Opening the gift of timeBy Sara Wenger Shenk |
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Mary Pipher, family therapist and bestselling author, said in an interview, “If families just let the culture happen to them, they end up fat, addicted, broke, with a house full of junk and no time.” For the first time in history, she claims, children are not being socialized by their parents. Essentially they are being raised by appliances. And multinational corporations have become our culture’s primary storytellers, teaching children what life is all about.
When I listen to Pipher talk about the need for families to differentiate from their culture, I remember all the talk about “separation from the world” in my growing up years. We had it hammered into us that we were to be different, with distinctive dress, rules on appliances, and plenty of talk about obedience and submission to community norms. Many of us fled what we felt were legalistic impositions on our creativity and freedom.
Then we formed families that came to look a lot
like everyone else. And, ironically, many of our
own children, rather than needing to free themselves from the burdens of
guilt and social
control that we fled, are looking for meaning,
guidance in making moral decisions,
accountability, and communities where they can
truly belong.
Disconnecting from harmful forces
Pipher observes that many North American families today live in “houses without walls—at least walls that offer any protection.” Technology has brought the outside world into our living rooms. The media form our community. The electronic village is our hometown. Yet, ironically, with more entertainment we are more bored. With more sexual information and stimulation, we experience less sexual pleasure. With more timesaving devices, we have less time.
We need to disconnect families from forces that harm them and connect them to stories, practices, and people that will help them. Where do we begin? Pipher suggests we need to build walls that protect time and space, walls of rituals, celebrations, and traditions. I think this metaphor is a helpful one, but I prefer to think of walls like cellular walls—protective but permeable membranes that keep the cell in balance; that regulate what comes in and out, preserving life.
Are we back to where we were a generation ago, separating ourselves off from much of the rest of the world? Not many of us will elect to be that radical. But I believe we as a church community must become counter-cultural with a renewed intentionality—not countering with a self-righteous over-against-ness, but with holistic, embodied practices and strong stories. These will find full expression in our homes, sustained by a vibrant, Christ-centered faith community.
So what are the protective membranes we use to shelter and nurture our families? How do we equip families with practices, stories, celebrations, daily rhythms that are supple and wise, crafted by generations of families seeking and finding what it takes to thrive?
The Shema, considered by some a “canon within a canon,” is a primary touchstone for family formation in any age. It invites us into a full-orbed alertness to God’s presence in our daily lives and the practices that form us—body, mind, and soul—in this awareness:
Hear, O Israel: The LORD is our God, the
LORD alone. You shall love the LORD your
God with all your heart, and with all your
soul, and with all your might. Keep these
words that I am commanding you today in
your heart. Recite them to your children
and talk about them when you are at home
and when you are away, when you lie
down and when you rise. Bind them as a
sign on your hand, fix them as an emblem
on your forehead, and write them on the
doorposts of your house and on your
gates. – Deuteronomy 6:4-9
Practices that nurture the spirit
History can be read as practices that sustain human communities over time, write Dorothy Bass and Craig Dykstra in Practicing Our Faith: A Way of Life for a Searching People. “Christian practices are things Christian people do together over time in response to and in the light of God’s active presence for the life of the world.”
The good of all people, they say, may depend on our ability to order our lives well; to order them with practices that are concrete, physical, down-to-earth; gestures with which we touch, feed, wash, honor, heal, celebrate, and release one another.
Ask people to discuss practices in the concreteness of their own lives, like morning and evening rituals, holiday festivities, picnics, gardening, singing, saying good-bye, and stories tumble out. Tears and laughter erupt. Connections are made. Admittedly, some of us feel trapped in practices that are stifling; we need to evaluate them regularly, revising them so that they better promote our well being.
Practices are the stuff of which the good life is made. I’ve enjoyed revisiting Romans 12, whose opening reverberated loudly in my childhood community: “Do not be conformed to this world . . . .” Now I hear those words only as a preface to: “but be transformed by the renewing of your minds, so that you may discern what is the will of God—what is good and acceptable and perfect.” And the entire chapter bubbles forth with animated recognition of the abundance of good practices that characterize faithful families and communities.
Rest and renewal are expansive gifts stewarded from the dawn of time, built into the story of Creation itself.
A paramount practice mentioned throughout the Old and New Testaments is the Sabbath. This habit holds great promise for our families, with huge prospects for transformation. Why Sabbath? Isn’t that about legalistic impositions and straitlaced rigidity? Sabbath is at the top of my list of practices to be recovered—not as a hard, unmovable wall—but as a protective, breathing membrane that keeps our lives in balance. Why? Because our ability to revitalize life-giving practices is all about our relationship to time and the purported lack of time that is at the root of so many of our current ills. In the frenzy of our schedules, we often experience time as the enemy. Sabbath, writes Dorothy Bass in her book Receive the Day, offers the gift of time.
Rest and renewal are expansive gifts stewarded from the dawn of time, built into the story of Creation itself. Sheltering space for Sabbath allows for many life-giving practices: assembling together for worship, giving and receiving forgiveness, celebrating the Lord’s supper, testifying to God’s faithfulness, offering hospitality around our tables, visits with extended family, relaxed space for conversation, long walks for reveling in God’s natural world, love-making, family games, afternoon naps, or journaling.
I keep on my desk a wonderful quote by Leo Tolstoy: “One can live magnificently in this world, if one knows how to work and how to love, to work for the person one loves and to love one’s work.” I would suggest that Sabbath is for remembering whom it is that one loves, so that one’s work (whether at home or elsewhere) is a work of love. Isaiah 56 and 58 offer powerful litanies reminding the people of Israel and others who joined in that the Sabbath is about covenant, joy, belonging, loosing the bonds of injustice, sharing bread with the hungry; Sabbath is when we come to delight in the LORD—and “ride upon the heights of the earth” Isaiah 58:14.
Imaginative renewal of practices that shelter families isn’t about adopting new church programs for ministry to families. It isn’t about providing therapy for dysfunctional, enmeshed families (or whatever other label we may impose). There is great promise in inviting parents, families, and faith communities to actively cultivate life-giving practices and daily rhythms.
In relatively simple, attainable ways we can empower families to shape a life they choose. We can help them counter the overbearing pressures of an invasive, consumer driven, mass culture by remembering how life-giving it is simply to go for walks together, to read and tell stories out loud, and to have neighbors over for a potluck meal. Families can learn how to turn off the machines, to disconnect from forces that harm them and reconnect with stories, practices, and people that sustain them. This is frontline missional agenda for our congregations today.
Sara Wenger Shenk is Associate Dean at Eastern Mennonite Seminary in Harrisonburg, Virginia. She has authored five books, including Thank You for Asking: Young Adult Faith Formation (new from Herald Press, July 2005).