In the Midst of Chaos: Caring for Children as Spiritual Practice
I have a vivid memory of a scene in “Shadowlands,” a film about the renowned theologian C. S. Lewis. Lewis sits alone in his quiet study, thinking, praying, and perhaps developing the theology that has so impacted many Christians. Then his housekeeper arrives with tea and asks him if he needs anything.
This scene is not especially important or memorable part of the film, which tells the poignant story of the love and bereavement Lewis experienced late in life. But it stayed with me because it planted a question I’ve lived with ever since: Do we know more about Christian faith as those like Lewis experienced it and wrote about it—in the quiet sanctum of a study, needs secured, free from the immediate demands of others—than about the faith experienced by parents and those who care for children?
Consider this scene next to the opening frames of the film “Parenthood.” Credits roll as a mom and dad inch their way from a baseball game to the family van, juggling, dropping, and picking up kids, souvenirs, bags, and other paraphernalia. The father, played by Steve Martin, is determined to be a better parent than his own father, who, as he has just reminisced, didn’t even bother with things like baseball games. His father had simply dropped him off at the ballpark and paid an attendant to watch him.
In spite of Martin’s character’s resolve to be a good parent, however, this scene also shows how hard that is, as the oldest son starts singing a ditty about “diarrhea” on the hot, sweaty ride home and the parents exchange a look of hopeful, despairing resignation. “Parenthood” depicts the entanglement of being a parent and being a child, having parents and having children, across several generations. Even the perks of middle class suburban life cannot allay bedlam, comically and yet honestly depicted.
When people think of the spiritual life, they typically picture silence, uninterrupted and serene—a pastor’s study, a cloister walk, a monk’s cell. Thinking of parenting, by contrast, they imagine noise and complication, dirty diapers, sleepless nights, phone calls from teachers, endless to-do lists, teen rooms strewn with stuff, and back-seat pandemonium. By and large, these portraits are accurate. The life of faith requires focused attention that comes most easily when one is least distracted, while caring for children is one of the most intrusive, disorienting occupations around, requiring triage upon triage of decision and response. Can one pursue a “spiritual” life in the midst of such regular, nitty-grity, on-the-alert demands?
The Western world has a long history of saying no. Perhaps one of the more extreme examples is Jerome, a fourth-century advocate for monastic life. Like many Latin authors of Roman antiquity, Jerome deemed procreation and the love of children undesirable. He didn’t have anything against children per se, but rather shunned child rearing for one primary reason: Children are a big roadblock on the highway to heaven.
. . . . I did not then and do not now want to rule out silence or solitude as part of the Christian life, or of any life. Indeed, I have a job that requires large amounts of both. I pursued my particular vocation partly because of these built-in qualities and my need for them. To write this book, I even had to ask my husband to take his laptop out of our shared study and find another place to, as I said not too nicely, “tap, tap, tap.” Silence and solitude have their place.
I simply want to widen the circle of faith for the sake of children and parents. Millions of other parents must have also asked how to live a life of faith when silence and solitude are rare. I know that I am not the first to raise this. I join a centuries-old search in the Christian tradition for similar streams of thought, bubbling up in Ignatius, Benedict, and beyond. I am, however, among a smaller number who have wondered about the life of faith in direct relationship to children and those who care for them.