When you’ve been together with someone for thirty-seven years, being creative for that person’s birthday is a challenge–particularly when that person says “nothing” when you ask her what she wants for her birthday. But I was actually able to completely surprise Jeanne on Monday, thanks to a random comment she made as we were watching television a couple of months ago. As we watched some character jump in a helicopter to rush off to some important event, Jeanne said “riding in a helicopter has always been on my bucket list.” I did not know this.
The next day I Googled “Rhode Island Helicopter Rides”; soon I reserved a 25-minute lighthouse tour for two from Newport Lighthouse Tours for Jeanne’s birthday. It was a huge success, not least because Jeanne was totally surprised. As we drove into the small local airport where the helicopter tours begin and end, the first sign she saw was for skydiving. It’s a good thing the next sign was for Newport Lighthouse Tours–skydiving is on neither of our bucket lists.
We all are familiar with the idea of helicopter parenting, parents who hover over their offspring as they seek to control or manipulate situations that their daughter or son either is or should be fully capable of handling themselves. Many sources identify Baby Boomers as the first generation of helicopter parents. The phrase gained currency in the early 2000s as the oldest millennials began reaching college age. Baby-boomer parents earned notoriety for practices such as calling their children each morning to wake them up for class and complaining to their professors about grades the children had received. Summer camp officials reported similar behavior from these parents. I want to push back a bit against this stereotype, since I have two sons born right at the transition point from Gen X to millennial who went to college. I don’t recall helicoptering over them at all (although they might claim otherwise).
I encountered lots of these parents when I directed a large interdisciplinary program required of all students on my campus a decade or so ago for four years. Such parents were never pleased when I told them that by law I could not disclose any information about their daughter or son—even though the parents had often spent many thousands of dollars for their child to be at my college—without their daughter’s or son’s written permission (which never seemed to be forthcoming).
But as we helicoptered above the beautiful Newport area last Monday, it occurred to me that calling parents who regularly insert themselves into their children’s lives “helicopter parents” accurately captures neither the invasive parental activities nor the experience of being in a helicopter accurately. When in a helicopter, one is serenely riding over and observing the land below. From a helicopter one not only doesn’t but one cannot engage with what is going down there. To interfere with their child’s life, the helicopter parent must land the helicopter and get engaged. One cannot do anything when one is hovering.
Our helicopter excursion brought to mind Bette Midler’s megahit “From a Distance” from 1990. The view from a helicopter is exactly as the opening lines describe:
From a distance, the world looks blue and greenAnd the snow-capped mountains whiteFrom a distance, the ocean meets the streamAnd the eagle takes to flight
Everything from a helicopter looks peaceful and serene, even though you know that on the ground you are hovering over there are traffic jams, stressed people, and all sorts of anxiety-causing events. If you want to engage with these events, the helicopter first has to land.
The chorus of “From a Distance” tells us that
God is watching usGod is watching usGod is watching usFrom a distance
Maybe so. That’s what theologians would call the “transcendence” or “otherness” of God, involved in the sense that God is interested in what is happening below but uninvolved in the sense that God will not (cannot?) manipulate or interfere. But of course we often want God to be “immanent,” to actually jump in and get involved as helicopter parents do.
As much as we claim to love freedom and autonomy, along with the responsibility of choice that goes with them, there is a place in which every person of faith wants the divine to show up, make all of the decisions for us, guarantee that everything will work out for the best, and put all of our enemies to shame for good measure. To use a familiar passage from Matthew’s gospel, we might appreciate that God knows when even a lowly sparrow falls, but it’s important to note that God doesn’t do anything about it–God just notices it.
The divine strategy for getting involved in the world rather than just watching “from a distance” is a surprising one. God chooses to get into the world through flawed and often clueless human beings. God is so committed to this strategy that God became human. God isn’t going to show up to set everything straight that we have messed up. It’s as if God is a parent who has sent the kids off to college with the expectation that we will make mistakes, fall flat on our faces, learn from the errors, and become more and more the presence of God in the world. As Barbara Brown Taylor says, “God decided a long time ago to trust the humans.” That’s a lot of trust on God’s part and responsibility on ours.
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