Isaac, Behave

(A parenting poem in some jest)

When we're in church and you can't sit nice
And the scripture's about child sacrifice,
I cannot cope.

You should pray when I go to punch your ticket
That the Lord provides a ram in the thicket.
 It's your only hope.

Before church, I tamed your wild hair.
We stand for hymns and kneel for prayer.
It's what we do.

Yes, you have to wear church sandals.
Yes, they're going to light the candles.
Now sit in the pew.

Sunday Haiku: Labor Supply

How do parents who
don't go to church meet teen-age
girls who babysit?

Sunday Haiku: Interstitial Season

Another season
falls between Thanksgiving and 
Christmas: It's Advent.

Flickr: oddharmonic

Sunday Best

After an off-hand remark caused an astounding flurry of debate on facebook this week, I've been thinking about why I feel that everyone in our family should dress up for church. I took the transcript of the argument and put it into an xtranormal video, which you can watch if you'd like. The rest of this post only takes that debate as a jumping-off point and doesn't actually refer to it anymore.

Our rule for our kids for Sunday church clothes are: nothing printed on the shirt, no jeans or sweatpants, and they wear dress shoes. That typically ends up being a polo or button down with khakis or dress shorts in the warm weather. They do get to wear sandals, but we specifically shop for sandals that work as summer church shoes. In the winter, they most often wear a sweater with khakis. They do have some wedding and funeral clothes that are a notch dressier - blue blazers, shirts and ties, dressier trousers.

I like to dress up for church. It makes me feel more prepared for worship. I think it's important to signal to the kids, too, that Sunday is different. It's difficult to implement concrete actions that differentiate the sabbath. Wearing clothes that you don't normally wear not only reminds you constantly throughout the day; it also starts right at the beginning of the day.

Also, though, I need to be able to say to my kids on various occasions for various reasons "that outfit is not appropriate for where we're going or what we're doing". Church clothes set the tone for that. With the weekly basis of church clothes, I find it easier to demand jeans and a nice shirt for certain events or khakis and a nice shirt for other events. I find it a little wacky, but in our house, jeans are one step up into dressy because our boys - Teddy especially - would wear sweat pants every day if he had the chance. As Jerry said to George, though, in the pilot episode of Seinfeld: "You know the message you're sending out to the world with these sweatpants? You're telling the world, 'I give up. I can't compete in normal society. I'm miserable, so I might as well be comfortable.'"

Did I just say that people who don't dress up for church have declared themselves unable to compete in normal society? Possibly. I've been believed to have said similar things before.

Holy Week in Full

A warning to regular readers: this post is much more reverent than my usual fare. It's downright spiritual. Oh, and it really has nothing to do with parenting. And it's too long for proper writing on the web. Oh well.
If you're a person of faith, it might resonate with you. If you're not, it may pique your curiosity or put you in a fit of pique. If it's going to be the latter, maybe you just skip this and catch my normal snide self in my next post.

I hate Palm Sunday. Not that I would have it any other way, but I hate the way the service starts with Hosanna and gets to Crucify! by 25 minutes in. Nothing brings home the role of my own sin in the crucifixion and my own need for the redemption of the resurrection quite like Palm Sunday. Which is precisely why I don't like it.

To back up, I grew up worshiping at The Salvation Army, where the church calendar means nothing. Easter Sunday arrived with no prelude, except maybe some shopping for a new outfit. Out of nowhere, we just woke up one frigid April Sunday and went out on a hill or even on folding chairs in a church parking lot for a "sunrise service". The closest we had to a liturgical tradition was the stop at McDonald's for breakfast sandwiches between the sunrise service and regular church. The egg has some spiritual significance, but a) I don't think those are necessarily real eggs and b) combining them with American cheese and English muffins, while trans-Atlantic, probably robs them of their Trinitarian meaning.

Now, I worship at an Anglican church and have learned to love the richness of the church calendar. The Lenten season through Holy Week makes Easter mean so much more.

At Ash Wednesday, we start with the pleasing symmetry of having ashes applied to our foreheads created by burning last year's palms. Hard to say whether that's a resurrection or a reverse resurrection. Either way, it's an important reminder that we are all ashes to ashes and dust to dust.

In Lent, worship changes in subtle ways like the eliding of the word "Hallelujah" from the liturgy and a much-less decorated altar. Purple stoles remind us that we are awaiting the crowning of a King. Individually, we give things up or take things on as a discipline. This year, I've found that I could live without facebook during Lent, a valuable lesson.

Then, we arrive at Palm Sunday, and the Hosanna!-Crucify! whiplash occurs. That whiplash sensation used to catch me unawares. I would forget from one Palm Sunday to the next everything but the joyous waving of the palms in what insiders call the "holy pretzel" processional. Then my complicity in Christ's death would rise up just a few liturgical minutes later. The past two years, though, I've been cast as Peter in our congregation's passion play. Apparently, i'm typecast as being disloyal in times of trouble. Anyway, rehearsing for the Passion means that I'm tuned into Palm Sunday for weeks in advance. We yell "Crucify!" over and over again. Reciting Peter's denials, I embody all the most obvious flaws of disciples, both biblical and contemporary. I don't actually need Peter's words to embody those flaws, natch.

Maundy Thursday claims two superlatives in the liturgical calendar: 1. most mispronounced day (Maunday Thursday seems more like a trick of the parallelism-craving mind and tongue than a mistake about how Maundy is spelled.) and 2. coziest service of the year. I like to think it's cozy because we remember the Last Supper in the Upper Room not because the service is so poorly attended. Jesus and the Disciples lived such a public life together during His ministry that the Last Supper strikes me as a rarely intimate moment. The most intimate act that happens in the sanctuary at any point in the year happens on Maundy Thursday as friends and family members wash each others' feet. And in case you didn't know what was coming the next day, this service ends in total darkness and silence.

When a friend in college talked once about leaving the Good Friday service in grief, I had no idea what she was talking about. Again, at that time, I knew nothing of the rhythm of the church calendar, and the notion that a service could bring home the reality of Christ's death as much as she described it (her face was altered, she discovered upon seeing her reflection in a store window). Three hours in length, this service reminds us of what it must have been like for Jesus' disciples and family members to watch and wait, scared witless, while he died and was taken away. The oft-quoted "Today is Friday, but Sunday's a-comin'" sermon undersells the importance of pausing on Friday to take in all the dire sadness of The Death without which there is no resurrection. Today is Friday. Let it be. Sunday has its own business.

Finally, having turned our minds and hearts in so many directions for 40 days (plus the Sundays that are feast days and not technically part of Lent). we arrive at Easter with the proper appreciation for all the fuss. At our church, we bring bells and ring them like crazy people as we celebrate the empty tomb and worship the risen Messiah.

To paraphrase a Pittsburgh political slogan: I hate Palm Sunday because I love it so much. Even if you missed Palm Sunday this year, I encourage you to participate in the rest of Holy Week at a church near you that observes it. And next year, you can do the whole shebang. There will be no denying it: It'll be your most meaningful Easter ever.