It Takes a Congregation to Raise Our Children

It Takes a Congregation to Raise Our Children

Earlier this week, in bible study, we talked a/what life was like for families, 50 years ago, compared with today. The consensus was that our culture today is not a friend to families. TV, internet ads enlist our children as surrogate salespeople demanding toys and clothes they’ve never actually seen but upon which they are convinced that their survival depends. Children and teens learn social skills from The Simpsons and even Sex in the City, and manners from South Park.

•    50 years ago, aunts and uncles and grandparents lived nearby and provided a cushion of childcare and perspective to relieve beleaguered parents. Today, many parents raise their children in the bell jar of the nuclear family.
•    50 years ago a city kid could wander through the neighborhood, and a country kid through woods and fields. Today we worry our child will be struck down by an car or snatched by a stranger.
•    50 years ago on warm summer nights people sat on their porches to watch and talk with passersby. Today, we retreat to our home entertainment centers, and the passersby are mostly in cars.
•    50 years ago, teenagers knew too little about sex. Now they know too much, with info available from everything from the internet to Oprah, many of them cynical before their 1st dance.
•    50 years ago, neighbors were family or friends and even if unfriendly, their strengths and weaknesses were known.

Today, many neighbors are strangers. Something called a village is more likely to be a strip mall than the real thing. and despite all the technology that’s supposed to bring us closer–from cell phones to the Internet–most of us feel more disconnected than ever. As psychologist and author Mary Pipher puts it, “There’s too much information and not enough meaning, too much happening and not enough time to process it.” As a society it seems we’ve come to care more about speed than safety, more about convenience than quality, more about wit than wisdom, more about personality than character.

On the other hand, few of us have any desire to turn the clock back 50 years. We know too well the racism, sexism, homophobia, and xenophobia of bygone times. So let’s not romanticize the past, but let’s not view the present through a fog of wishful thinking either. The electronic village is not a village. Virtual community is not community. Computers and TVs and DVDs and Iphones and blackberries, and YouTube cannot raise our children. We must raise our children.

I know that the metaphor of the good shepherd tends to be overused. Also, we suburbanites don’t have much to do with sheep these days, the closest experience might be watching the migrating flocks of (sheep or is it goats) eating dried grass in the Oakland hills in later summer..Besides our lack of familiarity with sheep, we also tend to view sheep as “not very bright” not “independent minded thinkers”, but instead, animals that blindly following a leader.. My experience of this congregation is that it’s more like herding cats, than sheep! In some ways, the sheep/flock metaphor doesn’t work for us..  so may I suggest another metaphor for us.

There’s a Sioux word, tiospaye. It means the people with whom one lives. A tiospaye is a human ecosystem of aunts and uncles and friends and neighbors who are all responsible for the care and nurture of all the children. Everyone in the community belongs, everyone contributes, everyone benefits. Children need a tiospaye: a safe environment in which to explore and grow, where adults beyond the nuclear family are known as trusted friends and teachers, not strangers to be feared and fled, where the values and traditions of previous generations can be learned and internalized, where the ancient stories are told again and again.

A congregation, this congregation, can be a tiospaye. We can be a real, not a virtual, community. Only in community do we learn the lessons of difference and relationship. Community demands civility. When we’re in regular contact with other people, what we say and do matters. It has consequences. Mistakes require apologies. Triumphs evoke praise, sorrows sympathy.

The dominant message of advertising and the entertainment media is that the only worthwhile commitment is to oneself and the only Q worth asking is “Am I happy right now?” It’s a formula, ironically, for unhappiness, because happiness ultimately depends upon one’s feeling connected to something more than one’s own happiness. Psychologist Martin Seligman says, “To the extent that young people now find it hard to take seriously their relationship with God, to care about their relationship with the country or to be part of a large and abiding family, they’ll find it very hard to find meaning in life. To put it another way, the self is a very poor site for finding meaning.” The result is a desperate, vague hunger for values, for community, for something larger than the self.
When we do our job, church communities breach the walls of isolation and fill the void of spiritual emptiness. Studies published not in the religious press but in journals of psychology and, most recently in Time Magazine, find that people who attend church regularly are much less likely than others to become delinquent, to abuse drugs and alcohol, to divorce or even to be unhappily married, to become depressed, or to commit suicide. At our best, a congregation like ours centers adults and children in an interdependent web of caring and cooperation, grounded in tradition but not bound to it, while opening hearts and minds to possibility and mystery, the cosmos beyond the self.

We do this in many ways. We enact rituals that connect the generations -  from our Mardi Gras, to Halloween, from the Xmas Party, to the Easter Egg Hunt, to the upcoming Spring Fling celebration. We celebrate rites of passage from baptisms, to confirmation, from weddings to memorial services. And, to some extent, we engage children w/the natural world in ecology curricula and time outdoors. We instill the habits of service and generosity through our mission programs, inviting children and teens to take part in alleviating cold and hunger here in Alameda County,  through such efforts as “stop shivering Sunday” and next week’s “Yes we can” Sunday. We invite teens to take part in preparing and serving meals to homeless people through  St Mary’s center, and to join in our global missions including, writing cards to children in Sierra Leone and donating books for Angola.

But so much more is needed.

We need to foster more communication between the generations in church School and through youth groups, and picnics and overnighters. We need to support our young people in their visions for our faith community – Their vision of worship – types of music, dance, video, sermon topics, faith Q’s –relevant to their lives and their world Their vision of service and generosity – taking on issues they are passionate about.. from environmental conversation to alleviating hunger and disease. – Crop Walks, Heifer international. In a world in which language is debased and trivialized, we need read to find out how God is speaking to them – through scripture and poetry and music and films. In a cluttered and hectic world, we need to offer more sanctuary, more sacred space set apart for contemplation of ultimate things. We need to provide young people w/a context for slowing down time.

Most important, we need to pass on to our children and teens, the core values necessary for moral choices: that every human being deserves dignity and respect, that giving is more blessed than receiving, that the Golden Rule is not out of date, that love demands both empathy and accountability, that there’s something inside every human that cannot be bought or sold, hired or fired, franchised or trademarked, which is the soul. To do this, we need to tell our stories of heroes and heroines who exemplify these values and inspire us to live and if needed, to die for them. We need to let children know that they are heirs to the UCC’s tradition of free inquiry and compassionate service.

This faith community and this denomination recognize our responsibility to our children and teens to give them not only a religious curiosity but also a religious identity. We must raise our children and teens to be free and confident to find their own path, and at the same time, we owe them a spiritual home to which they can return if they choose with affection, trust, and a sense of security.

Xian religious educator, Charles Foster, observes that all children have a deep yearning “to know to whom they belong.” They need a sense of history. The “communal events” we share, from the birth of Jesus to Galileo’s scientific discoveries to Sojourner Truth’s liberating mission, mark us as a people. We inherit their character. and so we must tell their stories. In Sunday School and in confirmation classes we use narratives from the Hebrew and Xian scriptures and other faith traditions of the world not because they’re literally true but because they are our religious birthright. During worship I read from these scriptures not because they’re infallible or exclusive but because they are rich in tradition as well as wisdom. They remind us who we are and to whom we belong.

This is our vision – for our children our future.. here at Skyline.. I am so moved by the commitment this congregation has made to fund our future children, youth and family director. We’re interviewing some very talented and dedicated people – shepherds if you will, to serve in this capacity, including someone today and we will keep you informed on our progress.

Yes, it does takes a shepherd, a catalyst – someone to champion and inspire our vision, At the same time, it takes all of us to be a part of it. It takes a flock, a tiospaye, a congregation,  a village to make this vision a reality.

So, I ask you to be a village for every child in this congregation. Get to know the children and teens by name! Teach Sunday School whether or not you have children of your own. Help out with the Confirmation program and the youth group and family activities at the church. Be a calm and guiding presence to children in work and in play, in trouble and in turmoil. Take initiative. Reach out.

“Raising healthy children,” says Mary Pipher, “is a labor-intensive operation.” Families have never done it alone and cannot be expected to. It takes a flock, village. It takes a tiospaye. It takes a congregation. It takes every one of us! Amen.