May 2008

ARTICLE TOOLS

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THE NIGHT you were born, I ceased being my father's boy and became my son's father. That night I began a new life.
Henry Gregor Felson, Letters to a Teenage Son

IT IS MUCH EASIER to become a father than to be one.
Kent Nerburn, Letters to My Son: Reflections on Becoming a Man

A FULL NIGHT'S SLEEP, time to oneself, the freedom to come and go as one pleases—all this must be given up. … Huge chunks of life are laid down at the behest of infants. And then, later, parents must let go.
Elizabeth Dreyer, in Weavings journal

WE HAVE SAID THAT children must honor their parents as the natural and therefore the closest representatives of God. I should consider it unreasonable and dangerous to invert this proposition and to say that parents should feel and act toward their children as God's representatives.
Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics Vol. III, Part 4

IT DAWNED ON ME only slowly when I first had children that I held major responsibility for forming them in faith. Nor did I anticipate just how much they would form my own faith.
Bonnie Miller-McLemore, In the Midst of Chaos: Caring for Children as Spiritual Practice

CHILDREN DO NOT NEED perfect parents, simply good enough parents. To support our children in their spiritual formation, we simply need to be on the journey with them, learning and growing, willing to say "I'm sorry" and to seek God's transforming grace, love, and strength.
Scottie May, Beth Posterski, Catherine Stonehouse, and Linda Cannell, Children Matter

IF IT TAKES nine months to bring a life into this world, what makes us think we can let go of someone in less?
Hope Edelman, Motherless Daughters: The Legacy of Loss

THE CHILD IS FREE from the first to disregard the parent, why is not the parent free from the first to disregard the child?
G. K. Chesterton, The Thing: Why I Am a Catholic

I CONFESS to thee that I am not worthy to rock the little babe or wash its diapers, or to be entrusted with the care of the child and its mother. … O how gladly will I do so, though the duties should be even more insignificant and despised. Neither frost nor heat, neither drudgery nor labor, will distress or dissuade me, for I am certain that it is thus pleasing in his sight.
Martin Luther, Luther's Works

ALMIGHTY GOD, heavenly Father, you have blessed us with the joy and care of children: Give us calm strength and patient wisdom as we bring them up, that we may teach them to love whatever is just and true and good, following the example of our Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
The Book of Common Prayer

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