theologizing the terrible twos.

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 old translation: what i will miss

The Catholic Church in the U.S. is on the cusp of change. Starting on Sunday, the new translation of the Roman Missal will go into effect, and all of us in the church – from pastor to pew – will begin learning new prayers and responses.

Last week I wrote about my need to grieve the loss of the well-loved words I won’t hear anymore, in order to turn and embrace new words. So today I give you a few of the changes that I’ll leave behind with longing…

[Words in bold are the part of the old translation that will be changed.]

We believe in one God…

I know that by definition, the “credo” of the creed means “I believe.” Yet I can’t help but miss how it feels to stand in a full church, shoulder to shoulder with family and stranger, and declare what we as a people hold true. Especially in a world as divided and contentious as ours, there is something powerful about proclaiming the truths that a wide and diverse group holds as sacred. We are liberal and conservative, we are practicing and lapsed, we are certain and unsure, but we all stand together and share the beliefs that make us church.

…by the power of the Holy Spirit he was born of the Virgin Mary, and became man.

The loss of “born” (in favor of “was incarnate”) is one that I especially grieve. I love the moment in the creed when we bow in reverence of Jesus’ conception and birth, not only because it honors the wonder of the Incarnation but because it honors Mary’s role in God’s great plan. Ever since the births of my own babies, I have barely been able to speak the words of how Jesus was “born of the Virgin Mary” without a lump in my throat. To learn all that bearing and birthing a baby demands from a woman, to have lived through the pain and the power of those moments – I felt that I was honoring Mary and her strength every time I prayed those words of the creed.

Christ has died, Christ is risen, Christ will come again.

Powerful and poetic, simple and succinct. Yes, there are many ways to proclaim the mystery of our faith, but I’m saddened that I’ll never hear these three phrases prayed in the Mass again. They always reminded me of the constancy and consistency of Christ: everywhere and always, in time and beyond time, past/present/future.

Lord, I am not worthy to receive you, but only say the word and I shall be healed.

At a family wedding years ago, I overheard the guest behind me whisper to her date right after the assembly prayed these words before Communion. “That is my favorite part of what Catholics say at church,” she said. “I don’t really get what they’re saying a lot of the time, but I love that part – ‘I’m not worthy to receive you, but I shall be healed.’”

I never forgot her words, how she recognized the power of humility and certainty of faith, all wrapped into one. At times in my life, I didn’t feel worthy to receive – but I could, so I did. Unworthy but grateful and hopeful – and therefore worthy in ways I couldn’t see. I know that the change to “Lord, I am not worthy that you should enter under my roof” is more Scripturally sound, but I mourn the loss of the intimacy of simply saying “receive you.”

These are just a few of the changes come Sunday, words that will pass from everyday use into the history books. But they are words that shaped my faith, prayers that guided me through dark moments and showed me glimmers of light. Maybe it’s not too dramatic to say that losing them is like losing an old friend. Because words matter. And we loved the ones we lost.

What words will you miss?

what my newborn taught me about the face of God

One of my favorite things about newborns is the thousand faces they make in a minute.

Especially as they sleep, they cycle through this amazing array of expressions: from peaceful to puzzled to pensive, all in mere seconds. One moment their eyebrows are arched in wonder; the next they’re scrunched in agony. As if the face is practicing for all the emotions they’ll have to display as adults: contentment, anger, sadness, bliss.

Lately I’ve been gazing at T during our quiet moments after nursing, and I marvel at all his faces. I can never capture the fleeting (and, ok, gas-induced) grins on camera, so I content myself with soaking them up as they come and – just as quickly – go.

Watching his thousand faces today, I got to marveling that it is the special gift of a newborn face to have so many expressions and emotions flash across it in a minute. But then I realized that most days, my face shows the same multitude of feelings, just stretched out over longer intervals of time.

I wake with groggy eyes and heavy lids. Which transform into a look of concern as I pick up the crying baby. I smile peacefully at him while he nurses. But then my eyebrows shoot up at the sound of his brother rousing, and I sigh as I set down the sleeping cheurb to dash into the shower before getting S.

Breakfast brings its own range of expressions: eye rolls at the latest political squabbles overheard on the radio; funny faces exaggerated to cheer up the cranky, hungry toddler; exasperated and furrowed brow as I tell him yet again to stop pulling the dog’s tail.

As the day goes on, I laugh, I yell, I sing, I soothe. I alternately smile wide and grit my teeth. I lose my temper and regain my calm. On the bad days, I cry; on the good days, I laugh so hard it hurts. And each day my energy rises and lags,my face always revealing the ups and down of life with littles – equal parts delight and frustration.

The more I think about it, the more I realize that the face of God must look like this, too.

In a single instant, God is both rejoicing and grieving – at all the good and the evil we do to each other. God weeps and delights. God watches and waits. Scripture tells us that God gets angry, but also relents; God punishes, but also forgives.

God’s face must never look the same for long, as our many loves and failures, joys and sins, give more than enough to respond to every minute. It’s a comforting thought for a mothering spirit whose temper and emotions often change like the sea – and can be just as stormy.

If we could glimpse the face of God, perhaps it would look like a newborn’s: one instant blissful, one instant sorrowful. A mystery for those of us who watch and try to figure out what’s going on inside.

you know neither the day nor the hour

Waiting can seem so passive. What is a waiting room for but sitting impatiently, staring at the clock, flipping idly through a magazine, wondering when your turn will come?

And yet we all know that times of waiting quickly fill up with lots of activity.

We wait for Christmas or birthdays to arrive with all the shopping, planning, cooking and decorating that accompany celebrations. We wait for news of a loved one’s safe travels or successful surgery by busying ourselves around the house till the phone rings. We even fill our time waiting for the train/plane/bus to arrive or the light to turn green by checking our phone or flipping through our ipod. Waiting can be active and busy as well.

Waiting for a baby to arrive is no exception. Every day I busy about my life and wonder when the time will come. But I can’t wait passively. There is work to complete. There is a toddler to feed and amuse. There is a house to keep clean. My waiting is full of work and activity.

Living in a constant state of waiting leads my theologian mind to drift to the waiting we all do (or should be doing) as Christians: waiting for Christ to return. Because that is what this whole life is ultimately about, n’est-ce pas? Preparing ourselves to be ready when that final day comes, knowing we will be held accountable for the lives we led and the people we became in the process.

But honestly, who really thinks about Christ’s second coming or the day of judgment all that often? Not many people in the circles I run in. Sure, we have those couple of weeks during Advent when we’re supposed to be preparing for the second coming of Christ at the end of time, not just awaiting the arrival of the sweet babe in the manger. And Lent is supposed to keep us mindful that we are not made for this life, but something more, something coming, something not-yet.

We know this as Christians, right? But rare is the person who actually thinks about the possibility that this very day, Christ could come back again. It almost seems an eye-rolling notion. We mock the sects and the crazies who predict the end of days with such certainty that atheists are left to laugh when tomorrow rolls around.

But spending my days (and restless nights) in a constant state of waiting reminds me that perhaps I should give more thought to this other kind of Waiting. If today were That Day and That Hour, would I be found to be the kind of person I hoped I’d be? How would my life, my work, my flaws and faults be found wanting? And what would it mean to meet face-to-face this person, this God I claim to follow?

Thoughts terrifying enough to send me back to that nest of pillows I call a pregnancy bed. But in small ways, the unknownness, the fear and the wonder of meeting my baby evoke some of the same feelings. What will it be like to meet this new person face-to-face? How will my mothering – with all its flaws and faults, its hopes and dreams – be found wanting? Can I rise to the occasion and be the parent this child will ask me to be?

Waiting is a time of “already-and-not-yet.” We live partly in the future and partly in the present. And it’s hard to live our lives any other way. But if we get too wrapped up in the busyness of preparing, of filling every spare minute so we don’t have time to think about the daunting possibilities of what lies ahead, then we can miss the beauty of what it means to wait.

Namely, that we are always people on-the-way, people who are becoming. That there is always something new before us, something strange and wonderful and unpredictable, something that will challenge us, something that invites us to become more fully the people we are called to be.

So perhaps this is my own call to stay awake, to keep watch amidst the waiting. To try and slow down while my body fuels the hormone-driven need to cook and clean and cajole this whole household (as well as my own heart) into readiness for a new arrival. Because there is no telling what this day, this hour will bring – for any of us. A truth of equal parts delight and terror, but the waiting we’re called to, nonetheless.

too pink or too blue?

A few weeks ago, I came across a great post on “At Home with our Faith,” a blog on nurturing family spirituality from Claretian Publications. The author described her frustration with the subtle (or not-so-subtle) messages about gender stereotypes that children’s clothing sends: the pink princess explosion in the girls’ aisle, the sports and trucks invasion on the boys’ racks.

Whether or not we realize it, the clothes we buy children tells them about what it means to be a boy or girl, a man or woman: how the two sexes should act or think, what acceptable interests they can pursue, and how society views them.

When I was scouring garage sales before S was born, I naturally bought gender-neutral outfits. It was only practical: we didn’t know if the baby was a boy or a girl, and I needed to stock up before s/he arrived. But even after he burst onto the scene in all his beautiful boy-ness, I still found myself drawn to the gender-neutral clothes: bright primary colors, simple t-shirts and pants, no character cartoons. I figured this was simply my own practical (read: frugal) side directing my shopping: why invest in two entirely separate sets of clothing for our family’s hopeful expansion into kids of both sexes?

But as S has continued to grow – a long trail of plastic tubs stuffed with outgrown onesies and overalls in his wake – I find this practical approach to clothes shopping becoming harder and harder. All the boy clothes for toddlers are rough-and-tumble, blues and browns, dogs and cars. Girls’ offerings for the same age are sweet-and-dainty, pinks and purples, kittens and flowers.

Rarely can I find kids’ clothing that is precisely that: designed simply for kids, who are small and bright and eager to explore everything, regardless of whether society says it’s acceptable for a girl to love trains or a boy to push a toy vacuum around the house. (Which, by the way, is why I adore Zutano’s unisex clothing: it’s pricey – so I usually wait to snatch it up at garage/consignment sales – but it holds up well for multiple children. Worth the investment.)

Now don’t get me wrong. I never set out on this quest for practical kids’ clothing to make a bold social statement about the genders. I do think there is adorable pink and blue wear out there, and I’m not categorically opposed to it. But once I read the reflection mentioned above, I began to see this as a theological question as well. (Which will surprise none of you who read this blog.)

How do the clothes or the toys or the books I buy for my children tell them about who they are as male and female? And what does that teach them about God, in whose image they were created, male and female?

The author of the “Off the rack” post agrees:

The trick of raising healthy girls and boys is being able to recognize and honor the differences between the sexes without falling prey to gender stereotyping. We are called to look beyond sugar, spice, and puppy dogs’ tails as we help our girls to grow into women and our boys to become men.

Respect each gender. Children’s first notions of their own worth as males or females will come from their parents…

The U.S. Catholic bishops put it well in their Human Sexuality document: “Each of the two sexes is an image of the power and tenderness of God, with equal dignity, though in a different way.”

Show them how. Mom is outside using a power tool; Dad was crying during the sad part of that movie. Our children learn the boundaries—or lack of boundaries—of each gender by watching their parents.

Children generalize by nature, so decisions you make as a person will likely be interpreted more broadly than you may intend. Instead of, “My dad doesn’t go to church,” a son will extrapolate, “Men don’t go to church.”

Your child will form a definition of what it means to be a man or a woman by watching you.

I believe that our sexualities are gifts that need to be cherished and nurtured in healthy ways. There are too many voices in the dominant culture that will tell my son what it means to be a man or my (future) daughter what it means to be a woman. And I cringe to think of how these images – from TV and movies and music and ads – will inevitably shape or even warp their understanding of themselves.

So I want to provide them with an alternative narrative: one that tells them they are strong and beautiful and worthy and loved because of who they are at the core, not how they look or what they like to do.

Yet I struggle with this. Some parents have gone to extremes in resisting society’s messages about gender, and frankly I think using a young child to make such a statement is unfair. Our gender identities do deserve to be celebrated, just not pigeon-holed or defined by a culture that offers skewed versions and visions of how we should express ourselves as men and women. So I want to help my kids to navigate this maze of conflicting messages and see the core of the truth that God created them to be male or female for beautiful reasons and purposes, not demeaning ones.

As I wait to discover whether baby #2 is boy or girl, I can’t help but think that perhaps our decision not to find out our babies’ genders before their births was informed by this same impulse. Deep down, F and I wanted to relate to this unborn child without immediately picturing pinks or blues, girl or boy. As tempted as I was at points to find out, I wanted to keep the surprise because it forces me to remember that this child is essentially a beautiful mystery.

He or she may look like F or I, or they may not. They may act like us, or they may not. They may share our interests, or they may not. And living with that reminder for 9 months reinforces that I cannot control any of who this child is or what s/he will become. Nor should society determine this by its definitions of boy or girl. Instead, it is all pure gift from God, the uniqueness of each human life.

So for now I wash all those yellow and green onesies and tuck them away in the drawer for baby to make the grand appearance. I let S play with the blocks and the trucks and the toy kitchen and the baby doll. I wonder what the coming years will bring as my children learn about who they are, and I hope I can keep muddling through as best as any parent can, making my share of mistakes along the way.

Because what I help them to learn about gender and identity will eventually impact what they believe about God. And that is a weighty question indeed.