The Tony Jones Blog at Patheos
Photo by Courtney Perry
Next week, Little League season begins again. This will be my fourth year coaching my son, Tanner, and his teammates. The other coaches and I end every practice and game teaching the boys one new term or phrase of baseball lingo — you know, “battery,” “frozen rope,” “can o’ corn,” that type of thing.
So, as you can imagine, after four years I’m trying to avoid too many repeats. So I send it out to you readers:
What is your favorite baseball lingo, and what does it mean?
Joy has:
But here’s the problem. I thought that in order to respect authority and understand right and wrong, my children needed to experience the smart of a spank. And on days when I was worn down or short-fused, I defaulted to spanking to keep control. I used negative motivation and the threat of physical pain to bolster a position of power. I was trying to impose external conformity from above and from fear, the very thing I hate about controlling churches and the very thing Jesus spoke against throughout the gospels.
When I defaulted to authoritarian control, enforced via spanking, I couldn’t come alongside my children as their partner and equal before God. I couldn’t help them examine their hearts, face their fears, and identify their desires. They were afraid of me! They would hide, and they would say what they thought I wanted to hear instead of what was really true. I began to see how using the fear of a spanking to change my children’s behavior failed to actually change their hearts or teach how and why to make better choices. Their fear of spankings became fear of me and was destroying the honesty and trust in our relationship.
Read the rest: Why I Don’t Spank My Children Anymore | Joy in this Journey.
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In thinking about Michael’s post yesterday, I was imagining what a difference it makes to my own children that they don’t go to Sunday school. They really never have. And I wonder, is that helping them or hurting them?
Growing up, I went to Sunday school, just about every week. I have some good memories of that, and I was raised in a moderate, centrist, thoughtful church. Nevertheless, it’s the very theology that I was taught in Sunday school from which I’ve had to disabuse myself for years now. At HBC, Bo offhandedly mentions this in a post,
If you’re like me, you’d like to listen to radio when the kids are in the house that’s somewhere between the cotton candy of Radio Disney and the occasional F-Bomb on The Current (or your favorite alt music station). Minnesota Public Radio fills in that gap with an excellent station called Wonderground Radio. He had it on last night and heard everything from the Jayhawks, to bluegrass, to DeVotchka, to Coldplay, to “Conjunction Junction, What’s Your Function?”
Seriously, check it out.
And if you’re more of a folky, try MPR’s Radio Heartland.
Like thousands of other teams across the country, the Little League team on which my son plays — and which I coach — was engaged in a season-ending tournament this weekend. We won our first game yesterday on a soupy field, and the boys were flying high. In our second game, against the best team in our division, we played as well as we have all season. It was a back-and-forth game, as we exchanged the lead with the other team. But, alas, as the time limit came up and other teams waited anxiously to take the field, we were behind.
And so our season ended, not really as a baseball game should, decided by a clock. But the boys held their heads high, and there was nary a tear. I think that’s because they knew that they had played their hearts out and that they were poised to defeat a superior team.
I’ve been a youth pastor, directed camps and retreats, coached teams, and led a Cub Scout den, but never have I experienced such a wonderful, unified, joyous group of kids. Plus, I coached with two other dads with whom I got along famously.
It was an honor to be their coach, and I will miss them.
School starts for my kids today, and I’ve returned to a wonderful little book that I first discovered in 2001, when I was writing my second book. It’s called, Sleeping with Bread: Holding What Gives You Life, and it describes a way to easily integrate the Ignatian Examen into your everyday life — and your family’s life.
The odd title comes from an orphanage during WWII. The children therein had gone hungry so many times that they were in constant fear of waking to no food. But their caretakers found that when the kids were put to bed with a piece of bread, thus ensuring they’d have something to eat the next day, they slept soundly and peacefully.
While I haven’t taken to sleeping with a loaf, or sending my kids to bed with one, we are starting this school year with the practice of examining our lives in the spirit of Ignatius’ examination. The cornerstone of Ignatian spirituality is regular self-reflection that encourages us to detach from inordinate attachments to things other than God and attachment to God’s glory and, ultimately, to union with Jesus Christ.
Sleeping with Bread translates these concepts to normal life, and in language that children can understand. It replaces the dinnertime questions parents so often ask, “What was your high and low today?” with questions around the days “consolations and desolations,” questions like, “For what am I most grateful today?”
Like anything, it’s going to take a little practice for me and my kids to become adept at this, but I’m looking forward to it.
Have you and your family committed to any spiritual practices for this school year?
I have returned, relatively intact, from my first big vacation with the kids as a single dad. We covered 1446 miles in the 2004 Volvo XC 70 (never have I taken a road trip in such a comfortable car). Among the highlights were visiting long-time friends on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, staying at the Creekside Lodge in Custer State Park, touring Wind Cave, and spending many hours learning about Mount Rushmore. Among the lowlights were the illnesses that we shared in the moving petri dish called our car.
There were definitely some challenges in being a single parent with three kids, like what to do when one is ill in a hotel room and medicine is needed from a store two miles away. But the joys far outweighed the challenges. We bought arrowheads and cap guns, recorded 34 license plates, discovered a couple great diners, and shared many, many laughs.
And when, on the way home, tears ran down my cheeks as we listened to the final chapters of Bridge to Terabithia, we had an important conversation about grief, which children of divorce feel keenly.
I’m happy to be home, and happy to have celebrated Easter with my kids and many other family members.
And I’m thankful for love.
I’m hitting the road with the kids at the end of the week, not to Washington, D.C., as originally planned, but to the Badlands and Black Hills of South Dakota. (I decided we’ll go to D.C. when the kids are a bit older.)
So, I ask you, dear readers, for the best road trip games for kids. I’ve already printed out some road trip bingo cards, and the license plate game. Any other ideas?
And how about favorite audio books — or, better yet, podcasts (free!) for the trip?
Really, any tips for the road trip?
Me with the Kids
One of the things that I haven’t blogged about before, but has been a part of my life for a while now, is that I am a single parent. This development was not expected, as I’m sure it isn’t for any single parent, nor has it been particularly easy. And while I will not be blogging about the circumstances that led to this situation, I do want to start writing about the joys and struggles of being a single dad.
Entering into the holiday season is just such a time that brings both joys and struggles to me and the kids. In the midst of the stress of the usual weekly transitions, the time off of school (they have this entire week off) does bring the kids some relief. Their stress level seems to be down, and they’re excited about the times with families of origin on both sides.
But it’s also confusing, especially being that my kids are young. They haven’t really internalized the holiday schedule, and their sense of time is nothing like an adult’s. So there are constants questions about where they will be when, and with whom. And transitions on the holidays themselves are never easy.
I’m hoping that there are some other single parents out there who will chime in on these posts, give some suggestions, and share their stories.
Probably the biggest religion story of the past couple weeks has been the saga of Daniel Hauser, the 13-year-old boy from northern Minnesota who is dying of Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. Yes, he’s dying, unless he gets chemo. With chemo, there’s a 90% survival rate. Without chemo, less than 10%.
After one round of chemo this Spring, Hauser refused to go back. At some point he and his mother — and possibly other members of his family — “converted” to Nemenhah, an online Native American “religion” that advotes homeopathic recipes of roots and herbs to treat illness. Daniel claimed to be a Nemenhah shaman, then it turned out that Nemenhahites (?) age 13 or older are automatically shamans. The Hausers are in no sense Indian.
When Daniel refused chemo, his doctor took him to court. Daniel defended himself with a first-person statement that I’m highly doubtful that he wrote himself. When the judge ordered Daniel to resume chemo, he and his mother fled to California, seduced by a sleazy lawyer to promptly ditched them. They were then flown back by a Hollywood movie producer, and yesterday, Daniel showed up for chemo at a hospital in Minneapolis.
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