The Wonder Years

Generation To Generation

In a house which becomes a home,
one hands down and another takes up
the heritage of mind and heart,
laughter and tears, musings and deeds.
Love, like a carefully loaded ship,
crosses the gulf between the generations.
Therefore, we do not neglect the ceremonies
of our passage: when we wed, when we die,
and when we are blessed with a child;
When we depart and when we return;
When we plant and when we harvest.
Let us bring up our children. It is not
the place of some official to hand to them
their heritage.
If others impart to our children our knowledge
and ideals, they will lose all of us that is
wordless and full of wonder.
Let us build memories in our children,
lest they drag out joyless lives,
lest they allow treasures to be lost because
they have not been given the keys.
We live, not by things, but by the meanings of things.
It is needful to transmit the passwordsf rom generation to generation.

Antoine de Saint-Exupery


Having read the first few sections of Parents as Spiritual Guides, by Roberta and Christopher Nelso, a UU book about whole-family spirituality, I've been thinking about some of the questions posed to parents. The first few exercises involve the definition of spirituality, why it's important to the parent, and the role of wonder in spirituality. And so, as I mentioned earlier, I'm going to journal about them here.

The book utilizes Dr. James Fowler's theories about spiritual development, from the undifferentiated faith of infants, through the mythic-literal faith of symbols and storytelling, to the Individuative-Reflective faith with its personally-constructed meanings, and, where I think I am now, the Paradoxical-Consolidative faith of recognizing the complexities of life and living with them (there are other stages and I don't know any of them well; this is just a quick mention of them). Apparently, for Fowler, the family is at the center of faith development, being the place where humans experience shared meanings and rituals, among other essential needs.

What is spirituality to me and why do I want to bring it to my kids? Spirituality, for me, is the valuing of things of the spirit, i.e. not consumer goods, not products, not posessions, but emotions such as love, wonder, gratitude, appreciation, responsibility, compassion, a feeling of connection to all living things, the questioning of the nature of the universe, a sense of a picture bigger than the here and now, my place in it all, as well as my contribution to it. What is that saying on coffee mugs? The most important things in life aren't things. In UU terms, it would be Principle 7, I think, the interconnectedness of all living things, plus Principle 1, the inherent worth and dignity of all people.

Such things haven't always interested me. For a long time, I confused and conflated religion and spirituality, rejecting both as I rejected Christianity, but they are not necessarily the same thing. I can be an atheist but still engaged in a spiritual quest. And so, several years ago, I began to consider such ideas. It has taken me away from a pessimistic and aggressive atheism, through a personal Wiccan interest in natural cycles and pagan traditions, to Unitarian Universalism, where I'm still an atheist with Wiccan leanings.

I should've noticed earlier, but my father, who never readily enters a church or finds much value in organized religion, is one of the most spiritually-alive people I know. He is a modern-day Thoreau, finding his communion with the universe in nature, respecting the world around him and taking care of it. He is particularly interested in ideas, reads a great deal, and engages in the issues of the day (he is one of the most well-informed people, as far as current events and political issues go). I remember as a child that he would exhort us to look out the window in the car at the world around us--look, there's the beaver dam on the way between Houston and Dallas--but I often didn't, of course, because children don't always. But of course, I want my children to look, too (see Dad, I was listening and learning, after all. Just a little late).

Do you know the joke about UUs? They are atheists with children! And that's exactly how it started. DP and I knew we wanted to have children and knew we wanted a spiritual community for them. She had been raised in a Buddhist household but sent to Catholic school for 12 years, not fitting in well either place; I was left to discover my own spiritual path and followed my mom's, but later in life, this atheism left me yearning for something else (for clarity: I don't regret not being raised with religion--I sampled lots of churches with friends--I just wished I'd found my spiritual home sooner. And thanks to art history and Cecil B. DeMille, I can identify many Bible stories). And so we checked out the local UU church, even before we were pregnant. And it's one of the best decisions we made--our specific community of friends who care for and encourage one another, our minister who has supported us with wisdom and kindness through many stressful times, the larger movement itself with its focus on liberal religious teachings and social justice. We go to church almost every week, leaving the children in the nursery for service and then spending fellowship hour together talking to friends. We had them dedicated there and are happy that they feel comfortable, happy, and loved there. And so now, as they get older, we're thinking of how to encourage their own innate spirituality. And for children, much of this centers around the concept of wonder--being able to recognize and appreciate the specialness and uniqueness of the world around them.

Nature is our path to wonder right now. The actual, physical world holds so many marvels for them, which in turns makes it marvelous for me: the tiny snow drop flowers pushing up out of the dried leaves; the tulip shoots starting to peek through next to our mailbox; the way the water rushes down the "waterfall" in the stream by our house; the half-moon visible during the day; the red tail hawk soaring overhead; birds' nests now visible in bare trees; squirrels chasing each other up and down our trees; a full rainbow in a rain-drenched sky; the way the wind dances in the trees; how gently-falling snow tastes on your tongue. We try to point out the world around them.

And last night it was the gorgeous full moon in a mostly clear and windy sky. It rose over the house next to us as we were getting the kids into bed. And so we watched it glow next to a tall pine, sometimes blocked by clouds, other times illuminating the sky. We checked back on its progress during storytime (we read Grandfather Twilight, about the man who carries a small pearl that grows larger and brighter as he spreads twilight around, until he puts the pearl into the night sky and goes to bed), and sang all our moon songs to it before we went to bed--"I See the Moon," "Sister Moon, Sister Moon," and "Moon, Moon, Moon."

The first thing we heard this morning? "Mommy, we don't see the moon. It's too sunny."

It's wonder-ful.