felix hominum

what do you do with godparents?

Most of us in this branch of the Christian family have them.  Or we have asked people to be godparents to our children.  So we either choose godparents for our children, or perhaps we have been asked to be godparents, and then the connection is lost after the morning of the baptism.  So let me share just one little tradition which has grown up in the Felix clan over the past several years:  "godparent parties".  We had one this afternoon. 

Over the past several years we have had a number of godparent parties.  These get togethers are opportunities for us as a family, and as an extended Christian family ("church") to celebrate the goodness and love of God in the lives of each of our kids.  So this afternoon we had a celebration:  a big old feast, interspersed with prayer, and singing, and games, and fun.  We try to have one on an anniversary of a baptism, or as close to the date as possible. 

While families often have "rituals" and traditions which grow up or are inherited (there was always a certain kind of food when the playoffs came in our house), we should also find space for the spiritual traditions and rituals which remind us of Jesus' call on our lives, and of his love for each of our children.  If you are a parent or a godparent, I suggest that you give it a try.  Get together, pray, sing or do whatever it is that fits.  If you are a godparent, it is one simple way of starting to fulfill your promise that you would help this child grow up in faith.  And if you are a parent, let me know of any other such family traditions which you have used to hand on the faith.  I'd like to start collecting some resources around "Christian parenting."

What is Christian courage?

Alice the Camel's quote on bullying (which came via Rick) reminded me of this episode:

Last year a young girl with disabilities was about to be harassed by two boys on a neighbourhood playground, when another a young man who heard what was happening came over and stood between the girl and the two boys.  He stood his ground until they backed down.

The young man is a Christian, and "knew what they were doing was wrong".  He is also 5 years old; a kindergarden student at a local school. He was recognized by his school for bravery.  I know the story because the girl is my daughter.

That's Christian courage.

Maundy Thursday: "Unless I wash you..

you can have no part with me"

what grandpas are for...

story time...

 

Sunday blessings: "Things Danny Taught Me: A Father's Story"

He stood there, dignified, in his polyester fastfood uniform, earnestly waiting for the bus and oblivious to the river of traffic around him, to the forced smiles and brief, uneasy glances from passersby.

In a world of multiple urgencies and lives racing at 50 mghz, he had one focus only--in this case, the Laurel Canyon bus to McDonald' s. He was alone, and he needed to concentrate. He had a job. That meant a schedule and responsibilities.

Stopped at the light, I watched him through my windshield. He was eighteen or so, short black hair slightly askew, with the thick body and unfinished facial features so common to Down's syndrome. Three years ago, I would have looked away, just as the other people nearby on the street were doing now.

But instead I just watched. I find that I can't look away anymore, not from Down's people, not since Danny...

You discover a lot about yourself. I assumed, with the callousness writers seem to perfect, that this "Danny thing" would be the source of so much good material. Well, he is; but not remotely in the way I expected. For the two years since his birth, every time I've sat down to write about him, an arctic silence has settled into my head. Danny will not be used. He is too intimate, too demanding, too funny, too eager to play; he does not fit conveniently into a prefabbed holding pen for the mentally handicapped. And I am too ignorant and not far enough along the road to offer any advice, other than to recount the experience of my own family.

I know that this is doable. It hasn't been easy, but it hasn't been a cross either. You stop thinking like that. Danny's just here, he's part of our normal routine. You adjust. Our manage has the same love and strengths, and also the same faultlines, it always had. So does the family. You learn to stop melodramatizing; you get tired of your own bathos.

I also know that we've been given a gift. A friend, Chicago novelist Patrick Creevy (Lake Shore Drive), the brother of one Down's person and father of a Down's daughter, puts it this way: "The best thing [about a mentally handicapped child] is having a son or a daughter in whom you're never disappointed; you're absolutely out of the business of disappointment .... So many of the expectations that in parents turn tragic, we're safe from. And in its place comes this wonderful, unconditional love, an unburdening from the hunger for perfection."

It's a kind of redemption. You enter a community--parents of sick and handicapped children--filled with far harder stories than Down's syndrome; where quiet, heroic love is an ordinary affair, and you learn from it.

Francis X. Maier is Chancellor for the Archdiocese of Denver and Special Assistant to Archbishop Chaput. This article first appeared in Commonweal magazine.  Full article available at Be Not Afraid.

book review: God on Mute: Engaging the silence of unanswered prayer II

Last week I spent 3 days on a silent retreat with a group of local clergy.  This is an annual event;  it's been a January tradition to bundle up, head out to the Star of the North Retreat Center, and spend a few days in prayer, reading, listening, and fellowship.

As it was a silent retreat, I thought it only fitting to take along Pete Greig's "God on Mute:  Engaging the Silence of Unanswered Prayer".  I started the book a few days prior to the retreat, and thought it would be a good book to read at that particular place, at that particular time.

It was seven years ago, during the annual silent retreat, that I received a message to call home.  We were expecting our second child.  AK had gone to the clinic for a routine ultrasound (as if seeing into the womb can possibly be routine!).  Sarah Joy was suffering from congestive heart failure in utero.  There could be any number of causes.  We'd like to do more tests.  Would you like to schedule a termination of the pregnancy?  We'd like you to speak with the geneticist.  Pete Grieg's book tries to give people a way forward when God is silent.  Not when God says "no" to our prayers, but when God decides to take his time in giving us the answer, when he is silent for a moment. 

The overall pattern of the book is a journey through the last days of Jesus' earthly life.  We walk with Jesus on Maundy Thursday.  If there was ever an "unanswered" prayer, it is surely Jesus' prayer that we might be one.  Jesus' prayer in the garden is often a model for our own.  We pray with Jesus that cups might be taken away from us, and yet so often it seems that is the only draught God offers.  Not my will, but yours.

On Good Friday we are God-forsaken.  Jesus' cry of abandonment from the Cross becomes our own - why, why, why, have you forsaken me.  In this section Greig tries to work through some of the "why" questions.  Why does the world seem to work the way it does?  Why is my prayer not being answered?  What are the ways in which these questions have been answered by Christians, and how can a deeper understanding of God's will, God's world and God's work help us through our personal "Good Friday" prayers.  In this section he takes us through the series of simpler answers which we might be accustomed to.  I have heard many of those same answers from well meaning friends and strangers.  I think my favorite was the plea to "Just pray Jabez" and SJ would be healed.  But while those answers which Greig enumerates can and do have their place, I am glad that he takes us to Holy Saturday.

In our fear of unknowing, we leapfrog Holy Saturday and rush the resurrection.  We race disconcerted to make meaning and find beauty where there simply is none.  Yet.

This is the real place of struggle for unanswered prayers.  The time when God truly is silent.  Greig's observation is true - we want to hurry through Holy Saturday to Easter.  It is a day of silence.  Yet, we are reminded: though God is silent, He is not absent.  This is the deeper place of Christian trust, when we have to say "into your hands I commend my spirit".  It is the place of trusting in God's presence with us when all signs of his presence have vanished.  Too often we try to rush others through this day as well.  Or we try to fill the void with something of our own creation.  I think of how we like to fill hospital rooms with chatter and stuff, when sometimes our mere presence is what is needed.  Not our voice.

Then Greig points us to the Resurrection - the place where all prayer is answered.  The book is seasoned with his own experiences of struggling with "unanswered prayer".  And at the end he gives a bit of a guided resource for reflection which can be used alone or in groups.  The book is a good antidote to overly triumphalist Christianity, and it addresses a concern that many Christians have, but which often (I have found) they are not very willing to admit.  After all, what kind of Christian is ignored by God?  This book is food for thought and prayer for all of us who have wondered why God doesn't answer... I'd give it 8 out of 10.

related post:  God on Mute

Sunday blessings: John Van Sloten - converted by an unusual missionary

Fifteen years ago, my wife and I had a son born with Down syndrome. His birth was devastating to me. That first night, I ran scenario after scenario of how shitty life would be as a father of a "retarded" child.  Will I ever love him? Will I have to take him bowling with other disabled kids when he's eight — bumpers in the gutters because no one could throw a ball straight?

Will he have any friends at 18, or will he sit alone in some high school cafeteria? And when he's 40, and I'm dead, will he rot in some horrible institution?

It was a rough night.

'That must mean I love him'

Three months later, while doing some community service in Rochester, N.Y., I got some answers.

I met a 40-year-old man with DS. His life was filled with meaning and he was the centre of his church community.

Two days later, I met an eight-year-old DS boy whose beauty and physical strength were so readily apparent. He kept showing me his muscles! Then, I met an 18-year-old DS teen whose social calendar was too full to have any time for the likes of me.

And then the next day, while driving back home to Toronto, the most powerful answer came. I caught myself missing my little boy, and thought, "Well if I miss him, then that must mean I love him."

Through the tears of that moment, it then hit me. God knew. The night I was running all of those anxious scenarios, he knew the answers I found in Rochester laid ahead.

The curtain pulls back

And then the epiphany came. It was like a curtain was pulled back and, in that moment, I got to see a glimpse of the goodness of God — absolutely huge, mysteriously holding all of reality, powerfully sovereign over all things, providentially moving and loving it all.

full story from the CBC

ps - John is now a pastor at this church, which has done some great things for a friend of mine.

mmm... pancakes!

Just because.

The selectivity of a (non) inclusive church

It appears that a report from the  Anglican Church of Melbourne has recommended we move to a less-inclusive Church, especially in the case of "foetal abnormality, when abortion was 'the least problematic solution'".  Thanks to Scott for drawing this to our attention

The Church of Melbourne's home page features three great articles relating to children and youth.  I was particularly struck by the one entitled "Archbishop calls for national inquiry into childhood depression".  Hmmm.

Where should one turn at such times for a vision of the inclusive church?  Perhaps to those who are the forefront of the move toward "inclusivity":

"Planned Parenthood is an organization that I have always admired and respected. It does such extraordinarily fine work, and I'm very happy to be associated with it."

Rt Rev Gene Robinson, interviewed here.

"...we must challenge the condemnation by the Church throughout the centuries of such things as masturbation, birth control, abortion, and homosexuality."

Rt Rev Michael Ingham, article here.

It's true that we are not a single issue church.  It's a worldview.  Of course those with "foetal abnormalities" are included as a large subset of the objects of the "extraordinariiy fine work" which is done. You can see that such fine work is done in almost 85-90% of say, foetuses with a diagnosis of Down Syndrome.  But don't take my word for it.  Such extraordinarily fine work has been detailed elsewhere: 

Caroline Mansfield, Suellen Hopfer, Theresa M. Marteau (1999). "Termination rates after prenatal diagnosis of Down syndrome, spina bifida, anencephaly, and Turner and Klinefelter syndromes: a systematic literature review". Prenatal Diagnosis 19 (9): 808-812.  PMID 10521836 ; David W. Britt, Samantha T. Risinger, Virginia Miller, Mary K. Mans, Eric L. Krivchenia, Mark I. Evans (1999). "Determinants of parental decisions after the prenatal diagnosis of Down syndrome: Bringing in context". American Journal of Medical Genetics 93 (5): 410 - 416

This is why I find talk of an "Inclusive Church" rather, well, deficient at best and deceptive at worst.  I have long known that the Episcopal Church has been active in the Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice.  The latest op-ed from the Rev Anne Fowler celebrates this fact.

I am not convinced.  It is precisely those who require of us a sacrificial love, who will lead us into the Kingdom.  Of course we don't want to offer such sacrificial love, and so we look for the "least problematic solution".  We don't really want to practice Jesus' unconditional love;  we just want to use it as a slogan at synods, in church newspapers and in comments on our favorite blogs.  Don't let us see what it really looks like.

SJ, former "foetus with abnormaiity", presently 6 year old person living with Down Syndrome, showing a piece of "extraordinarily fine work".

For some, full "sacramental inclusion" means reaching the baptismal font...

move over Santa, the real St Nicholas is here

every santa needs a hat like that... 

ps that's SJ (daughter#2) on the left, and on the right, well, you know who that is.