The Great Summer Spiritual Explore

I’ve been invited, no more like strongly nudged by circumstances to take a close look at how I personally view and engage worship and summer Christian Education experiences. In this experience I have found both great blessing and great discomfort. The blessing has been in the freedom I have found in doing the not expected and getting creative. The discomfort from my own awareness of my inner reaction being the classic but that’s not what’s expected/done/how I grew up doing things mantra. What quickly followed was the wave of clergy-mommy guilt.

The old that’s not what’s expected and guilt stuff came on strong just as summer hit and I realized this clergy parent was not sending her daughter to church camp or VBS.  Yes I know – OH THE SHAME OF IT! The reality was that our summer schedules were just not aligning right. Also my daughter really, REALLY wanted to go to the familiar county parks and rec day camp she attended last year and had so much fun at. I honored her choice, because it was her choice to make. We could have done a VBS, but wisdom and child choice once again prevailed and we let her choose to not go and keep the summer schedule much simpler. 

Then hit the guilt – what good clergy mom lets her kid skip all the summer Christian formation experiences available?! A wise mentor stepped in and set me straight saying so what – do it differently, do it yourself at home. What freedom in those words. And so began our journey together figuring out what Christian formation topics she wanted to explore in the living, breathing community of the world she engages on a daily basis.  VBS became not just a one week adventure, but a summer long daily exploration.

As our summer formation began our church also changed where it was meeting, the day and the time.  We have temporarily combined with another congregation of a different denomination helping them start an alternative worship. With this has come a worship experience that is different from her norm. Some things are the same and yet some things are very different to accommodate the traditions of the congregation our church is partnering with.  All of this put together, I am finding, is very good.

I have been blessed to be forced to put aside my personal and perceived public expectations and create something that has become life giving for my family.  We have become freer to say no to things that just complicate the schedule.  We have become freer to say yes to serving and mission opportunities that we are excited about. Life has slowed down enough that I feel room to sit down and read, study and discuss the bible with my child giving her space to ask her own questions and give voice to her own thoughts.

Being in a combined faith community has opened me up to experiencing new faith traditions, to helping my daughter to see that there is more than one way to experience and do worship. I am excited about what this summer holds for us spiritually and where the journey might take us.  So like Winnie the Pooh, we are going on an explore, not knowing exactly where we are headed, but trusting blessing is waiting at the end and that God is present in this entire adventure.

Spiritual Mothering

         

                

I have a love-hate relationship with Spring. I love watching the earth come back to life and green up. This morning, as I was walking my back yard labyrinth, I marveled at how green our back yard was. I found simple pleasure seeing my dead, gray lavender showing signs of tender gray/green leaves coming back out with the promise of purple flowers and relaxing fragrance. I hate Spring because it sends my allergies into a tail-spin, and physically I find myself miserable. Spring is also the time when I realize the school year is coming to a close. This past week I got my daughter’s Spring school pictures and immediately it went up on the wall next to the beginning-of-the-year pictures. In that moment I was struck by just how much she has grown up in the last 9 months.

Yesterday in the midst of our church service, as I watched her sitting with her friends, standing and singing and participating in worship without my prompting, I realized how her participation in worship has also grown. And I was reminded once again of the question of “How am I doing in attending to her spiritual growth?” I wondered if I am doing enough to give her a strong foundation. Or am I pushing her too much to express her faith in ways that are reflective of me and maybe not her own unique personality?  We are blessed to be part of a church in which spiritual formation is important, and something that all are a part of, so the responsibility does not fall on my shoulders alone. However, as a clergy mother, I strongly feel the responsibility of my child’s spiritual formation.

I found myself only paying half-attention to the words of worship being spoken. Instead I was immersed in my own ponderings and reminded of some words I wrote in 2011 which were posted to my Facebook page that speaks of the place where motherhood and ministry meet in the most humbling of ways. I share some of those thoughts now, only slightly edited. 

I have been a labyrinth facilitator since 2003 and have had many neat experiences on the labyrinth, but none so moving and thought provoking as my experience of October 2011. I was doing a walk for my former church in conjunction with their Taize service. My husband and daughter went with me so that he could help me unload and set up.

Sometime after the walk had started I heard little feet coming into the room where the walk was taking place. There was my daughter asking me if she could walk the labyrinth. The numbers were small and all were on the labyrinth, so I took some time to help her with her shoes and talk her through what to do when walking the labyrinth with other people (she was used to being on the labyrinth by herself or only with me.)  She started out on her own, me watching from the side, then she came back off and asked me to walk with her. As we walked together, her going first with me behind, yet also guiding and directing to help her go around those others who were also walking, I had one of those moments where the sacred spaces of motherhood and ministry intersected. I was humbled in my remembrance of my responsibility to her spiritual growth, and how without my even really trying hard, she is coming to know and appreciate the quiet spaces with God. It reminded me that sometimes the most effective way of teaching about relationship with God is through our own quiet, yet consistent example. I also had a moment of reflection on how there are times in life where we are in the lead on the path of life's journey - confident, but maybe yet a bit unsure - we are not alone, we never are but in this time God, Christ, Spirit is there right behind us, just a step or two, just enough to help us feel secure and close enough to nudge in guidance when needed. Kind of like I was with my daughter, close enough to give her confidence and guidance when needed, yet also letting her lead, learn and gain confidence in her own walk experience. It was a good reminder for me that even when things are going great, and I seem to have it all under control, God, Christ, Spirit is there right behind me, and that I never really walk alone and I never have to walk alone.

Then she was off again, off to the art table wanting to draw - never having "finished" her walk, but then maybe the point of that walk was not for her to "finish," but for me to notice, listen and ponder, to help me reconnect with an important truth for me. For really in part that is what labyrinths do, connect us - to ourselves and to our relationship with God and others. We just need to take the time to stop and listen and be willing to trust the experience.

I really needed to remember these words, this time where I realized that I am doing enough, that she is getting it. Next Sunday we start on the next part of the spiritual formation journey as she starts discipleship class led by our pastor. I will be a part of the class as her parent and participant in her spiritual formation. I look forward to these next few weeks and seeing where our journey together in this next step of her faith formation takes us. I will journey with her, encouraged by remembering that as long as I am present to her in her faith journey and the questions she raises, then I have done my job of motherhood and ministry.