At the Hospital

I checked my eighty-two year old mother into a hospital yesterday. She’s been slowly losing weight, and the doctors haven’t found a cause, other than her lungs, which have been lousy for some time. Now that she’s down to seventy pounds, they want to admit her for more tests, even though they’ve been doing tests for months. As we were waiting for them to assign her a bed, I reminded her that the children and I are scheduled to go to a big Quaker gathering at the beginning of July, providing she’s well enough for us to leave town.

“What are you going to learn there?” she asked with what I heard as a critical tone.

“I’m taking a workshop on prayer,” I responded. “And the children will have different activities.” I kept my tone even and waited for a reaction. My mother has never understood my decision to leave the Roman Catholic church and become a Quaker. The practice of worshipping in silence seems strange to her, as does the idea of spending a week at a workshop on prayer. Although she has faithfully attended mass her whole life, it’s been out of habit and superstition rather than devotion. She says she’s remained a Catholic to hedge her bets, “just in case the nuns were right.”

“How do Quakers pray?” she asked. “They don’t say anything, like the Hail Mary.”

“Silently,” I answered, unsure how to explain what I do for an hour every Sunday.

“So they just talk to God,” she concluded. “Do they tell him how mean he is?”

There it was, I thought, the theological abyss between us. My mother is not sure she believes in God, but if she does, he’s male and mean, deaf ears to complain to. For me, prayer is more about trying to listen to God, a God that is neither male nor female and generous rather than stingy. I don’t actually know what I’m doing in prayer; I think I’m meditating more than anything, trying to empty my restless mind. I’m definitely not telling God how mean he is, and I feel sad that this is how my mother conceives of prayer.

“Have you been praying more lately?” I asked, knowing she has been thinking a lot about death.

“No,” she said. “I can’t concentrate.” Then she added that she wanted to get death over with. I’m not sure what to do with this other than to listen. My mother is a practical woman, and she appreciates practical expressions of love. So I check her mail and do her banking and her laundry. And I try to assure her that she’s not a “pain in the ass,” as she puts it, which is part of why she wants to get dying over with. Dragging it out just seems inconsiderate to her, like guests who linger too long after dinner.

Meanwhile I’m trying to prepare myself for whatever unfolds, which might be a quick death or, more likely, a slow one. (None of us expect her to recover her old independence.) This is calling me to let go of my need to make plans. Already we’ve cancelled our trip to Wisconsin this Saturday, and the rest of the summer feels unpredictable. I didn’t mention to my mom that the Quaker conference costs over a thousand dollars, which we’ll lose if we cancel at the last minute. Instead I’m trying to trust that all will work out, which brings me back to our differing concepts of prayer. Instead of complaining to God about the inconvenience of having a dying mother or asking God to work some miracles for us, I feel like what I need to do is be still and listen so I’ll know what to do at each turn in the road. Right now, what I need to do is be present to her and willing to hear whatever she needs to say.

Not Me

My eight-year-old daughter was cranky when I picked her up from school yesterday. As usual, it took a few hours before the real reason emerged. It seems that two of her best friends are teaching her “how to act cool,” and yesterday’s lesson involved swishing her shoulders provocatively when she walked.

“I just can’t do that, Mom,” Megan explained. “It just isn’t me.” The fact that boys might see her only exacerbated her main dilemma—how to be true to her self when her friends wanted her to be someone else.

I know adults who have spent years trying to figure out who they really are after being raised to hide their true selves. It takes many weekend retreats or years of therapy, work that can be an important part of spiritual and personal growth. The question for me as a parent, however, is how to raise children who know who they are from the start, who don’t have to work so hard to find themselves in their forties. Part of me wants to protect my daughter, to shield her from fashion magazines and second graders who give cool lessons. Another part of me thinks she might as well learn to stand up from herself in second grade since she’s going to have to do it for the rest of her life anyway.

“So what did you say to them, Honey?” I asked.
“I said, ‘No way. That’s just not me,’” she reported, her body language stiff and determined. “I don’t mind them giving me lessons in how to be cool. That’s my choice,” she emphasized, knowing that I don’t approve of the coolness lessons. “But some things I just won’t do. That’s not me,” she repeated, “but it’s hard for me to say, ‘No’ to my friends."

This has come up before, the idea that she’s willing to change somewhat for her friends, but within limits. Since I haven’t been able to debunk the notion of “cool,” I’m trying to help her know where her limit is and how to defend it. For a moment my mind flashes forward to adolescence and the dilemmas she might face in a few years—a horny boy whose affection she wants to win, friends who want her to try drugs—or in the years beyond, perhaps a boss who wants her to cook the accounting books. After all, there were many people involved in Watergate and only one Deep Throat, which makes me wonder what gives some people the courage to speak up. I remember Tim O’Brien’s point in The Things They Carried, that he might have had the courage to resist the draft in 1968 if he’d practiced being courageous as a child.

Teaching my daughter to know her limits and to defend them feels like an expression of both my feminism and my faith. Girls are especially at risk for losing their voices in the face of people telling them how to dress and walk, so it feels decidedly political to teach her to say, “No.” It’s also very Quaker, the idea of speaking our truth. Knowing what that truth is requires paying attention to our inner life, listening to something inside us, rather than all the external pressures.

In addition to listening to children, I think giving them “down time” nurtures this—time when they’re not doing homework, practicing piano, or watching TV. But I’m aware how little down time my children have right now, with all the end-of-the-school-year events and, still, the lice and daily nit-picking (see “Head Lice”). I’m trying to use the nit-picking as a bonding experience, an intimate time to talk with my daughter. “I know it’s hard to say, ‘No’ to your friends,” I tell her. “But I’m proud of you for knowing who you are. If they are good friends, they’ll accept that.”

Do other parents have ideas they want to share about how they’ve tried to nurture their child’s sense of self? I'd welcome your thoughts here.

Geldof, Wallis, and Me

Three converging activities have got me reflecting on how to practice the Quaker testimonies of Simplicity and Equality as a middle class parent: 1) we’re cleaning out our basement; 2) Bob Geldof is planning another rock extravaganza to help the poor in Africa; and 3) I’m reading God’s Politics by Jim Wallis.

Jim Wallis, editor of Sojourners magazine, makes a compelling case that relieving global poverty is a moral issue that people of faith should be addressing with more urgency. He also offers some shocking statistics:

Today some eight hundred million people around the world are malnourished. According to UNICEF and the World Health Organization, 30,500 children die every day in the developing world from hunger and preventable diseases. Almost three billion people, nearly half the world’s population, live on less than $2 a day, 1.2 billion of them on less than $1 a day (285).

Significantly reducing these numbers would cost less than the Iraq war and would do more for our long term security. Wallis makes these kinds of connections and frames them as religious issues. He also talks about realistic solutions, such as changing trade policies to make the playing field fairer for poor countries.

Enter Bob Geldof, who twenty years ago organized Live Aid, which coincidently one of my students skewered in a paper this semester as an irrelevant ego trip for rock stars. Just as I was finishing Wallis’ chapter on global poverty, Geldof announced that Philadelphia will be one of the hosts for a new rock event to help Africa: Live 8, a reference to the summit of eight rich countries that make the trade policies that Wallis criticizes.

I was heartened to hear that Live 8 will focus more on justice than on charity, which could make it more relevant than Live Aid ultimately was. It seems that there is a growing movement of people interested in systemic change. Starbucks now has a Fair Trade coffee blend. Bono’s wife is reportedly starting a line of Fair Trade designer clothing. Obviously neither will be selling at Walmart anytime soon, but Live 8 could conceivably raise consciousness about the connection between trade and global poverty, which could be more helpful than just raising money.

And then there is the connection to my basement, which probably contains more toys than the entire African village where I lived as a Peace Corps Volunteer. I know clearing out my basement is not going to end world poverty. In fact, some would argue that our consumption provides jobs in “developing” countries, though I’m haunted by the words of the eighteenth century Quaker abolitionist John Woolman who wrote: "May we look upon our treasure, the furniture of our houses, and our garments, and try to discover whether the seeds of war have nourishment in these our possessions."

Woolman was talking about slavery. His own journey led him to give up selling, wearing, or eating anything produced by slaves. Perhaps people of faith today could embrace his example and try (as much as possible) to only buy products where the workers were paid fairly. Instead of class warfare, which Republicans charge whenever people raise economic injustice, we could advocate class solidarity as a moral issue.

Aside from the idea of helping others, there seems to be something spiritually toxic for us in having so much more than we need. My children don’t appreciate each of their possessions the way my students in Botswana appreciated something as simple as a new pencil. My struggle is partly about nurturing my children’s sense of gratitude when they are given so much (mostly by people other than us), but it’s also about making time and space for what’s most important. If I took all the time I spend picking up toys, or asking the children to do it, and spent those hours advocating for global poverty reduction, wouldn’t that be a better use of my time?

In the meantime, I’m trying to use our spring cleaning as a consciousness raising opportunity, to get the children to think about which of their possessions they value most and to consider sharing the rest with those who have less. It’s not as sexy as Live 8, but it’s a start.

Seinfeld

One day last month my eight-year-old daughter asked me, “Hey Mom, did you know you can get gonorrhea from riding a tractor in your bathing suite?” My mouth dropped, but I knew exactly where she had gotten the idea, having watched that episode of Seinfeld years before.

Let me just say that I consider myself a moderate on the TV issue. We don’t totally abstain from media, like our friends at the Waldorf school, but we don’t usually let our kids watch Seinfeld either. We’re more of a PBS family. But one night when I was debilitated by a sinus infection—barely able to lift my head from the couch with my husband out for the evening—I agreed to let my children watch some evening television just to help me make it to bedtime.

I usually try to shelter my children from sexual humor, so I was nervous when they found Seinfeld, though frankly, I didn’t have the strength to argue. Fortunately, the innuendos went over their heads, and they just laughed at the slap-stick, Kramer’s clumsy entrances and Elaine rubbing a co-worker’s stapler in her armpit. My concern was unwarranted, it seemed… until a few nights later when they watched the gonorrhea episode with their dad. They’ve been begging for Seinfeld ever since.

It’s hard to shelter children in our culture. Even if we permanently unplugged the TV, avoided the supermarkets that sell Cosmopolitan, and listened only to classical radio stations, they would still hear sexual lyrics from their friends at Quaker school. The violent toys and movies marketed to boys come even earlier than the slinky clothes aimed at girls. My five-year-old son, who has never seen a Star Wars movie, speaks knowledgeably about Darth Vader’s fall from grace.

I’m part of the culture I criticize. I have to confess, I think Seinfeld is funny and Star Wars entertaining—but for adults, not five-year-olds. I vacillate between wanting to totally shelter them and wanting to teach them how to understand the world they will inevitably have to deal with. I try to do a bit of both, but it is exhausting. I only gave a sketchy explanation of gonorrhea, though not getting the joke didn’t keep my son from trying to repeat it to another Kindergartener at Yearly Meeting (a large gathering of Quakers from around the region). “Hey, Rachel, want to hear a joke about a tractor?” he asked. Fortunately, I was standing there and was able to shelter her, but not for long.

Head Lice

I usually don’t pray about things like head lice. I prefer to pray for other people, which Quakers call holding them “in the Light.” For example, my mother and my mother-in-law have both had medical issues recently, so we’ve been holding them in the Light. You can translate this as “sending them good energy” or “asking God to take care of them,” whichever makes the most sense to you.

I think of holding someone in the Light as praying for whatever is best for that person, without trying to tell God exactly what that is. Larry Dossey—author of Healing Words, among other books—says that studies show that this type of intersessory prayer is actually more effective than specific “Please let mom’s test come back negative” prayers. Aside from the interesting fact that people are studying the effectiveness of prayer on the sick, I am struck by Dossey’s explanation that there seems to be no evidence that one religion or denomination’s prayers are more effective than another’s. However, there is a measurable benefit to patients when the prayer is open-ended or non-specific. Dossey, a physician himself, prays for his patients, "May the best possible outcome prevail." He acknowledges that sometimes the best possible outcome for the patient is actually a peaceful death, even though as a doctor he wants to prolong life for as long as possible. The message for me is to try to be open to an outcome that is not what I originally envisioned, but which may be best in some bigger sense.

So, it was with some ambivalence that I finally prayed last night, “Please let us be done with the head lice!” After more than two weeks of toxic shampoo, daily nit-checking, and excessive house-cleaning, I’m fed up. I tried to be open at first. When we first found a few lice in my daughter’s long red hair and I had to keep her home from school to treat it, I thought, “Well, maybe we needed this quality mother/daughter time.” As I’ve meticulously looked through her hair every day since (making us late for school many days), I’ve thought, “Maybe she needed this extra attention.” When we found another louse a week later and then a few more ten days after that (including some in my hair), I thought, “Maybe God’s still trying to teach me patience.” Frankly I’d prefer for God to teach me how to get rid of the lice.

This is a theme on my spiritual journey. I want to control things, get the lesson over with, move on. However, usually the problem doesn’t go away until I let go of my anxiety and accept whatever is going on. I don’t believe in totally passive spirituality—turn everything over to God, while the head lice multiply. I’m still going to check our hair tonight, soak it in vinegar to get the nits out, and keep working on cleaning the house. But tonight, perhaps I should also pray for the patience to deal with the head lice. That might bring a better ultimate outcome than just getting rid of the buggers.