P.S.

I just read this today on a wonderful site and blog I stumbled upon ( http://christopherushomeschool.typepad.com/ - Waldorf-inspired publications and resources for home-schooling!) and it seemed a perfect postscript to my recent posting (May 23) on the heavy themes of Easter, themes children don't yet have to deal with and therefore, maybe, should even be shielded from.  

"To finish, I want to share one last anecdote, this from a book by Corrie Ten Boom whose family worked hard during WW2 to save the lives of many Jews and were eventually destroyed themselves by the Nazis. Corrie tells a story of a train trip she took with her father. She was about 13 and asked her father a question about sex. He paused for a while and they sat in silence (that alone is something worth taking from this story as so often parents seem to think they must immediately always respond to the questions of their children without any time for distance or reflection). Then he said "When we get off the train, will you carry our bags?" Corrie said no, she couldn't possibly, they were too heavy for her. Then he solemnly said that the same was true for her question, that for now, its answer was too heavy for her to carry and that he would carry it for her until she was ready to carry it herself."

The Quote Above the Kitchen Sink

It is easy to be heavy;
hard to be light.
G.K. Chesterton

More Thoughts on Why Teaching Easter is so much Harder than Christmas

And there are other reasons why I think communicating Easter to children is so much harder than Christmas. 

For example, this was really, really hard to read to our children.
But Jesus stayed [on the cross].  
You see, they [the bystanders to the Crucifixion] didn't understand.  It wasn't the nails that kept Jesus there.  It was love.
"Papa?" Jesus cried, frantically searching the sky.  "Papa?  Where are you?  Don't leave me!"
And for the first time - and the last - when he spoke, nothing happened.  Just a horrible, endless silence. God didn't answer.  He turned away from his Boy. 
(the Jesus Storybook Bible [for children], by Sally Lloyd-Jones)

Why was that so hard for me to read to my kids?  Because how do I answer their questions, "Mommy, why did God turn His back on His Son, whom He loves?  Will you turn your back on me when I'm in pain or need?  Will God turn His back on me when I'm most in need or pain?"  And how do I comfort their sadness and tears over a hurting, dying child crying out for his father and his father turning his back on him?  

I don't have answers.  I just have some thoughts.

In George MacDonald's Maiden's Bequest, a quiet orphan girl is terrified by a hell-fire preacher. She visits Pastor Cowie and is reduced to tears. With deep concern he asks:
Pastor: "What's the matter dear?"
Stumbling for words she told the story, though interrupted with much weeping.
Annie: "I went last night to the church to hear Mr. Brown. And he preached a grand sermon. But I haven't been able to be with myself since then. I am one of the wicked that God hates, and I'll never get to heaven, for I can't help forgetting him sometimes. And the wicked will be turned into hell and all the nations that forget God. And I can't stand it."
In the good heart of Pastor Cowie arose a gentle indignation against the overly pious who had terrified and bewildered that precious, small child. He thought a moment and said:
Pastor: "You haven't forgotten your father, have you Annie?"
Annie: "I think about him most every day."
Pastor: "But there comes a day now and then when you don't think much about him, doesn't there?"
Annie: "Yes, sir."
Pastor: "Do you think he would be angry with his child because she was taken up with her books and play? Do you think he would be angry that you didn't think about him that day, especially when you can't see him?"
Annie: "Indeed, no sir…he wouldn't be so sore upon me as that."
Pastor: "What do you think he would say?"
Annie: "If Mr. Bruce were to get after me for it, my father would say 'Let the lassie alone. She'll think about me another day…there's time enough.'"
Pastor: "Well, don't you think your father in heaven would say the same?"
Annie: "Maybe he might, sir. But, you see, my father was my own father, and he would make the best of me."
Pastor: "And is not God kinder than your father?"

"And is not God kinder than your father?"  Yes, God is kinder than even my father.  God is kinder than even your father.  Kinder than even the kindest father.   Oh yes, God is oh so kind.

Another lovely George MacDonald quote on the Father of fatherhood: 

In my own childhood and boyhood my father was the refuge
from all the ills of life, even sharp pain itself.
Therefore I say to son or daughter
who has no pleasure in the name Father,
“You must interpret the word by all that you have missed in life.
All that human tenderness can give
or desire in the nearness and readiness of love,
all and infinitely more must be true of the perfect Father—
of the maker of fatherhood.”
 

So then how to explain to my children God the Father's behavior in the moment His Son needed Him most?  

Dana reminds me of a passage I've read several times in my life from Elie Wiesel's Night:  Of course I don't share this with our children, but it helps me, helps me find ways to help them understand, as my own understanding is increased.

“Where is God? Where is He?” someone behind me asked. ..
For more than half an hour [the child in the noose] stayed there, struggling between life and death, dying in slow agony under our eyes. And we had to look him full in the face. He was still alive when I passed in front of him. His tongue was still red, his eyes were not yet glazed.
Behind me, I heard the same man asking:
“Where is God now?”
And I heard a voice within me answer him:
“Where is He? Here He is—He is hanging here on this gallows. . . .” 

Maybe because God was there, there on the Cross with His Son, also God, One with Him in suffering.  God was there crying out too.


Other's have understood it this way:  That Christ was so very unified in our sufferings and sins that He experienced the separation from God, the utter isolation, that sin begets, in the same way that we experience and feel cut-off from God when we walk outside of His Love.  Has God turned away from us, or have we turned away from Him? 


Again, I don't have any answers.  I'm just so grateful that there's no Christmas without Easter, and no Easter without Christmas.

Why is Teaching Easter so much harder than Christmas?

For a few seasons now, I have been somewhat challenged by just how much harder it is to explain Easter to a child than it is to communicate Christmas.  I savor every moment of Advent, have trouble sleeping nights leading up to it, waking early late November mornings to make secret preparations, all fashioned to help open my children's eyes to the mysterious wonder of Christmas, Love come down.  But Lent gets me every time.  How do I walk my children through 40 days in preparation for Christ's Passion?   It's so easy and light to prepare ourselves for His Coming.  Lent feels so heavy, too heavy for these little ones of mine.

Frederica Mathewes-Green helped shed some light on my dilemma:  "[The themes of Easter] are not things children have to think about.  Easter tells us of something children can't understand, because it addresses things they don't yet have to know:  the weariness of life, the pain, the profound loneliness and hovering fear of meaninglessness."  ("Merry Easter?", Bread and Wine:  Readings for Lent and Easter, p. 269, italics mine) 

I love that.  It gives me a little space to pace myself.  I don't have to explain all of Easter to them yet.  There will be time enough for them to be acquainted with all the sadness and darkness of that Story, and how great the Light and Life is that comes after.  For now it's okay to let alone some "things they don't yet have to know". 

Our professional

Last night Kadie asked Briana how she came to choose "planting trees" as the theme for her 7th birthday party coming up at the end of this month (a bit of a diversion from last year's swashbuckling pirate party) .  She just shrugged and answered, "Cuz I'm a professional at my own life."  Dearest daughter of mine, may you always feel that way, in some underlying sense. I love you. 

The Challenge of Naming a Child Cross-Culturally

We don't know if the little one that will be born in November is a boy or a girl, but so far we've had more fun throwing around female names. We were pretty pleased with ourselves when all 3 of us seemed to like Sabina Gaia. Sabina is easy to pronounce in Romanian and I liked the nickname "Sabi" (what Briana calls the hot green paste, "wasabi", Daddy likes to mix with soy sauce) and Dana's read lovely theological books on the concept of "gaia", the greek earth goddess, but more recently an intellectual paradigm for the gorgeous unity of the cosmos. Well all that was shot through when we ran the names by our closest Romanian friend. Apparently "Sabina" is a peasant's name (in other words, it's hick), negatively associated with uneducated, insular village life. (Perhaps akin to Bubba or Thelma Lou in the States.) And "Gaia" is part of a popular expression which means, "I'm going to kick your a_ _!"
So it's back to the drawing board.
Granted it's just one person's humble opinion (we'd be glad for other Romanians' thoughts), but for now we've scratched "I'm going to kick your hick butt!" from the list.

Experiments in Social Entrepreneurship

Not to compare our daughter with our dog, but both Briana and Augustina (our husky that was with us from 2001-2005) have been able to do much more for us socially than the fact that we have offered the free Viata Program to over 1000's of young people in this town over the past 10 years. The Viata Program rarely gets us acknowledged in this small community, but both Augi and Briana have brought numerous pleasant social encounters: conversations on the street, well-wishes, unsolicited smiles and chit-chat, shared snacks in the park and free fruit at the vegetable market. We used to talk about driving Augi around on the top of our car, just to melt the social ice that can still chill between us foreigners and the locals, and we're certain it would've been successful. Briana's lemonade stand this weekend was successful in just the same way.

Though there's probably a kid-run lemonade stand on about every corner in North America , I am certain no one has ever seen one here. Or anything remotely like it. So it was with great interest that we helped Briana proudly hang her sign on our fence (Homemade Lemonade for Sale - 5cents a cup) on Saturday and arrange her table, cash register, and cups in the front of our yard. When the first passerby approached, one of our neighbors, I coaxed Briana into approaching him and asking him if he'd like a glass of lemonade. At first he said no, I'm sure he was confused, and then he saw the sign and her little table and cash register and he somehow understood. He didn't have a penny on him so he promised to bring the money tomorrow, and appreciatively emptied his glass. I won't say the rest of the afternoon was bustling, but I think only one passerby declined, and the rest of our neighbors were great sports. We had at-length conversations with 2 neighbors we've only ever saluted, and one neighbor who had hurried by earlier in the day made it a point to come back later, after the stand had closed, insisting on buying a glass. And Briana made a killing when our 9 international volunteers showed up for a 4th of July BBQ (we weren't going to set our daughter up for complete failure...we knew she'd at least sell 9 cups that day).

It was great fun, a great learning exercise for Briana (she made the shopping list, watched videos on how to make lemonade, squeezed lemons, poured, learned how to give back change, eventually, and practiced customer-service, sort of) but most of all it was a great experience of social warmth and openness between us and our neighbors, something we don't take for granted.

Dana was trying to teach Briana the age-old adage: "If life gives you lemons..." "Make a lemonade stand," she replied. I'll drink to that.