We hadn’t had a Catechism lesson in awhile.
Homeschooling is rather disorganized in the Pezzulo household. We have a series of unit studies on ancient history and biology going on bit by bit, and for Catechism we’re reading the Gospels straight through and memorizing certain passages. But when I’m under the weather and when there are a lot of activities going on, unit studies and Catechism tend to go by the wayside and we only do reading, writing and arithmetic.
Rosie attends a non-denominational “Bible Club” where they memorize verses and sing praise and worship hymns once a week before her art lesson and martial arts classes. I guiltily hoped that was filling in the catechism gap while I got organized again.
Meanwhile, we picked away at the Three R’s. She’s still stuck firmly in first grade penmanship but a year ahead in math and right in the second grade where she’s supposed to be for reading. We’re starting the multiplication tables, which she likes.The phonics book mostly involves a series of odd line drawings under which Rosie is supposed to write a word. In the lesson on words that end in long vowels, there was a drawing of a little girl pointing coyly to herself. The word written underneath was supposed to be “me” but Rosie wrote “spy.” That answer was so imaginative, I didn’t have the heart to mark it wrong.
She also has a series of extremely simple online “books” she is reading her way through to build fluency. We call them Boring Books as if it’s their proper name, because they are excruciatingly dull. The current section of Boring Books is entitled “Folk Tales,” and contains several nice little fables with any wild or interesting mythical content carefully dumbed down and weeded out.
The first folk tale was an uninspired re-telling of “The Little Red Hen.” Rosie had never heard “The Little Red Hen” before. As she neared the ending of the story, she realized what the hen was about to do, and was indignant.
“But they were BUSY!” she protested.
“Yes,” I said, “but you still need to finish the text.”
“The turkey was busy sleeping, the duck was busy fishing–”
“Yes, it was not considerate of her, but you need to finish the text.”
Rosie finished the text. She fumed some more about the unreasonableness of a hen finding a sack of grain and demanding that everyone drop their own duties and help her make muffins, and then depriving of them of a snack when they wouldn’t play along. I hadn’t actually thought of the story that way before, myself.
“It’s what they call a Protestant work ethic,” I said. “And anyway, maybe the duck was fishing so that they’d have fish to eat with the corn muffins.”
“And maybe he was fishing for money,” said Rosie.
“Yes,” I said. “To sell the fish and buy his own muffins or to buy something for the community. Everyone’s supposed to help one another and pitch in, but not everybody contributes the same things. You’re right. And besides, everyone needs to eat even if they’re lazy. But you’re still not allowed to be lazy.”
The next story was one I had not heard before, about Farmer Rabbit attempting to make a carrot soup. He gave one of his carrots to hungry Mr. Mouse, one to hungry Ms. Pig, and so on until he had no carrots left. Then he went home and looked hungrily at his soup pot. At the next moment, all the farm animals arrived at his door with tureens of carrot soup they’d made from his gifts of produce.
“That’s closer to how the community is supposed to work,” I told Rose.
Last night’s story was about a peacock who plants an apple seed. The rabbit waters the seed, the monkey fertilizes it, and the elephant keeps it safe. After the tree grows, suspiciously quickly in one panel as trees in children’s books do, the animals pile onto each other’s backs to knock the apples out. And then they feast, sharing the apples in common.
“So,” I said in my most boring motherly voice, “In the first story, the Little Red Hen refuses to share muffins with the community because they wouldn’t help her when they were busy. And in the next story, Mr. Rabbit shares every one of his carrots with the community and realizes he didn’t think too hard about that. And now he has no food, but the community all bring him soup so it’s okay. But in this story, the animals–”
Rosie interrupted in a solemn tone. “Man cannot live by soup alone.”
I did a double take. “What?”
She repeated herself.
“Where did you hear that verse? In your Bible club?”
“No, you said it. When we went to the Friendship Room cupboard and there was nothing in it but bread, you said ‘Man cannot live by bread alone.'”
I remembered. Rosie, Michael and I have committed to picking up a can or a box of food or toiletries for the Friendship Room’s Little Free Grocery every time we go to the store, if we can fit it in the budget. Rosie looks out for good items to add to the stash; we store them in a cloth shopping bag we keep by the door. When the bag is good and full, once a month or so, we bring it downtown and stock the grocery for them. The last time we did this, I opened the cupboard to find that a generous person had stuffed every shelf with loaves of sliced whole wheat bread from Kroger.
“Man does not live by bread alone! Let’s give them the other food groups!” I’d joked, and then stepped aside to avoid the fumes. My allergy is so strong that I sometimes cough and have watery eyes if I inhale the strong smell of wheat like that. Rosie had to fill the whole cupboard herself while I waited– stuffing granola bars and pouches of pop tarts on top of the loaves, moving them aside to place a can of soup or vegetables here and there, stacking the tuna cans in one corner. Then we went about our day, and I forgot that I’d said it.
“Ah,” I said. “Yes. Man cannot live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God. That means that we can’t just live on material things, food and other things you buy and sell. We also need to live on the Gospel and the things Jesus taught us, like–”
But Rosie had already gotten up and turned on her Mary Poppins video, shutting out any further lessons for the night. She enjoys Mary Poppins. She is especially intrigued by the sequence where the children go to the bank. The other night she asked me, “Why would anyone put tuppence in a bank account instead of giving it to a homeless person?”
It’s not that you shouldn’t catechize your children. You must. It’s just that children are constantly watching. And the real, memorable lessons aren’t in the things you say when you’re trying to get a point across. They’re in what you do and don’t do, and what you blurt out when you’re living your life, and not paying attention.
When you’re not paying attention, life happens. And life is always going to be your child’s primary catechist, because the Gospel isn’t a set of words written in a book. The Gospel is life.
I guess we’d all better try to live a live that’s worthy of the Gospel we’re preaching to our children.
(image via Pixabay)
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