One of my favorite things about our life right now is that we are surrounded by a good community of people who share much in common with us and yet are so very different from us. It used to be, as I grew up, that agnostics were fabled people who I never really knew but heard about. So were Catholics, for that matter.
And now, thank God, we've got this fantastic rainbow of friends: agnostics, Catholics, sort-of-pantheists, Orthodox Christians, searching Christians, and searching don't-know-whats. Conversation is rich with our varied backgrounds and our own spiritual journeys. The richness of these interchanges is deepened by the fact that we all genuinely care about each other and care to hear what the other has to say, without anger or judgement.
And like the community in which I grew up, we become each other's family. Our children even call the adults in our community "aunt" and "uncle," a familiarity that speaks safety and belonging to children, especially children whose real family is far way. And especially in this time with young children, when, ironically, we can feel very isolated and lonely, community is life-giving. On a very basic level, it keeps us sane.
No matter what our spiritual beliefs, we all surely believe in the power of gentleness and words spoken with love.
We practice that belief every day in our relationships with our children and with each other.
And in loving each other's families, we help to shape one another.
We shape and create a heritage of love and acceptance for our children, eating together, talking together, laughing and worrying together.
Since I am a Jesus-follower (uncomfortable often with the cultural aspects of Christianity and the Church, but committed to the person of Jesus), I think of Jesus himself, doing what is so often recorded about him: laughing, talking, eating, joking around with his community and doing the work of mercy in that context.
And so do we speak words of the deeper reality of this life to one another, not in syllables always, but though the sharing of our food, our houses, our children. We show our children: What you see here, this diverse community of honest people, this is real, this is worthwhile, this is your heritage.
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I was reminded of the power of words spoken in the reality of love when I reread this blessing that my father, W. Meredith Long, said over Elspeth at her baptism in 2006:
Elspeth, may your restless curiosity and keen intelligence mature into a deeply inquiring mind. As you uncover knowledge, may you delight in mystery, clapping your hands in celebration of God who creates and sustains all there is.
May you become a strong woman. May your will be captivated by God, your lover, and conformed to His heart and mind. May you become a woman of grace and gentleness. May your heart be always moved by suffering.
May you bring joy to all around you. May your optimism be rooted in hope, and may you laugh at the future. May God to whom you have been consecrated fill your life with his. Amen.
This blessing made me thankful for the gentleness and wisdom of my father, of whom I have the greatest respect and devotion. And how many children can say this freely of their parents? The women in my family give my Dad a hard time sometimes, but he, who spoke recently at a feminist gathering and who lives a life devoted to justice for women and children, takes our ribbing with good humor.
Rereading this blessing also made me laugh, because, since words are filled with power (and I as a writer believe this fervently), you have to be careful what you say--see especially, "Deeply Inquiring Mind"/ "Strong Woman"/"Laugh at the Future" above.
And then consider what happened last night as we talked with dear friends: Cries of "Oh, no!" reached us, and we found that our middle child (with the deeply inquiring mind) had acted as strong woman and, despite the sure knowledge of consequences and punishment, had, "laugh[ed] at the future" and, among other things, done this:
I thought I was going to write about the flax seed she sprinkled all over the sun room, or perhaps I could have told you about the letter "H" that she inscribed all over the walls of our house, but no, this takes the cake. The pink marker was not just on this chair, but on various other surfaces, including the curtain.
God bless us. I may ask for a slightly modified blessing for Beatrix--Dad, think words like "calm" and "gentle" and while certainly strong is good, consider including "bring your parents relief" as a possible phrase.
But in all seriousness, we like any other loving parents ask ourselves, how can we help make this blessing become real for Elspeth? And the answer is in real community, which I believe is the very fabric of spiritual reality. How do we encounter God but through the hands of those around us? How, in our daily lives, do we hear the voice of God but through the voices of those who love us?
Merry, always our deep wonderer, asked me when she was about three: Mommy, how can I hear God? And I explained that we hear God in many different ways: in nature, in books, in music, in the words of those we love. That explanation was not good enough, and so I said, "All right, Merry, tonight ask God to talk to you, and tomorrow tell me what God said." I had the hopeful faith that God would see a child listening and do SOMETHING. In the morning, Merry said, "Mommy, I listened and listened, but God never said a THING."
Well, who of us has heard God utter words directly to her? But in the voices of my community, of my family, of the natural world, I do encounter the voice of God. And it sustains me deeply. Perhaps Elsepth hit the nail on the head when, after asking where the heck Jesus was since we talked to him, and I said, "All around you, inside of you, in other people and in the world," she looked at me with an incredulous grin and said "Jesus is in my MOUTH?!" and after swallowing I realized, yes indeed, my child, Jesus is indeed in your mouth when you say a kind word to another.
And when we live in community, Jesus is mainly in our mouths. We speak him to others when we inquire how they've been, and we swallow him when we eat food prepared by another's hands with love. In living in community, normal and paltry things become sacred, and we find deep magic residing in our world.
