Phil's Little Blog on the Prairie

For this week's post, I'm offering my contribution to the 2005 UU Family Network Clearinghouse Packet, Open Book: Family Story as Faith Story, a collection of family stories by UU ministers, religious educators and Family Matters Task Force members.

Once upon a time I thought I’d marry another Unitarian Universalist. I didn’t, of course. I married Julia, a Mennonite—a very liberal Mennonite—and now all sorts of questions about how to raise our children have appeared. Which tradition, Unitarian Universalist or Mennonite, will be the primary religious home for our family? How can we stay connected to both traditions? Will we be able to stay active in two different congregations where we both have so felt welcomed?

It turns out that these questions were relatively easy to sort out once we shifted our focus to what really matters—finding the values from each of our traditions that we wanted to pass on to our children. So, for example, the Mennonites are an historic peace church, something neither the Unitarians nor the Univeralists were. Since this is a core value from Julia’s tradition, and since it’s a stance that I’m extremely sympathetic to, we’ve decided our family is going to be an historic peace family!

For my part, I’m very proud of the way Unitarian Universalists have dealt with issues of sexuality and sexual orientation. Both Our Whole Lives (or OWL—the UUA’s lifespan comprehensive sexuality education program) and the Association’s position on civil marriage as a civil right go straight to the heart of our commitment to the inherent worth and dignity of every person. Julia understands that this is an important part of my religious heritage, and we hope to provide a family environment that deals openly and honestly with human sexuality and sexual orientation.

Together we’ve decided that participating in OWL should part of our children’s religious education, so we’re going to make the local Unitarian Univeralist congregation our primary religious home. And since Mennonites practice adult baptism, we’ll let our children know that they will have an opportunity to make a commitment to that part of our family’s combined religious heritage later on if they choose. The important thing is that our children understand the link between the values our family promotes, values like standing on the side of peace and love, and their parents’ faith traditions.
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I was hoping that this was going to be a relatively short post, something like, "Announcing the birth of Henry David Reimer Lund!" But little Hank's on his own schedule, so we're a couple of days overdue. Maybe next week.... In the meantime, I'd like to write a bit about the philosophy of another Henry David.

At the GA workshop on sharing family values last month, I mentioned that Julia and I were hoping to live simply with our son, a thought that provoked a bit of laughter from those attending. Not too surprising a response, actually. After all, Marie Sherlock opens the first chapter of her book Living Simply with Children with these words:

For most American families, "living simply with children" is the ultimate oxymoron.

Between Mom and Dad working full-time jobs, the kids being shuttled from day care to lessons to sports--wolfing down fast food along the way--and the never-ending need to buy and spend to "fit it" to America's consumer culture, family life can indeed be incredibly complex.

And the problem with (literally) buying into America's consumer culture is that along with all those must-have products, you're also buying into a set of values. I've written about these five great motivators here before: fear, exclusivity, guilt, greed, and ego gratification. These are the values market-driven media promotes in order to perpetuate the gnawing feeling that we're always lacking something, the SUV with a DVD and cupholders everywhere, the McMansion with mega square footage and garage big enough to double as a hanger, and the computer/television/video game system in every room. Ugh.

What was it Thoreau said? "Simplify, simplify." And Julia and I are going to give it a try. We've decided to both reduce our hours at work by 1/4 each (something Don Browning at the University of Chicago suggests); and we're going to try to pass on a different set of values than the ones promoted by consumer culture. And that's really the point. We (and I'm talking about Unitarian Universalist ministers and religious educators here) need to help families intentionally name and claim values that are more congruent with our liberal religious heritage--like living simply. (By the way, this is where Julia's Mennonite background and my fondness for New England Transcendentalism really meet.)

So, here's something I offered to the folks who attended the GA workshop on sharing family values--another section from Marie Sherlock's book. It's called The Values of Simple Living Families. She says, "When I asked dozens of simple living families what their values were, they recited such principles as:"

Compassion
Love
Charity
Family
Community
Respect for people and the earth
Social justice
Harmony
Honesty
Generosity
Understanding
Cooperation
Peace
Nonmaterialism
Kindness
Tolerance
Diversity
Responsibility

I would much rather make an effort to promote these values in my family and in my community than give in to the pressures of our toxic culture and the noxious values they espouse. Sure, it won't be easy. But making a decision to live one's life deliberately never is. It's worth the effort, though. As Henry David Thoreau said,

Why should we live in such a hurry and waste of life?
We are determined to be starved before we are hungry.
I wish to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life.
I wish to learn what life has to teach, and not, when I come to die, discover that I have not lived.
I do not wish to live what is not life, living is so dear,
Nor do I wish to practice resignation, unless it is quite necessary.
I wish to live deep and suck out all the marrow of life,
I want to cut a broad swath, to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms.
If it proves to be mean, then to get the whole and genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world;
Or if it is sublime, to know it by experience, and to be able to give a true account of it. (#660 from Singing the Living Tradition)

Here's a summary of the information Mary Higgins and I presented during the second part of our workshop at General Assembly in Fort Worth last month. (Last week's post was a summary of the first part of the workshop). As I recall, we talked some more about what kind of values we want to pass along to our children. Some specific UU values might be freedom, reason, tolerance (from the Unitarian side of the family) and faith, hope, and love (from the Universalist side). Others might include: acknowledging we are all worthy of being loved in this world (our first principle); affirming we are born with what it takes to feel at home in the universe (our fourth principle); or understanding that we are all connected and that our actions can make a difference in the world (our seventh principle).

There's another cluster of values that I didn't mention at the workshop, but that I've covered here in the past. They're the opposite of the “five great motivators” advertisers use to make us feel inadequate: fear, exclusivity, guilt, greed, and ego gratification. As I've said before, I believe liberal religious families need to actively counter these motivators with values that bring us together, in our families and in our communities: instead of fear, we proclaim the transforming power of love; instead of exclusivity, we seek to be more inclusive; instead of guilt, we practice forgiveness; instead of greed, we show gratitude; and instead of ego gratification, we strive to open our hearts to a hurting world so desperately in need of our healing message.

Next, I ran through the "six daily activities" Robert Wuthnow has identified that help bring about a lifelong faith in children:

sharing family meals and saying grace;
spending a few moments before bedtime to share the joys and worries of the day;
having real conversations about what matters most in life;
adorning your living spaces with symbols of your faith tradition;
celebrating holidays in ways that the religious significance comes through; and
participating in your community of faith in ways that make it part of your family’s emotional support system

(I've covered each of these in separate posts that can be found under the "Best of Log" section on my "Favorite Links" page).

Finally, I talked about the importance volunteering as a family plays in passing on values. For example, here's a list of benefits families received from volunteering together:

It's fun.
It strengthens families.
It makes family time valuable to both families and communities.
It connects and strengthens communities.
It improves family communication.
It helps create a new generation of dedicated volunteers.
It teaches kids values like kindness, empathy, respect, friendliness and tolerance.
It changes lives.

I got this list from a group called 1-800-volunteer.org. Their Family Cares page is a great resource for family volunteering.

I also mentioned that often times all a congregation has to do is tweak some of their existing programs to make them more conducive to family volunteering. For example, rather than having individuals donate items to a relief organization, find out if the group has some instructions for making care packages, such as this list from Church World Service:

Our brand new Heart-to-Heart Kids Kit recognizes that even as faces must be washed and bellies must be fed, laughter must be heard as well. To assemble a Kids Kit you will need:

One Rubbermaid® Clear Impressions shoebox with lid, 6.5 qt., or other flexible clear plastic 6.5 qt. shoebox with lid
One small stuffed bear
One soft small ball
One harmonica, or other small musical instrument
One 6” x 9” non-spiral bound pad of regular or construction paper (60-100 sheets)
One slinky
One yo-yo
One 7-foot child’s jump rope
One comb
One toothbrush
One tube of toothpaste (4-7 ounces)
One box of 24 crayons
One large eraser
Six new pencils with erasers
One pencil sharpener
One 30-centimeter ruler (12”)
One pair blunt child’s scissors

Remove excess packaging so that items fit snugly in box. Place all items inside the shoebox, close lid, and tie securely with ribbon.

This is a great way for families to do a project together and talk about the values that motivate them. And speaking of Church World Services, their annual CROP Walks are one of the best family-friendly service projects I know of. If your congregations is already participating in a CROP Walk, intentionally having congregational families participate together is great way to building community and pass on values. If you're not, please consider having the families in your congregation take part in the next walk in your area. Participants can even have some of the money they raise go directly to the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, so it's a great way to promote UU values, too.
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