'Tis a Gift

A few days ago a friend who works with low-income students told me that one of her students was sharing Ramen noodles with his siblings this month so that their family could afford Christmas. It was my friend’s impression that they might be saving, not just for a simple gift, but for some higher status electronic item.

This story reminded me of my mother, who always said that Santa was a cruel story to tell poor children. She and my father went bankrupt when I was a baby, so they couldn’t afford nearly as many gifts as the cousins whom we usually visited for Christmas dinner. My mother didn’t want me to believe that I was naughty and they were nice just because I got fewer toys. She also didn’t want me to ever be without healthy food or a good education, so she put her money into that which she thought would nurture me, even when it wasn’t what I most wanted. Coming up on the two-year anniversary of her death, I appreciate my mother’s practical wisdom much more than when I was a child.

It is so difficult to resist the consumer competition that Christmas has become. Even religious people seem to have surrendered. Last night we attended a mass geared for children where the priest told a story about Santa during the homily and in his closing remarks reminded the children that “Santa loves children who are good,” so if they were good, they would “be surprised by what Santa would bring them on Christmas morning.” When afterward I gently suggested that it was really hard for families like ours to keep the focus off the consumerism, the priest nodded in commiseration, not realizing that his remarks contributed to the problem.

I guess I shouldn’t be too aggravated at my daughter for asking (repeatedly) for an iPhone for Christmas. She’s just doing what her culture tells her to do. The question for me is how to swim against the cultural tide without drowning (see last year’s post). I’m pretty sure that giving my children an alternative example will work better than giving speeches. So although I was kind of thinking that I’d like an iPod myself this year, I told Tom not to get me one. Instead I asked for a retreat sometime early in the new year—and a few pairs of warm socks for our trip to Wisconsin. (Like Albus Dumbledore, all I really need is some warm socks.) Tom also wants a retreat, and a shirt to replace the one that just got ripped. The children might not notice or appreciate the example now, but maybe they will in forty years, the way I appreciate my mother’s approach to Christmas now that I’m on the other end of the gift-giving.

In the meantime, Tom and I are trying to figure out how to give them some gifts they can unwrap, but ones that will nurture them more than Ramen noodles.

Daily Discernment

I once heard that Quaker teacher Bill Taber didn’t do a single thing before stopping and listening for God’s guidance. Even when he was leading a weekend workshop, he never planned more than a session ahead, stopping at each break to pray for guidance for the next hour’s work. I aspire to be so grounded and trusting, but I’m afraid I’m still learning how to listen to my inner voice when the phone is ringing, the dog barking to go out, and the kids clamoring for help with their homework. This week I’m practicing with the daily decisions around scheduling a busy family.

This weekend, for example, is just ridiculous. My son has a soccer game on Saturday morning, while my daughter has a Middle School Friends activity in the afternoon. I am invited to an art exhibit opening where a poem I wrote will be featured, along with a piece of visual art that was created to accompany it. Both curiosity and ego made me want to go to the exhibit opening, which is being organized by a good friend. Unfortunately, it is a few hours drive, and not even the Pennsylvania mountains in autumn could justify such a long trip, especially since my husband (a hospice social worker) is on call, the kids need chauffeuring, and I have things to do to prepare for my husband’s birthday on Sunday. Once I admitted to myself that my ego was blocking my discernment, I was able to let that one go and erase the exhibit from the family calendar.

Then a trickier dilemma came along. Several of the parents of the Middle School Friends event, which has been planned for some time, realized that dropping our children at the meetinghouse at 1 was going to make us miss the human chain for peace happening at the other end of the city. I got the bright idea that we should take the kids to at least some of the peace march and start the field trip an hour later. One parent offered to drive all the kids from the march to the meetinghouse, but then realized she wasn’t going to be able to do it. Other family plans shifted as well, often when people remembered other commitments they had forgotten. To make a long story short, this dilemma generated scores of e-mail—we were, of course, hitting “reply to all”—as well as a few phone conversations. I felt like John Woolman who chided himself for wasting people’s time in business meeting when he realized he was keeping hundreds of people from starting their journeys home.

From a logical point of view, having Quaker kids go to a peace march made all the sense in the world. But yesterday morning I woke up with a strong sense that I needed to think less and listen more. (This also applied to the question of whether to offer a workshop at FGC Gathering this summer, which I had also been thinking about.) I took the dog for a walk in the predawn rain and felt a strong call to simplify, cutting activities unless they really were spirit led. The result will be one less peace march for my daughter, but I’ve realized she’s more likely to learn peace from having a peaceful mother than from rushing from one end of town to the other with a peace sign dragging behind her.