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In six months I’ll be a new dad again, and my thoughts have returned to what kind of parent I think I’m becoming. This is the fundamental question, more important to me than that of what kind of world we are bringing a new human into; we’re choosing to focus on what kind of human being will be visited upon our world. And the logical follow-up question to “who is my child becoming,” is “what are we modeling?” I’m intrigued as I meditate on this theme that I feel less equipped to parent than I did with the introduction of Gabriel, our almost-three year-old. Maybe its because I grossly underestimated the task (or was it that I grossly overestimated my abilities?), but I feel like the advent of this fresh progeny I am more sober about what’s important, thus more involved in the introspective process of spiritual preparation for a child. I’m sure the time will come when we’ll busy ourselves with paint swatches and name combinations and baby showers, etc., but I am thoroughly immersed at the moment in what it means to be a Dad.
Mark Scandrette, a local artist and spiritual director, writes in his blog about the importance of creating spaces for rites of passage to take place as he unpacks a recent experience with his own son who is in the process of becoming a man. And the two realities cannot really be separated in a healthy way – these realities of fatherhood and manhood. The father invests his very life, from genetic code to wise counsel to friendship and camaraderie, until the point at which the boy becomes a man and replaces him. This transactions is strangely lacking in our youth-crazed world where men, like Peter Pan, refuse to mature into adulthood and experience all the relational and societal complications that result.
A friend of mine named David asked me today what kind of legacy I wish to impart on the next generation. Immediately I think of my son and the mystery child on the way and ask myself if my legacy will be limited to the realm of good intentions, or if I will truly become the kind of man they will want to follow into significance. In other words, can I live the kind of life that will help draw them into the fullness of their own potential? I know some things, like that I want my son to be unashamed and secure in his sexuality. I know I him to be secure enough that he doesn’t have to hide behind empty machismo or bullying tactics, but instead can invest his energy into a deep and authentic respect for self and others. I want him to love his mom and treat women with equity and honor. There’s a lot more that I am completely clueless about, like how to be vulnerable about my own broken humanness when he wakes up to the reality of my mortality. Or what to do when my expectations get in the way of my ability to love and accept him. Or a million other things that come with each new developmental stage or shift in circumstance.
This journey into parenthood is a long march into significance. We don’t get a certificate and a plaque on the baby’s arrival; that legacy instead has to be etched out slowly in the granite, into a lifetime of relationship. My prayer now is that I can learn this time more quickly than I learned the first time around.
Blogged with the Flock Browser
Tags: parenting
Wow. If you haven’t read this opinion piece by TD Jakes, brought to my attention (interestingly enough) by Brian D. McLaren, you need to do so as soon as possible.
Amen, TD Jakes! – Brian McLaren
What an important message for the church of Jesus to heed. I don’t say this merely as a supporter of Barack Obama, but more fundamentally as a Christian.
Blogged with the Flock Browser
Tags: Christianity, Obama, TD Jakes, Jeremiah Wright, Opinion
I downloaded a browser and had something of an epiphany.
Flock is a browser whose sole purpose, it seems, is to keep the user updated with his or her various web2.0 social networks (facebook, flickr, twitter, etc.) I’ll admit, it’s daunting to see a constantly updating stream of human interaction on the left sidebar of my browser. I’m beginning to realize that, at 29 years old, I am on the trailing edge of technological innovation and am far less a native to social networking than kids still in high school. So it took this browser to wake me up to a big turn in the way people communicate: meet-ups can organize in literally hours or less through a network of computers and mobile devices, people can broadcast up-to-the-moment updates of their thoughts, feelings and happenings to friends and total strangers alike, and reactions to these individual and communal happenings can be executed and observed in real time.
Some examples I’ve seen of how this works in real life:
From GodGirl:
A week ago, when I signed on to my Facebook account and saw that Mark’s best friend had written “I’m sad that Mark died in Iraq today” as his “update” message, I hoped it was a joke. Mark and his best friends — two guys named Dave who were his college-mates and, more recently, his neighbors in Laguna Beach, Calif. — have a wicked sense of humor.
When the other Dave sent me an e-mail saying “it’s no joke,” my heart gained 50 pounds and sank in my chest, where it remains, a painful boulder.
How was it possible that one of the most alive people I’ve ever known was gone?
From a friend’s facebook status update:
just wrecked my car and i’m quite tired and sore.
From a friend of a friend who was recently working on a prayer labryinth:
Labyrinth tonight. Come help me move rocks.
Then there are other stories of friends and peers who have recently lit up my phone with text messages requesting prayer, sending blessings, or sharing news.
The question I’ve been pondering is, with the rise of this kind of instant relational networking, how long can church communities keep leaning on routine weekly gatherings that people have attended for centuries out of a sense of duty or habit? While there is certainly still a place for regularly scheduled programming, it’s simply not how emerging culture seems to be working: we watch TV on demand via TiVo or streaming internet feeds, we listen to customized music playlists instead of pre-programmed CD’s, we arrange gatherings via social networking websites and text messaging instead of by the regularity of the weekly calendar. Where’s the balance going to strike (and when)? And in what way does a community lose out by ignoring this trend (or not)?
Blogged with the Flock Browser
Tags: web2.0, networking, gatherings
[This poem was brought on by a term I heard Earl Creps use in describing the challenge of church-starting in Berkeley.]
Berkeley!
Friend of the afflicted,
You pre-paradigmatic primordial soup
Strutting your stuff
Before princes and paupers,
In front of the soiled old man
Pushing his world in a shopping cart
And that clean-cut freshmen
Carting her dreams in a backpack.
You’re creating the world
With neo-synaptic connections
Firing over valleys of indifference
And setting the fires of innovation and conscience
That can’t be extinguished
By cash, oil or holy water.
You are a city set on a hill,
Misguided and delusional as you may be,
Because Jesus is the patron Savior of
The kinds of people good religious folk
Hang out to dry.
Look to the mountains!
Your next great idea won’t come from there
Or from the valley or the sea
But from the sapling that breaks through
The hard concrete of duplicitous idealism
To reveal a revolutionary love
That knows no bounds
And names tolerance
As the clanging cymbal that it is
Yes,
Tolerance is weak street smack
Compared to the love that’s
Flooding your streets
Sorry the posting has been few and far-between as of late. Life for the last week or so has been very present-tense, and not really given to narration.
Next week I will be out of town at (takes deep breath) the Northern California/Nevada District Council of the Assemblies of God. I will try to post some canned thoughts up here during the week, and I will also be live microblogging at www.twitter.com/oharaville
Just one more thought before I go home to be with my wife and kid: would you want to know when your last day on earth is going to be? How would you live differently knowing that your days here are numbered? I don’t mean to be unnecessarily morbid, but our society here really works overtime to distract us from the grand reality of time’s passage. We color our hair. We hide old people in homes or retirement communities. We want to stay young and active as long as humanly possible and turn off the transmission after that line is finally crossed. I’m part of that world. But I’m also part of a world in which I saw my grandfather pass away in his hospital room last year. I’m also part of a world in which four people from my faith community have had funerals in the past year. I’m also part of a world in which death is a reality of life. How do I live in light of this reality? How does it help me to be present with the people I love, knowing that my time here is really a blink in the long gaze of eternity?
My friend just bought a used car in great condition, finally replacing his relic of the heady ’90’s, a Nissan Pathfinder, with a much more sensible sedan. When he was shopping, he and I had a chat about the possibility of his purchasing a hybrid vehicle. This led to some conversation about how a green-minded individual might express himself in the midst of a midlife crisis (I say himself, although I’m sure there are a few ladies who experience this phenomenon). So here, for all those energy-conscious folks approaching the top of the proverbial hill, are a few ways to navigate a greener midlife crisis:
- Put a spoiler on the Prius
- Take public transportation to wander around the harley davidson store
- Convert junk mail to .pdf and transmit it all electronically to the postmaster general
- Watch yoga videos on youtube instead of driving to a class
- Skip the chemicals and photoshop that bald spot or gray hair into oblivion
Can you think of any others?
