Sons & daughters

The church I attend held a mass baby-dedication today. There's a lot of young families attending & a lot of new babies & so it was sort of a mass free-for-all of praying for kids & families & blessing children & parents. Like anything with kids, it was not on schedule, chaotic & incredibly beautiful all at once.... It was carefree & weighty at the same time... there was a huge 'release' of destiny in that room, parents (& perhaps God behind the parents) whispering/speaking their hopes & dreams over these children. Prayers for their lives now & lives to come, calling out in these young lives weighty things like justice & healing & joy.

Destiny is a hard thing for us as humans. We love to make our own way & be masters of our own fate. And this is very much part of our existence. But there is also this thing of 'destiny' of 'calling', this place where sometimes we wonder if our paths are maybe laid out for us before we were ever born. Each of these kids, like their parents before them, will need to live out this paradox, embracing both aspects & also holding both with a certain degree of suspicion... They will be shaped by the people, the community & culture around them. They'll be shaped by their genetics... and in the end there is some x-factor, some unknown thing that will make them unique, somehow not a product of anything around them, but somehow a 'one-off' - a one of a kind miracle of live & individuality that will never been seen again on planet earth....

...and so for this & a multitude of other reasons it's good to watch, to bear witness, to the lives of these young ones. Watching these young lives you get to see the rawness of a person in development. You get to see a personality forming before anyone has had time to put the 'hooks' in; before anyone has had time to shape them into some societal ideal of what a child should look like, do, act, function...

...there is great wisdom hidden in children. So much to learn. & this really comes only from time spent with them witnessing the growth of their young lives.

Got to spend time watching a friend entertain one of the kids today. The little guy had a dump truck & handed it to my friend & she held it out for him to play with. He looked the truck over, looked at my friend, then back & the truck & then started, with little hands & unsure movements, began to spin the wheels on the truck. First one axle, then the other, then bringing both hands up to try to spin both at once. He worked away at this for a while before heading off to gum a bagel, later to take the un-eaten pieces & make a game of placing them in & out of my hands....

... I watched this in fascination & thought about what it must have been like for the very first man who discovered the wheel (or the first woman, we don't know who figured that one out originally). What must it have been like? Did he/she discover circles first? Did they see logs rolling or stones & then try to shape a wheel from that concept? How many times did they try & fail before they found the concept of wheel & axle that we take for granted today in our world of cars & trucks; vehicles & toys....

.. and it just makes you think that this little boy is coming in this same sense of wonder. This is maybe for him the first idea of wheels, of rolling, is dawning in his young brain... and there is so much more to discover. Every moment, everything touched, eaten, felt, seen, heard, all is a new experience for this one, brand new & full of freshness & awe....

...and as an adult we so need this. We forget awe, we forget wonder. We forget to marvel at the world around us, at just the rush of being alive & what a great gift it is, that it's a ludicrously wild chance that we should be given even a moment on this planet to experience any of this...

This, if nothing else, is the wisdom that come from childhood. It makes all things new again (which is maybe part of why Jesus refers to 'conversion', placing faith in Christ, as the 'second birth' - where we are again plunged into wonder of seeing the world through new eyes).

The only other place I've heard about this renewed sense of wonder (beyond being with children & religious experiences) is marriage. Mike Mason describes in his book "The mystery of marriage" that somehow marriage is like finding 'Eve' again - that somehow the groom finds these places of where he sees his bride & seeing her is like seeing the first woman, like seeing woman for the very first time.... and it's this sense of wonder & childlikeness which often helps carry a marriage through the early days & must be returned to over & over & over again....

... we get old without wonder... life without wonder chokes us... we die a slow & painful death of boredom.... our lungs asphyxiate, die from lack of fresh air, with all the deadness & monotony of a world without wonder. Maybe this is why change is the one of the only two constants in our world (the other is God's love - there may be more, but those are the two I'm sure of right now)... change, as much as we may resist it, keeps things new, keeps shaking out the cobwebs of our lives... gives us hope for something more... something different... something new....

...but wonder can be cultivated even in the 'same-old, same-old'... kids have a way of helping that :)

When I wasn't watching kids, I spent time sneaking glimpses into a book called "Father to Daughter: Life lessons on Raising a Girl". I was in Monkey Shine's books (http://www.monkeyshinesbooks.com/) on the weekend with my parents. It's an absolutely fantastic kids book store in Marda Loop & yeah, I saw this little book by Harry H. Harrison, Jr. that is a bunch of little tidbits of wisdom on raising girls. I picked it up & yeah, it passed the tear test (i.e. read a bit, it made me cry, this is a good sign that the book touches me). I set it down thinking it was maybe silly that I should pick it up now, when I'm, well, not even dating & far, far, farrrrr (really far) from having kids. But decided it I'd add it to the library 'cause, well, eventually I'd like to have kids &, for whatever reason, hope for daughter(s). Maybe it's the perpetual growing up without sisters, maybe it's some overconfidence that I could raise strong & gentle women, or who knows... but yeah, figured I might as well grab the book now & that way I'm not trying to remember it when I'm older & actually about to have a baby.... (& yeah, if I get too much older, who knows what I'll forget, eh? :) )

I sort of hid the book behind my Bible at church. Still a bit shy to show off the book in public (or at least was). Made it through reading about the 'wonder years' about the early years & this dovetailed nicely with some of the other thoughts mentioned above. Some selected bits of wisdom from the book (it's a great little book. Really recommend it from what I've seen so far:

"Realize from the beginning that even at one week old, she's a girl. So she's going to be just as charming, and just as mystifying, as every other girl you know. Beign her dad will not change this."
"Tell her from day one that she can accomplish anything"
"Let her sleep on your chest when she's a baby. This is when the world begins to make sense."
"Memorize her face. her eyes. Her hands. She'll be memorizing everything about you."
"Be prepared to watch Walt Disney movies with her some 200 times. Each."
"Never lose the wonder of watching her & her mother together"
"Trust her mom to understand the mystery of little girls. You have yet to figure out the mystery of big ones."
"Bear in mind that from the very beginning your personality will shape her. Realize that as you shape her, she will shape you."
"Don't think that because she's a sweet little girl that she can't throw food with the best of them."
"Build a shelf for her dolls and stuffed animal collection. Ask her to tell you stories about each one."
"Buy her a jungle gym. However, if she falls off that jungle gym, disregard those thoughts about killing yourself."
"Dance with her always. She'll never be too young. Or old."
"Resist the urge to let her sleep in your bed when she's scared or sick. Independence starts in childhood. Instead, sit with her in her own room until she falls back to sleep."
"Teach her not to be afraid of boys, but to be ready to challenge them."
"When she's old enough, sign her up for karate lessons. This is more for your sake than hers."
"Never laugh at her dreams."