A summer of firsts for Jaybird

It has been a summer of firsts for the six-year-old in our family. Her top five:

1. Learning to read

This is an ongoing process, but she has definitely made real progress in reading on her own. We're hoping that she will be reading books in bed by Christmas.

2. First lost tooth

She had this loose tooth for MONTHS. In fact, when she went to the dentist before our trip to Alabama, we were convinced that she would lose it there. Nope. It just came out a few weeks ago. And even then, I yanked it out. Jaybird was happy to get a Sacagawea dollar from the tooth fairy.

3. First time riding a bike without training wheels
Sp, several of Jaybird's friends learned how to ride a bike without training wheels, which meant she wanted to learn, too. And NOW.

This led to a funny incident earlier in the summer. After falling off the bike one more time, she stormed into the house. "I hate God!" she announced. (A statement like that will get your attention.) "Je did NOT answer my prayer to ride a bike without training wheels, AND I FELL DOWN!!!"

So much growth in faith is inspired by crisis, no?

After giving her a hug and a little sympathy, we explained that a) God is not your servant, and prayers are not magic; and b) God usually wants us to use our own capabilities to achieve some good, because it is part of our human dignity to do so; and c) maybe God wants you to learn patience and persistence.

To which she crossed her arms, stomped her foot, "hmft'd" and said, "Well, I hate that rule!"

To her credit, she did persist, practicing her riding for up to an hour every day, despite various mishaps. And one day, she was able to announce that she had learned to ride: "I still have a few things to work on, though," she said with a totally straight face, "like braking and not running into trees."

On the day she learned to ride

4. Learning to swim

We covered this in an earlier post, but this has been a continued source of pride for Jaybird. She likes to show off how she can dunk her head under water, jump in the deep end, and paddle around. She even swam in the deep part of Fish Lake during our recent vacation.

5. First fish

We also chronicled this in an earlier video post. For weeks, she had been begging to go fishing, just like her older brother. We finally took her down to the lake, where they rent not only canoes and kayaks, but also fishing poles, for free. She liked catching it, but wouldn't touch it!

So, a summer of firsts. And in a week, she will be entering first grade!

"You're not my real dad..."

You do kind of wonder when your five-year-old opens up with: "You're not my real dad, you know."

"Oh?" (Imagine raised eyebrows.)

"God is my real father. You're just the babysitter."

Demoted! The perils of family catechesis....

Speaking of which, Mouse found out about children dying from hunger yesterday -- Jaybird was refusing to eat her supper but asking for something she liked better and I made a (frustrated) offhand comment about the 24,000 children who die of hunger every day. Mouse really picked up on that and started asking all sorts of questions -- including, why don't people just feed them? (Good question.) So we headed to the computer to do some research and discovered that, actually, 41,000 children die of hunger-related causes every day. We also found a number of good resources on the World Food Program website. Mouse was fascinated to know that she could fill a WFP red cup with food for just a quarter; she calculated that she could feed a child for a month with her savings of $9.

Later, in bed, she looked up at me and said: "Those kids are just like me. They want a lot of things. But I want what I don't need, like a princess tiara that costs $7.99. They want just what they need to live."

We'll see how this develops. It's poignant, because it's hard to introduce kids to such harsh realities; on the other hand, it's good for her to be able to put things in a wider perspective, and it is good that she is so compassionate.

Theological musings over lunch

Once in a while, our kids do something to reveal that they really are the children of a couple of cburch nerds. To wit:

Over lunch the other day, Bear pipes up with, "Dad, if God existed before the beginning of time, how could he move? Because you would need time to move, right?"

As I was groping for the beginning of an answer to that one, Mouse chimes in with, "Yeah. And sometimes I ask myself, Why am I me? Instead of another person or animal?"

And then Jaybird comes in with, "And sometimes I wonder if this is all real, or if we're just part of God's dream or something."

Must've been something in those hotdogs!

Why are we living?

During family prayer the other night, B asked, "So -- why are we alive, anyway? Why did God bother to make us?"

Cue the Baltimore Catechism! Actually, we thought it out a little with the older kids: "Well, what do we say God is? God is . . . "

"Great!"

"Uh huh, but we also say that God is . . . "

"King of the Universe!"

"Yeah, but also God is . . . "

Well after a few tries, we finally basically gave it to them: God is love.

"So what does it mean if God is love? What has to happen so God can be love?"

A light comes on for B: "The love has to have something to go into."

High fives. So we played that out for a while longer. One of those rare moments when it all gels.

The light of Christ illuminates the world from within

It's a happy Easter around here: not only is Christ risen, but J finally "rose" from her sick bed after five days of being completely out of commission. Literally in bed all day every day without food. So good to see her up and around. . . and enjoying the Easter festivities (although she slept through most of the Mass -- in which M, by the way, sang with the children's choir).

Easter morning Easter baskets. Because we were running out of colored high fructose corn syrup, you know.

New Sunday dresses. Hey, they match!

J running out of steam during the Easter egg coloring at the Catholic Worker.

These three couldn't  take a straight picture if their lives depended on it.

And a final coda: M asked at bedtime: "How could the angels have sang at Jesus' birth, since angels are pure spirit?" My response: "Give me a few years and I'll get back to you on that one."

Family Catechesis: Learning the Nicene Creed with the Kids

We have "family catechesis" on Sundays around our house. So far, the older kids have memorized the Ten Commandments and the responses for the first part of the Mass. When we got to the part where we recite the Nicene Creed, we took a break from the Mass to memorize and learn about the Creed. This means that almost every week we sit down and learn a new line from the Creed, and then we talk about what that line means, using the corresponding part of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. (We take a break from this for certain holy seasons and special events.) Up until today we have gotten this far:

We believe in one God, 

the Father, the Almighty

maker of heaven and earth,

of all things, seen and unseen.

We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,

the only Son of God. . . .

Sometimes we stay on one line, since there's a lot to unpack. The Catechism uses "seen and unseen" to unpack the creation story, man made in the image of God, the fall, original sin, and the angels. We spent quite a few weeks on that.

Now, most people think that this stuff is way beyond what a six- and eight-year old would be able to comprehend, but you know what? We paraphrase and explain on their level and act it out where necessary, and they pick up a surprising amount. It's pretty amazing.

Most of the time, I have to admit, we approach family catechesis with a certain amount of dread, because B is always squirmy, M is usually silly, and J is usually climbing all over one of us or interrupting with her own totally irrelevent speeches. (Actually, lately her speeches tend to be more on-topic -- based on what she has been picking up.) Today should have been a doozy, since we needed to cover everything from "eternally begotten of the Father" through "by the power of the Holy Spirit, he was born of the Virgin Mary and became man." That's the long part with "God from God, light from light, true God from true God, begotten, not made" in it. We had to cover that whole part because we're learning the Nicene Creed (because we recite it during Mass), but the Catechism follows the Apostles' Creed, so there's a bit of a gap.

Surprisingly, it went very well. In fact, we were trying to wrap things up and they kept asking questions and making comments for another 15 minutes -- and relevant ones, too! We really covered the gamut, from "What does begotten mean?" to the nature of the Trinity to the history of the Council of Nicea to the difference between Lutherans, Catholcs, Buddhists, and Jews.

First we started out by explaining that all that strange language was talking about Jesus Christ. We talked about what "eternally begotten" means (Jesus has no beginning, but "eternally" comes from the Father -- which we also explained by saying that he's "always being born"). That led M to ask why Jesus was born at Christmas if he was "always" born. So we explained that Jesus has two natures: he's fully human and fully divine, and so he was "born" as a human, even though he has always existed. Then we talked about how "God from God, light from light" meant, and that led M to offer that she thinks of Jesus "as the moon," because he shines in the darkness. And B built on that by saying the light of the moon comes from the sun, just like Jesus comes from the Father -- two persons (sun and moon) but one nature (the light). And M added that she thought of humans as the stars, because "we have sin AND grace inside us."

So then we did a very short, informal, impromptu skit about the Council of Nicea as a way of explaining where all this strange language comes from. We explained that Nicea is a town, and that in the early Church, lots of people were saying lots of different things about who Jesus was. We kept it pretty broad. I said, "Well, I believe that Jesus is not totally God, because only God can be God. Jesus was just human!" And S said, "No, Jesus was totally God, but not really human -- God just made himself LOOK human." And then I pointed a finger at her and said, "Heretic!" and she did the same to me, and we kept doing that for a while. Then I explained to the kids that people started fighting about who Jesus was, and so the bishops all got together in Nicea to sort it all out. So the kids got to be the bishops, and they imitated a debate -- B made a really good bishop, actually, weighing the pros and cons of each argument, while M and J nodded. Then I explained that the bishops met for a year and decided to write down what the Church believes, and that became the Nicene Creed. The kid-bishops recited some of the parts of the Creed we'd been discussing to illustrate the conclusion of the council.

We'd have been done at that point, but that got M and B talking about how different people believe different things, and they offered some examples they know about. That's where we got into talking about what Jews and Lutherans believe that is different from Catholics. (M has some Lutheran friends, and as we were explaining about the different beliefs at the Council of Nicea, M put in, "And then there were the Lutherans, too!" which made us laugh as we explained that the Lutherans came much later.) And then M said, "I think each group has a different idea of who Jesus is, and each thinks they are right." So THAT launched a discussion about religious pluralism and how we can discern the truth (through prayer, community, and following the teaching of Jesus to see if it delivers what it promises).

I have to admit that we have been bribing the kids with pieces of candy as a reward for memorizing parts of the Creed and for paying attention -- but this particular session went way beyond what we normally get out of our bribes (and occasional threats). As S said afterward, it's nice to have it go really well once every 40 times or so!

What does God sound like?

Sometimes when we pray with the kids we have them practice silence by asking them to "listen for angel wings," or to "listen for God." Last night, M looked back at me with those big brown eyes and asked, "What does God sound like?"

I said, "Hmm." Long pause. "Go ask your mother." Hey,  she's a theologian, so she has all the answers. (He says with a straight face.) It's a good question for pondering, but perhaps tonight we will read 1 Kings 19:11-12, in which Elijah hears God in "a tiny whispering noise." Might be a good discussion-starter.

"Why Do We Eat God?" (Questions Kids Ask #1)

"Why do we want to eat God?" Five-year-old Maggie dropped this question on me after we finished our meal prayer tonight.

My first reaction: What a wonderful expression for the Eucharist, "eating God." It sounds scandalous--a slap across the face waking me to the radical gift of the thing.

To buy time, and to check that I'm understanding her, I ask, "Um, when do we eat God?"

"Well, the bread and wine are Jesus' body."

"We eat God so he forgives our sins," says 7-year-old Andy, who is taking first Reconciliation classes and therefore knows the answers to things.

I nod at him. "Yeah, that's part of it," I say. As I sling slop (aka mac 'n' cheese) into kids' bowls, I decide to go the analogy route: "Well, what happens when you eat food, like a chicken or a carrot?" I get a puzzled look, so I try again. "Where does it go?"

She stands up and silently points to her behind; we've discussed not talking about what comes out of our body during dinner. Good to see the lesson stuck.

"Well, that's what happens to part of it, but the rest becomes part of our body. Otherwise, why would we eat? Why do we eat, do you think?"

"Mmm...to grow."

"Right. And what would happen if you didn't eat?"

"We wouldn't grow."

"You would die!" chimes in Andy.

"So, we eat God in the Eucharist for the same reasons," I say, gesturing with the broccoli. "God helps us grow, and gives us life, and when we eat Jesus' body and blood, he becomes part of us--part of our body, and our spirit."

"Like our eyes," Andy says knowingly, pointing to his eyes. "Jesus makes our eyes see."

Umm...not sure where to go with that, so I take a pass. "Does that makes sense?" I ask Maggie. "Did that answer your question?"

But, as usual, the bell has rung and class is out, 'cause I don't get an answer. "Why did you get D.W. macaroni and cheese, Dad?" she asks.

Feel free to offer your take on how you'd handle that question--or how you answered similar questions from kids. Be merciful, though--figuring out an age-appropriate, theologically correct answer while serving dinner to three kids is no small feat!