What I'm teaching my kids about Christmas -- Guest Post

My little girls are still small--1 and 4--and they're into the holiday season. They love all of it: sparkling lights, Advent calendar chocolates, an Advent amaryllis that grows and blooms over several weeks, Santa in a musical snowglobe, the Chanukah menorah, and the Christmas tree with a bright star on top. They love hearing their Grandpa Ira's recorded rendition of "'Twas the Night Before Christmas," and they love dancing and singing to Christmas music, especially by the Trans-Siberian Orchestra.

All these things are part of our Advent/Christmas ritualizing, but come Christmas Day, before (or maybe after) the flurry of presents, I'll add something more. I'll tell my daughters the story of a young woman named Mary who said yes to an extraordinary possibility, even though she could much more easily have said no. I'll tell them about Mary being pregnant with God's Word for nine months, and I'll remind them that Advent is the time when the world celebrates being pregnant with God's Word here and now. I'll tell them the nativity story from the Gospel of Luke, and I'll share with them how Jesus was laid in a manger, a feeding trough, so he could become the Bread of Life.

Advent and Christmas are occasions for joy, and they're occasions to teach my kids about some of the wonders of Christian faith: that God loved humanity so much that God became one of us, that a woman's consent changed the fate of the world, and that the world's salvation became food for those who hunger. I'll remind them that we, too, are part of the Body of Christ, which means we are also called to feed the hungry, and I'll talk with them about the donations I've made to the food bank every time I've shopped during Advent. I'll teach them that Christmas is about receiving the gift of God's presence so we can learn how to make our own presence into a loving gift for others.

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Kate is the married mom of two precocious tots. When she's not chasing them or dancing around them or singing at the top of her lungs with them, she likes to drink coffee, make yummy food with her hubby, edit other people's writing, pray, and write edgy pieces on religious topics. You can check out her blog, Thealogical Lady, at lifeloveliturgy.com. (And, for the record, that "a" in "Thealogical" is no accident.)

Dying and Rising - Abortion and Easter: Contributor Post

Today I am blessed to have an extremely personal post by good friend and thealogian K. A. Her bravery and strength in sharing her story so that others may not feel so alone is inspiring. I am so lucky to be able to consider this woman a friend. Remember, people in all walks of life have had abortions, and each one must deal with it in her own way. And each one needs support.

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My name is Kate. I'm a woman of deep, life-long faith. And a number of years ago, I aborted a wanted baby.

I was in relationship with a man I loved deeply, but our relationship was not known to others. If our pregnancy had been discovered, we (or, at least, I) perceived that we would lose support as a family from all those who then supported us as individuals, and we wouldn't be able to make a life together, much less support our child. The decision was ultimately mine. He was there when I took the pill.

A couple of weeks later, our relationship ended. In the midst of grieving the loss of that relationship, I lost sight of my grief for the tiny fetus that would have become our first-born child.

Now, all these years later, I am the mother of two amazing daughters; I am also the wife of the best man I know. My life is beautiful and full. And I'm finally giving myself permission to grieve my first pregnancy, the pregnancy that became my first abortion.

To my surprise and consternation, I've had a difficult time figuring out how to grieve it. Once I decided to allow myself to grieve, I intentionally tried to access my grief for over a day. Nothing came. I read a book called A Solitary Sorrow in which a therapist discussed her encounters with women who had had abortions. As I read the therapist's stories and considered my own, thousands of thoughts flooded my mind, but I couldn't access any emotional content.

I had already shared the story of my abortion with those closest to me long ago, so I decided to shared my story with several additional trusted friends. When one of them--the one from whom I most feared judgment--replied with compassion, my heart broke open. I ran to my husband and sobbed on his chest, a tidal wave of long-hidden grief bursting the dam in my heart.

In the United States, abortion is often heatedly discussed, but actual abortions--the abortions chosen by women all around us--are almost never discussed. To have had an abortion is an enormous taboo, and that impacts the self-perceptions of those who have abortions. The woman who has an abortion will often either perceive herself as a terrible, hypocritical sinner, or she'll tell herself that she's not supposed to feel any attachment to the tissue that grew in her womb.

I am pro-choice and completely support the right of all women to choose whether or not to continue a pregnancy for the reasons she holds close to her heart, but I now also have the profound and personal realization that women who choose abortion need to be supported in their right to grieve that choice. The decision to choose abortion is rarely a neutral matter, and often it isn't the most desired outcome of a pregnancy, but when it is chosen it is almost always perceived as the best possible choice among the choices that are available. That makes for a lot of messy feelings, all hidden behind the rage of society's abortion debates.

I am one woman among many who has experienced abortion, and sharing the story of my abortion publicly here and now is terrifying. Even though I already experience deep support from some, I expect judgment and hatred from others. I expect to be disowned and cast out by at least some in my life who would otherwise keep me close. Beyond those I know personally, I expect strangers to point fingers, to call me a baby-killer and a whore and an evil woman, and even to threaten me for daring to speak up.

As I seek to answer my vocation as a future minister, however, I feel compelled to risk all of this. As a woman who buried her grief for years and discovered, after sharing it, that she is still loved, I can no longer justify cloaking myself in timidity and fear while other women still bear the burden of their grief alone (many in far more oppressive circumstances than mine). If I had known even one woman like myself--a woman of faith who chose abortion and dared to share her tale later so that others might be able to face their own stories--I might have been able to grieve and begin to heal far sooner.

I invite any woman who has had an abortion to consider letting her grief rise up and to share her story with someone she trusts. And for those women who can't think of anyone to tell, consider sharing it confidentially with someone who will listen to your story without judgment. If you are someone to whom one of these grieving women shares her story, I invite you to release all your expectations of how she should feel or how she should have acted and listen instead with all the tenderness and compassion you hold within you.

As a Christian, I experience on this Easter day the strange, radical truth that tombs aren't necessarily destined to remain closed. Perhaps, if we who have experienced abortion allow our grief to rise up, we will visit the tomb one day only to find it empty--and we'll realize that what was dead was made to be raised to new, undying life in us, just like Jesus was raised up from death in the midst of those who loved him.

 

Purim: How Does It Work? - Contributor Post

Today, Kate Allen from Life, Love, Liturgy talks about the history of a really cool, and slightly unknown by some of the masses, holiday.

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If any religious people can put on a daringly joyous and raucous holiday, Jewish people can. Purim, celebrated on the 14th day of the Jewish month of Adar, will be celebrated this year starting at sunset on March 15 (and continuing till sunset on March 16).

Purim is a holiday based on the book of Esther, which is a ten-chapter tale about Esther and her cousin Mordecai, who are Jews, along with the Persian king and his advisor. The king's advisor, Haman, persuades the king, Ahasuerus, to eliminate all of the Jews, mainly out of anger and jealousy he bears toward Mordecai. Mordecai persuades Esther, who has become the most favored woman in Ahasuerus' harem and thus the Persian queen, to go to the king and ask him not to fulfill Haman's request. After fasting for three days, Esther goes to the king, thus risking her life, because no one is supposed to approach the king without a summons. The king continues to look on Esther favorably despite her unexpected appearance before him, and afterward Esther reveals her Jewish identity, asking him to spare her people. In the end, Haman is hanged on the gallows he had built for the leaders of the Jews, and Purim is declared a holiday by Esther herself.

To celebrate Purim, Jewish folks prepare for Purim by fasting. Then they get together to read the Megillah (i.e. the book of Esther). This is no drab reading of scripture, however. Folks show up for Purim in bright costumes, armed with groggers to boo and blot out the name of Haman. The celebration of Purim is a lively ritual enactment of the salvation of the Jewish people from those who would have them annihilated.

According to Esther 9:22, people offer food to their friends and money to the poor. Purim is also a time of obligatory drunkenness--observers of this holiday are supposed to get so drunk, according to Talmud, that they can't tell the difference between cursing the name of Haman and blessing the name of Mordecai!

If you don't make it to your local Purim celebration this weekend, you might try your hand at making triangular, jelly-filled Hamantaschen so you can join in the feasting!

picture courtesy of Wikipedia

Saint Valentine: The Story Behind the Guy - Contributor Post

Thealogian Kate Allen from Life, Love, Liturgy, has been going through some amazing and exciting changes! And yet she still made time to explain the roots of Valentine's Day to us. We are so lucky.

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As Americans flood Hallmark and grocery stores and 7-Elevens everywhere for chocolates, pink paper hearts, and roses for their beloveds, some will wonder who this Valentine guy was, and what the connection is between him and Cupid.

The connection is rather tenuous, it turns out. 

St. Valentine’s Day has been around for ages.  Legend has it that the actual saint named Valentine was a Roman martyr for the Christian faith.  His feast day on the Western liturgical calendar is February 14 because that is the day he is said to have been beaten with clubs and beheaded.  In any case, that was the day set aside for him in A.D. 496 by Pope Gelasius I.  This pope was the same one who banned Lupercalia, a Roman pagan fertility festival lasting February 13-15, during which observers of the festival ritual would run naked through the streets to counter sterility.  Most contemporary scholars reject any direct connection between the banishing of Lupercalia and the instituting of the feast of St. Valentine’s Day by the pope.

So why the violent death?  Some say Valentine failed to renounce his Christian faith to Emperor Claudius II in A.D. 269, when it was still a big no-no to be a Christian (Christianity wasn’t tolerated by the Roman Emperor until Constantine early in the fourth century).  Others say on the night before his execution, he wrote a letter to his jailer’s daughter, whom he had healed of blindness, signing his note, “From your Valentine.”

There is no substantial evidence that Valentine had anything remarkable to do with romance and lovers, however, until the time of Chaucer.  Chaucer is widely argued to be the one who made Valentine a man of fame and romance in his “The Parliament of Fowls” (a modern translation of which is available here).  It’s in this poem, written in the fourteenth century, that we get talk of lovers, birds, flowers, and finding the perfect mate on Valentine’s Day.  The earliest known reference to calling one’s beloved “Valentine” is in the fifteenth century letters of Margery Brews to her future husband, John Paston III.  The rest is history!

With the founding of the Hallmark Cards company was founded in Missouri in 1910, the feastday of St. Valentine was destined (or doomed), among other holidays, to become a highly ritualized day in the United States and other Western cultures.   Now Valentine’s Day, rather than serving as a memorial to a martyred saint, has become a feast of love.  Adult lovers celebrate it with everything from jewelry to store-bought Valentine’s cards to sweet treats to hand-written poetry to lace and lingerie to sex.  Meanwhile, the ritual of sharing some sentiment of “love” is taught early to children, who create Valentine’s card boxes as art projects and exchange miniature Valentine’s cards with all of their classmates.  Whatever its actual origins, and regardless of its actual connection to the man named Valentine, the Western rituals of Valentine’s Day won’t be going away anytime soon.

From my perspective as a liturgist, the lesson of St. Valentine is this: don’t underestimate the power of a retold story to change a community’s ritual, even if the community is as large as the Western world.  If the likes of Chaucer decided your life were worthy of a retelling centuries after your death, what rituals might spring up around you? 

Courtesy of “Presbyterian Voices for Justice” Facebook page

 

Open Letter to Pope Francis from a Roman Catholic -- Contributor Post

A while back, I wrote an open letter to Pope Francis as a nonreligious. Today, thealogian Kate Allen from Life, Love, Liturgy writes a much more relevant note to him, as a Roman Catholic.

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To Pope Francis:

In my almost thirty-two years as a Roman Catholic, I have never been prouder of any pope. Granted, I've only encountered three in my lifetime, but I am also a student of Christian history. You stand out among your predecessors.

You have rocked the entire world with your embodied proclamations of the good news. You kiss the wounds of the sick. You share tables with those who have neither tables of their own nor food to put on them. You warn your clergy again and again against the glamour of clericalism. Your love is abundant, like Christ's was and is, and I have seen it have a multiplying effect, even (perhaps especially) among non-Roman Catholics.

I am tremendously grateful to God for your faithful, living witness to the teachings of Jesus. Your heart is wide open, and I feel quite certain that if I happened to walk into your midst, you would smile and greet me with the warmth of an old friend, and I would greet you likewise.

I need to confess something to you. On February 16, 2014, God willing, I will leave my cloak of Roman Catholic identity behind in order to be received as a member of the Episcopal Church.

Despite having spent my entire life as a devoted (albeit flawed) Roman Catholic, I cannot remain Roman Catholic any longer. Because despite the gospel of Jesus you now proclaim miraculously through your very body, and despite the many ways in which I encounter Christ's presence through your holy example, I'm afraid there is at least one way in which you, like most if not all of your predecessors, have failed to hear the voice of God and heed it: in the calling of thousands upon thousands of women around the world to ordained ministry.

I was able to name my own God-given call to ordained ministry thirteen years ago. I was still a teenager then. I am close with several Roman Catholic women who share the same call. Yet you, like your papal predecessors, have dismissed even the possibility that women might be called to ordained ministry.

I don't understand this hardness of heart. Not from you.

What I do understand is how hard it can be to hear God's earnest whispers when so much of one's culture screams against it. My favorite psalm is Psalm 51, because it is a perpetual invitation to be changed, transformed, turned around:

Create in me a clean heart, o God.
...
Then will I teach transgressors Thy ways
and sinners shall be converted unto Thee.

I suspect this psalm is as dear to you as it is to me. Please, then, let God's whispers reach your ear through my meager words: God calls some women to serve as ordained ministers. That the Roman Catholic hierarchy refuses to acknowledge this (or even to discuss it) is gravely sinful. It is presumptuous to deny God's calling to those whom God has chosen.

Please, for God's sake, don't allow whatever is lacking in me cause you to be deaf to what God is speaking to you through me in this moment. If anyone with the authority to effect gospel change in the Roman Catholic Church can hear this prophetic word, I believe you can.

Please, open your heart and listen for the sake of my daughters, who will grow up in the midst of your legacy even if they never set foot in a Roman Catholic church.

Please, listen. Listen because you know better than almost anyone that God speaks prophetically through those who are marginalized, women included.

Please, I beg you from the bottom of my heart, listen--allow yourself to be importuned by me, just like the judge was importuned by the widow, or like Jesus was importuned by the woman begging for scraps. You and I both know what happened in those latter two instances. If Jesus' mind could be changed, surely yours can.

I believe that the world-wide turning of hearts to God, if you listened in this one way and acted accordingly, would be a miracle of biblical proportion.


With blessings and love in the One who creates, redeems, and sanctifies all the world,


M. Kate Allen









 

Five Ways Advent Is Like Potty Training - Contributor Post

M. Kate Allen from Life, Love, Liturgy has a signature look at the prep stage to the holidays, and one I can totally understand!

Advent and potty training, are, in fact, very similar. lol

Way #1: There’s a lot of waiting around.  My kid became daytime potty-trained last week.  We started potty-training her over a year ago.  Advent’s like that—you only get to light one candle a week on your Advent wreath, or open one little door on your Advent calendar per day.  The church hymns, if you’re in a liturgically oriented church, are subdued, like the mood of a parent thwarted by uncontrolled toddler bladders and bowels.  If you’re super-observant, the Christmas tree doesn’t come home till Christmas Eve and the Christmas music makes way for the usual dose of Muse and Metallica (okay, that’s the music at my house, but you get the idea).  “Fun” isn’t the first word that comes to mind in either case.

Way #2: It takes repetition—lots of it—to get the idea.  Without our many-times-a-day repetition of “Do you need to go potty?” our kid just had no awareness of it, and oops! There went her diaper (or, worse, on the days we were foolish enough to dress her in it, her underwear).  At my Anglo-Catholic church, we sing O Come, O Come, Emmanuel—several verses of it—every Advent Sunday to start the liturgy procession.  Wait, what are we singing about?  You mean Jesus isn’t here yet?  You mean he’s still in the dark, nourishing womb of the one who bears him?  Reminders of what hasn’t happened in the midst of everyone’s celebration of the it-already-happened do help.

Way #3: Rewards help.  For a while we used potty treats in the form of little gummy fruit-flavored snacks.  It didn’t really work unless our kid was hungry, though, so we shifted to a homemade chart for which she earned shining metallic stars.  And you know what?  Going square by square works!  That’s what makes Advent calendars a raving success.  My husband is especially fond of the ones from Trader Joe’s, loaded with chocolate.  I’m fond of the Jacquie Lawson virtual Advent calendar, which I’ve received as a gift for the last several years.  The wait for the lighting of each Advent candle on a wreath takes seven times as long—but oh, that moment when you finally get to light the next candle, multiplying the light that will eventually manifest as a bright, beckoning star! 

Way #4: Taking time is kinder than a sudden total shift in reality.  When I first got the idea to potty-train my toddler, it was right after I learned that I was pregnant with my second child.  We wanted her to be potty-trained by the time the second one arrived, so I found a three-day fail-safe method on the internet that a friend had used.  The author of this method said as long as her directions were followed to the letter, it would work for any age, period—in three days.  She lied.  And this mama wept and wailed before (and after) admitting defeat.  The shift from Thanksgiving to Christmas (or the Fourth of July to Christmas) wrenches my heart like that.  Really, I need time to prepare, and I need the experts to respect my need for time to prepare—like John the Baptist—for the birthing of the Christ in my world.  If I take seriously what Isaiah writes, my lioness self just isn’t ready to lie down with a lamb.  I need time to step back, shut up, and listen to the quiet, quieting voice of God, whether as the voice in my dreams or as a prophetic voice speaking out to me in waking life.

Way #5: The final reward, after all that waiting, is a little odd to talk about if you step outside the immediacy of the moment.  The toilet is filled, the diaper at last remains dry.  There’s nothing else you can think about, and you can’t stop squealing.  If your non-parent friends could see you now!  So the Christ-child is born and laid in a manger of animal hay to become food (“manger” means “to eat,” after all).  Um, whose food?   And did you notice that the child got swaddled swaddled like a mummy?  Same way he’s going to be wrapped in the tomb thirty-three years or so down the line when he actually does die, and…becomes bread for the world?  Birth and death.  Death and resurrection.  Birth and risen bread.  Whoa.

Toilet-training is to Advent what Potty-Training Day is to Christmas--the necessary prelude to the main event.  And you know what?  The wait renders the main event absolutely glorious.

 

Thanksgivukah Advent-ures: How to Celebrate the "Season" before You Celebrate Christmas - Guest Post

Resident Thealogian Kate Allen who can be found at Life, Love, Liturgy, preps for the holidays in amazing ways. (as always).

If you're like me, you're just not ready for the red and green and tinsel cropping up at Target, Starbucks, and the grocery store.  I want to go, "Hey, don'tcha know there's all kinds of cool stuff that goes on for a couple of months before Christmas ever arrives?"

I invite you to try out the following this year, not to ditch your family traditions, but to expand them.

Thanksgiving/Chanukah: This year, for the first time (and the last time for 77,000 years, according to one source, Thanksgiving and the first day of Chanukah coincide.  This year, as you finalize your Thanksgiving day menu, consider a few Jewish specialties, like latkes 

Courtesy: All Recipes

or matzo ball soup.

Courtesy: Food Network

(Pro-tip: matzo ball soup can be made in minutes using a handy-dandy pre-made dry mix in the Jewish section of your grocery store.)  When you and your family and friends are gathered around the Thanksgiving dinner table, share the story of the miracle of Chanukah, in which an oil lamp with only enough oil for one night lasted eight nights, providing ongoing light in darkness.  Chanukah is an eight-day Jewish feast of enduring, miraculous light--telling this story is is a great time to light the first candle of eight of your menorah, if you have one, or perhaps the first of other candles you have on your table.  Allow this to be your segue into a giving of thanks by each person around the table.

Then, when you awake the day after Thanksgiving, consider just staying home.  Really.  Eating latkes with cranberry sauce for breakfast while sipping home-brewed coffee and wearing fuzzy slippers is a far gentler holiday practice than trampling your neighbor at 3 a.m. to get through store doors.  Consider continuing your candle-lighting through the eight days of Chanukah, saying a silent prayer as you light them if you aren't familiar with the Hebrew prayers.

Next, Advent, as in, advent-ure!  

That's right--before you pull out your tubs of Christmas glitz, try cutting a few boughs from an evergreen (places that sell Christmas trees may give these away for free, if you don't have any evergreens of your own) and fashion an Advent wreath with your kids.

Courtesy: Happy Home Fairy

Each Sunday, beginning December 1, light one of the candles.  Sing a verse of "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel" or "People Look East" with your kids. Invite them into conversation about what the dawning of light means.  Refer back to the Chanukah ritual, if you used it.  You might ask:

Why do we want light when it's dark?  

What are examples of darkness we experience?  

What are ways that we can bring light to dark places?  

Allow Advent to be the season of quiet, pregnant anticipation that it's intended to be--because if you do, the glimmer and dazzle of Christmas Eve's light and the bright clamor of Christmas morning will shine and ring out for you in a whole new way.

 

Finding Religious Formation Good Enough for my Daughters - Contributor Post

Today, Kate Allen who blogs over at Life, Love, Liturgy (and CornDog Mama!) shares her struggle to find the right religious landscape for her kids.

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My oldest daughter turns three next month, and I can no longer put it off: I have to decide what sort of religious formation my kids are going to have growing up.

I wrote recently about resources parents can draw on for their kids' religious formation, but, the thing is, there's a bigger issue than resources at stake for me. I mean, I have more theological training than most ordained pastors--I am and always will be a walking theological resource for them. But I want more for my kids than what I can teach them. I want my kids to grow up in religious community. And it'll take a serious leap of faith for me to stick them in religious community and trust that they'll be formed well.

I grew up Roman Catholic. I have a Master's degree in Roman Catholic theology. The easiest thing would be to stick them in Catholic Sunday School and correct whatever they're taught that strikes me as off-base or wrong. In fact, that was my plan before I had kids.

In the last year, though, I've come to the realization that pragmatism won't be able to overcome one vitally important fact: the Roman Catholic Church isn't good enough for my daughters.

I don't want my daughters to grow up in a faith tradition where only men are allowed to do the most important things, like acting in persona Christi to say the consecrating prayers over the bread and wine. I want my daughters to look to the center of the action in religious services and see a woman leading, rather than making way for a man.

I don't want my daughters to hear weekly Mass readings that systematically exclude women. I want my daughters to hear regular references to the many bible stories featuring women who do awesome, even outlandish things.

I don't want my daughters to have to fight their way into the idea that women can do anything men can, especially in a truth-charged religious context. I want them to be empowered by everything they see, hear, smell, taste, and touch in their religious formation.

The thing I've learned as a follower of Jesus is that Roman Catholics aren't the only ones who do Christianity wrong. Christianity has evolved into an exclusivistic club where you have to buy into Jesus as the sole son of (a male) God to get the most grace.

I don't buy it. Christian creeds alone aren't good enough for my daughters.

I do want my kids to learn about Jesus and all the ways he broke the status quo of his religious context--that's critically important to me. I also want them to see beyond what Jesus' followers have canonized and creedalized as right and good. I want them to know that Jesus was born Jewish and died Jewish. I want them to know that Jesus wasn't out to start a new religion--that what he was really doing was being an extraordinary interpreter of Torah. You know, the way rabbis often are.

I want them to dance in the presence of God the way the people at Chochmat HaLev did at their High Holy Day services earlier this month. I want them to laugh and sing out in the presence of Goddess. I want them to regard all places and creatures as holy, and that "more holy" or "less holy" are labels that can only apply to one's actions. I want them to learn that God is both-gendered and beyond gender. I want them to learn that they are sacred bodies as ancient and substantial and changing as the stars, not merely immortal souls as immaterial as infinity. I want them to see how extraordinary--even divine--Jesus is (and isn't). And I want them to see how extraordinary--and divine--they aren't and are.

So maybe I'll take them to a Christian church, and maybe I'll also take them to a Jewish synagogue. Maybe I'll choose a Christian place that rehearses radically and intentionally inclusive table fellowship in its liturgy, and maybe I'll choose a Jewish place in which all are welcome to dance with and kiss and learn and interpret Torah. And maybe both of the religious communities I choose will be led by women as awesome as my daughters are.

Because that would be good enough for my daughters.



 

Good Friday in Your Family - Guest Post

Kate Allen, who blogs at Life, Love, Liturgy and at CornDog Mama, has agreed to talk about Good Friday and its implications to all, religious and not. She's amazing, and if you have any theological qualms or questions, I would point you to her blogs. A very intelligent lady.

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In the past couple of weeks I've seen moms post about a holiday dilemma: what do I do with my kids on Easter if I'm not religious?  Do I impose my non-religiosity on them?  Or do I fake religiosity and offer them religious concepts I don't believe in so they can experience religiosity for themselves?

I'm a religious mom, but I face a similar problem.  What do I do with my almost two-and-a-half-year-old today, Good Friday, which is one of the most important days of the Christian year?  It's a day that means a great deal to me at age thirty, but what can a two-year-old get out of a Good Friday service aside from the desire to squirm and run and fuss when she's shushed?  Good Friday involves, among other things, lots of kneeling, lots of silence, and lots and lots of words in between the silences.  Oh, and a procession to the cross so that each person can make her or his veneration of it.  Apart from the procession to the cross, there's positively nothing for a two-year-old to do, much less understand.  

So what am I supposed to teach my child about the brutal death of a Jewish man who lived 2,000 years ago--and how?  How am I supposed to explain the concept of sacrifice?  How do I show her that Good Friday is something more than kissing a piece of wood without resorting to a cerebral (and, for her, unintelligible) explanation, on the one hand, or leaving her out altogether, on the other?

Exposing a toddler to religiosity in helpful ways is a difficult business, even for this theologian-by-trade.   The trick I've discovered, thanks to Maria Montessori (the famed Italian educator who was herself Catholic and wrote a great deal about religiosity in small children), is to start where my child is, rather than requiring her to start where I am.  With that in mind, I've come up with a two-fold solution for my toddler.

My first step was to ask myself, "What does Anastasia (my toddler daughter) love?"  Off the top of my head, she loves to sing, she loves to dance, she loves to move, she loves learning new words, she loves a good animated movie or show, she loves to learn new rituals, she loves to eat, and she loves to learn new ways to relate to Mom and Dad. 

So far, so good.  But what do I do with that?

A good friend of mine who has two kiddos of her own asked me if I would want to join her at her church for a special Good Friday service this evening.  Often Good Friday services are held at noon, but this service is to be a Taizé service of light, shadow, and song, with a veneration of the cross as well.  Taizé religious services, named after the French town in which they sprung up, involve singing brief phrases from Christian scripture in memorable melodies and harmonies.  Because the music is simple and repeated over and over, a person of any age can pick it up.  It's a bit like singing Annie's famous "Tomorrow, tomorrow!" (which, by the way, Anastasia loves to do).  Anastasia loves the flicker of candles, and Taizé services are usually lit solely by candlelight--another win.  The procession to the cross will come in the midst of singing and light.  I have the feeling that Anastasia will, with her whole two-year-old self, totally dig this service, not because she'll "get" what it's about, but because the service will honor her two-year-old-self just as she is.

That still leaves the question of how to help her understand the point of it all.  She won't "get" sacrifice from this service.  But sacrifice isn't foreign to her.  To help her, I'm going to turn to one of her other favorite things: Disney and Pixar's latest great film, Brave.  (Note: this is the point at which you shouldn't read on if you want to avoid spoilers.)

Before anything else, let me say that Brave is an outstanding achievement--not just in terms of animation, but in terms of story.  Finally, we have a Disney princess who can stand her own ground--Merida's got talents, interests, creativity, and a mind of her own.  If you've seen Brave, you know that Merida's strengths lead her to butt heads with her mother, the queen, more often than not.  When her mum's plans for her are about to come to fruition, Merida seeks a witch's assistance in changing her mother in order to change her planned fate to something more palatable.  To Merida's dismay, her mum gets turned into a raw-fish-eating, non-talking bear, and Merida has to figure out how to undo the witch's spell before it becomes permanent.

So what's Brave got to do with Good Friday?  Turn to the very last scene, when Merida's well-intentioned dad and all the men of the neighboring clans are trying to kill the bear that is Merida's mum.  They've got the queen-bear bound up and ready to destroy when  Mor'Du, the monstrous bear who has the strength of ten men, shows up.  The men can't hold Mor'Du back, and Mor'Du's attention turns to Merida.  Mor'Du has Merida pinned to the ground and is about to devour her when Merida's bear-mum rises up, defeating the strength of the twenty men who are holding her back with ropes, and roars to Merida's rescue.  This queen, who didn't think it was lady-like or fitting for a princess to have weapons of her own, fights Mor'Du tooth and claw, coming back again and again when Mor'Du has strikes her aside to get at Merida.  In the end, the queen sacrifices her queenly self-expectations to embrace her more important identity--that of mother-bear--to save her daughter's life.

That, friends, is sacrifice my toddler "gets."  Merida's mum sacrifices her queenly inhibitions and propriety to become a roaring bear so that her daughter may live--in a strikingly similar way, according to Christian tradition, Jesus sacrifices his kingly right to honor and esteem and dies the death of a criminal so that others may live.  What I love so much about this parallel is that it means my daughter doesn't have to have background in ancient Jewish customs or social rules or anyone's theology in order to "get" what's happening on Good Friday.  She only has to have a mom whose love for her, in the end, supersedes everything else.  And she does.

 

M. Kate Allen ~ www.lifeloveliturgy.com