Preschool Weekly Meditation Archive

The Rev. Daniel R. Heischman, D.D., Executive Director

At our recent retreat for chaplains and parish day school rectors in the Pacific Northwest, Bishop Hanley of Oregon made mention of a new, emerging trend, “home churching.” Like home schooling, this phenomenon has its roots in a family’s dissatisfaction with what institutions provide or do not provide, as well as an interest in offering some spiritual and moral framework for children whose parents are not particularly interested in church going, or perhaps seek to carve out their own approach given their varied religious or non-religious backgrounds. It also appears to have an organic beginning in most homes: what begins as a day of the week set apart without television or internet then gives way to grace before meals, Bible study, singing songs, family discussions, and planning for the week ahead. Before one knows it, a pattern and ritual have emerged. As some of these parents report, “Church really did not work for us,” and this provides for them a spiritual alternative.

One of the ways that “church really did not work for us” is the discomfort these parents can feel having their children in church, including the seeming lack of welcome they can experience for bringing their children in the first place. When the children make noise, these parents claim to receive a lot of “nasty and disapproving looks” from the older folks around them in the pews.

I don’t think the church does a particularly good job of addressing the expectations it has for the behavior of children in worship. On the one extreme, there are those churches where the nasty looks abound, where the implicit message to kids and the parents who bring them is, “Not welcome;” on the other hand, there are those churches where children can seem out of control, admittedly making it hard for many adults to focus on the liturgy. It encourages me when parishes intentionally seek to welcome children “as they are” in worship, although children—like all human beings!—need help with what is appropriate and inappropriate behavior, even in a sacred space. It is a struggle that many parishes face: how to blend welcome with needed guidelines.

Here is where I believe our Episcopal schools do such a good job with children and worship. Our chapels are welcoming places for children, where we center our message and tone to their world. At the same time, we help our students learn how to act in a sacred place. They are given a framework, something they all seek and need. In some cases, they ultimately have a better sense of how to be in a sacred place than their parents when they show up to chapel!

A welcome and a framework: the two go hand in hand when it comes to having that most important part of the Body of Christ in our midst. In this way, among many, we have something of real value to offer to our churches.

The Rev. Daniel R. Heischman, D.D., Executive Director

For all of our schools, the safety of our students—their physical safety, as well as their emotional and moral safety—is of primary concern. When it comes to judging between competing claims for the good, it trumps the others every time. At the same time, almost all of us, I am sure, have had to deal with requests from some parents to do things in the interest of safety that go beyond what we feel is reasonable and healthy in assuring the well-being of our students. As Aristotle might describe it, safety can easily become a virtue in excess!

We had a fascinating discussion on this matter at our annual ChapToR Conference (Chaplains and Teachers of Religion in Episcopal schools), last week in Austin TX. Professor Scott Bader-Saye, who teaches ethics at the Seminary of the Southwest, spoke about how our culture manufactures and cultivates fear, issuing in an all-consuming desire for safety in every corner of life. Safety sells, he reminded us, and part of its curious appeal is its ability to make us anxious about the questionable safety of virtually everything we do and encounter. Tell a story about new revelations challenging the safety of a toy or medication, and we stop and listen.

Professor Bader-Saye made one observation that has stuck with me. In the absence of a common understanding in our culture of what it means to be a good parent, as well as to raise good children, safety becomes the “default mode” in the process of assessing our parenting skills. If we are actively working, on all fronts, for the safety of our children, then we can assure ourselves that we are being a “good enough parent.” All one needs to do is to look at recent surveys on why parents send their children to private and independent schools—in recent years safety has become the number one reason, outscoring academic strength or small classes—to understand some of what he is talking about.

As I think about this contemporary “benchmark” of good parenting, I also wonder how much of the search for safety is a disguised form of a deeper human yearning. St. Augustine said that our hearts are restless until we rest in God. If we find ourselves obsessing about safety, could it be that we are looking for something more than just a refuge from harm? Sometimes, after all, the soul can trick us: just when we thought we were clear about what we were looking for, it turns out that there is a deeper human search going on. Our wish, to others, that they, “Be safe,” may in fact be a way of putting into words something we hope for at a much deeper level.

The Rev. Daniel R. Heischman, D.D., Executive Director

The Rev. John Buchanan, longtime pastor of Fourth Presbyterian Church in Chicago, is retiring soon, and in a recent reflection on his 48 years of ministry, he told the story of one baptism he did for a two-year old. In accordance with Presbyterian tradition, Buchanan pronounced the child’s name, followed by the declaration, “You are a child of God, sealed by the Spirit in your baptism, and you belong to Jesus Christ forever.” The young child immediately responded, “Uh-oh!”

Buchanan thought that a very appropriate response, given the depth of the affirmation he had made on behalf of the child. So often we make our way through some profound and even stunning theological affirmations, in our worship, without stopping to consider just how serious these words and phrases can be in their temporal and eternal meaning. That is why we can count some of the challenging questions of some of our students to be such a gift, whatever their age, as they can remind us of the “uh-oh” dimension of what the tradition is saying, what we are saying. Are we serious in what we say, or simply just throwing out words and phrases? Do we embrace it all, part of it, or none of it?

Indeed, a common question that young people ask these days is, “Are you serious?” They ask it in routine ways of each other, they are asking it—directly or indirectly—of us as adults. Behind what seems to be a routine question is a much deeper one, reflecting what these young people are looking for in life. They want to know where the seriousness can be found. Do we really mean what we are saying and doing? That is an enormous challenge for us to face; we can count it both a daunting task and an immense blessing when they have the courage to ask it of us.

The Rev. Daniel R. Heischman, D.D., Executive Director

Surely, this is the time of year when we can be easily frustrated by student behavior. Be it on an individual or group level, we can find ourselves repeating the words above, “What were they thinking?” Perhaps, we might wonder, was thinking actually part of the equation at all? We can find ourselves asking lots of basic questions regarding what students have done, perhaps what adults have done, as news of incidents reach our desks, and which may now require a corrective and appropriate response.

A cautionary note is always valuable. Our students, as well as the adults in our community, are fundamentally good people. We need to remind ourselves of this basic fact, over and over, as we meet unexpected and undesirable behavior at any level. Recently, the New York Times Magazine reported that, when it comes to surveys on teenage substance abuse and sexual behavior, our young people are actually more conservative than many of their parents.* While the internet and social media can open up new avenues of opportunity for us to wonder, “What were they thinking?” it can also allow for a more careful monitoring by parents of their children. As one school head recently wrote, in the aftermath of one of those large-scale incidents that can wreak havoc with the morale of a school this time of year, “We have a good school and good students.” We should never lose sight of that simple reality in light of frustrating events.

These moments can also reacquaint us with another important perspective, something that strikes at the heart of what we are about as school communities. In our cultural push for young people to grow up faster, to acquire ever-greater intellectual skills and expose them to wider experiences, the cultivation of a moral compass is not automatic. Sophisticated, savvy, and very bright young people are not necessarily well-grounded in moral judgments. Indeed, as the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, wrote some years ago,** for moral judgment to flourish, young people need more, not less, time to grow up. The absence of that compass, which can come as a surprise to us, may well be an unwelcome and unintended consequence of our push to make students grow up before they are ready.

The crucial question might well be, in the words of the Archbishop, are we providing, for our children, “room to explore in safety, not to be prematurely committed?” It may well be the key ingredient in the cultivation of moral judgment, for what our students need to be thinking as they mature.

*See, Tara Parker-Pope, “The Kids Are More Than All Right,” New York Times Magazine (February 5, 2012), 14.

**See, “Childhood and Choice,” in Rowan Williams, Lost Icons (Edinburgh, 2001).

 The Rev. Daniel R. Heischman, Executive Director

A couple of weeks ago I received a message from a colleague in California, sharing with me two emails she had received from parents, one right upon the other.  The first elicited the reaction from her, “Why am I doing this?”  The second, received minutes later, provoked a very different response, what she referred to as, “This is why I do what I do.”

I think all of us can easily recall the contrasting responses, and in many cases they follow one right after the other.  At our new heads program in September, Aimeclaire Roche, Head of Bishop’s School in California, spoke of how the life of a school head can, “turn on a dime,” enduring a difficult conversation in one moment, celebrating a joyous occasion the next.  Moving so quickly from experience at the end of one spectrum to something almost exactly at the opposite, in virtually the next moment, was for her one of the most eye-opening experiences of being a school head.

As coupled as those contrasting situations can be for all of us, this time of year seems to hold more potential for the, “Why am I doing this?” type of experience.  The walls can feel as if they are closing in, and it is a long stretch until spring vacation.  We are juggling attention to the current academic year with increasing amounts of time devoted to next year.  The idealism we carried with us back to school at the beginning of the academic year can seem a distant memory.

All the more important to remember what my colleague remarked when I wrote to her to ask if I could use her examples as a base for an upcoming Monday meditation.  She replied that her big challenge – particularly perhaps this time of year? – is to seek out more of those “this is why I do this” reminders.  After all, she tells us, we don’t need to look far!  They are there for the finding; we just need to be attuned to them!