The naming of kids

The naming of kids is a difficult matter
It isn't just one of your holiday games
You'll know that their dad's a liturgical pastor
When I tell you our kids must have three different names
First of all, there's the name that the family use daily
Such as Isaac, Bartholomew, Amos, or James
Such as Rachel, Naomi, or Martha (not Bailey)
All of them catholic, Biblical names
Conceptual names can sometimes sound sweeter,
Since options are somewhat restricted for dames
Such as Kathryn, Charissa, Irene (though not Peter)
But all of them catholic, Biblical names
But I tell you, a kid needs a name to inherit
To anchor him well in his family of birth
So second, we borrow from Granddaddy Garrett
Or re-circulate Aunt Mae's name here on earth
For names of this kind we explore the ancestries
Searching the long generations within
How about Comfort? For a dude? No way, weirdo!
Names that belonged to our foregoing kin
But above and beyond there's still one name left over
And that is the name only church buffs can guess
The name that historical research discovers
The one our poor babies will never confess
When you notice our kids in profound meditation,
The reason, I tell you, may well be the same
Their minds are engaged in perplexed contemplation
Of the thought, of the thought, of the thought of their names

Their long, unpronounceable,
Saintly, Patristic,
Weird, ecumenical, fun-to-pick Names

Children of the Heavenly Father

Jottings from a few weeks ago. The local weather has calmed down a bit since then, thankfully.

The last few weeks, I’ve lost a lot of sleep. I know what you’re thinking: Duh, you’ve got an infant.

But it’s more than that. The world is falling apart at every turn. There’s an earthquake or a cyclone or a tornado every other minute. We recently spent part of an evening in the basement while the tornado sirens sounded. Flooding has turned 83 of this state’s 99 counties into disaster areas. More personally, sad and strange and scary things have been happening lately in the lives of people we know and love. And in the midst of all this uncertainty and tragedy, I happened across an article reminding me that SIDS risk is highest for baby boys, specifically baby boys around two to three months old.

Mourning with loved ones, listening for tornados, and watching a baby boy’s every nocturnal breath: Not conducive to peaceful nights.

In the wee hours of one such night, I finally realized that it was time to let God be God. As I heard in a recent sermon, there’s a difference between believing that God is sovereign and living like it. (Why do I forget this so often? I trip on that first commandment at every turn.) Since then, the world hasn’t gotten any better, but I haven’t been losing quite as much sleep (within BabyBoy’s parameters).

Here’s the deal: “I have held many things in my hands and I have lost them all; but whatever I have placed in God’s hands, that I still possess” (Luther). Do I believe the promises that were spoken at the font? In faith, we surrendered each of our children to that dangerous deluge of Holy water, to die that they might live. There we placed our children into God’s hands: better to fall into the hands of God than into the hands of men, even the hands of a mother.

Maternal worries: my faithless attempts to snatch my children back from the only One who can guard their lives forever, no matter what happens in this present vale of tears. Mother-love can be as foolish as it is fierce. No matter how tightly I try to clutch my children, grasping with the desperation known only to mothers, they may yet slip through my fingers at any moment and be lost. But in God’s hands, they are safe forever.

Though He slay me, yet will I hope in Him.

These verses from one of my grandma’s favorite hymns have been on my lips this past week:

Neither life nor death shall ever
From the Lord his children sever
He to them his mercy showeth,
And their sorrows all he knoweth.

Though he giveth or he taketh
God his children never forsaketh
His the loving purpose solely
To preserve them, pure and holy.

In life and in death, preserve us always, dear Savior.

Great moments in nursing

Dad's birthday is in the neighborhood, so we decided to take a family excursion to Cabela's where he could use his gift card and the rest of us could admire the murdered wildlife. This trip was, predictably, perfectly timed for Small Guy to be hungry right in the middle of it.

Cabela's, surprisingly enough, does not have a mothers' room, and it was a pretty hot day for sitting in the car. But I found a nice little corner with some benches. I was prepared with my double layer nursing top and a cover blanket just to make sure. The corner was by an exit so there was some traffic, but no more than I'd have run into anywhere else in the store. I only noticed one person do a double take and I was congratulating myself on being so brave when some fool tried to leave with something in a bag that set off the alarm. I started looking around nonchalantly so as to be even less noticeable, and saw above the exit door--can you guess? a TV monitor broadcasting me and Small Guy going about our business.

I can only hope no one in the back was monitoring the security cameras too closely. And they don't keep the tapes, right? Why would they keep the tapes?

I still want one

but for now I guess we'll have to content ourselves with an annual visit to the "Family Farm" section of the zoo.

Babies as punishment

Disclaimer: this isn't intended as a political post (though if you can't guess how a CSPPer might feel about Obama...). If you want to talk about the political implications, go here where I came across this quote and talk to Gene Veith & co. about it.

So if I'm not trying to get all political, why quote Obama? Because these words, uttered by Obama at a town hall meeting in March, are so representative of the pervasive view of babies as punishment rather than babies as blessing, a mindset that has even stealthily invaded the church (but more on that in a future post).

So here's what he said:

"When it comes specifically to HIV/AIDS, the most important prevention is education, which should include — which should include abstinence education and teaching children, you know, that sex is not something casual. But it should also include — it should also include other, you know, information about contraception because, look, I’ve got two daughters, 9 years old and 6 years old. I am going to teach them first of all about values and morals.

“But if they make a mistake,” Obama continued, “I don’t want them punished with a baby.”

Wow. This reminded me of the movie Juno in which Juno does make such a "mistake" (sin? such an outdated concept!) and her stepmother expresses her relief to Juno's father about the teen's decision to place the baby for adoption rather than to abort: "Someone's going to get a sweet blessing from Jesus out of this garbage dump of a situation." Amidst the rubble of our broken world, the circumstances surrounding a baby's conception and birth may be heartbreakingly sin-saturated. But God's Truth is clear: that baby, though a sinner himself, is a blessing.

We couldn't agree more

Artistic portrayals of Maria Lactans get a shout out from the Vatican (Incidentally, a suitable image of Maria Lactans was the most difficult one to locate when we were putting our banner together.) :

VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- The loving, tender images of Mary breast-feeding the baby Jesus need an artistic and spiritual rehabilitation, said the Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano.

A vast iconography of traditional Christian art has been "censored by the modern age" because images depicting Our Lady's naked breast for her child were deemed too "unseemly," the paper said June 19.

Artists began depicting a fully clothed nursing Mary in sacred art in an attempt to make her seem less "carnal," but the depictions unfortunately also diminished her human, loving and tender side "that touches the hearts and faith of the devout," the newspaper said . . . .

Salesian Father Enrico dal Covolo, a professor of classic and Christian literature at the Pontifical Salesian University, said in his commentary that a nursing Mary represents an interesting paradox: "He who gives nourishment to all things, Mary included, now lets himself be nourished by her.

"The Virgin Mary who nurses her son Jesus is one of the most eloquent signs that the word of God truly and undoubtedly became flesh," he wrote. And it was only by becoming fully human that the Son of God could save humanity from sin and death, the priest wrote.

Scaraffia said that when the early Christian theologians wrote about and artists represented Our Lady breast-feeding they were showing "concrete proof" of God's incarnation.

"Jesus was a baby like all others. ... His divinity does not exclude his humanity," she wrote . . . .

She said the sacred image of Mary nursing her child is "an image so concrete and loving" that it recalls her offering her body for nourishment and giving herself completely to her son as he offers his body and blood in the Eucharist and gave himself completely for others with his death and resurrection.

HT: Motherwear Breastfeeding Blog

Advice from a hard-core PP-er

Some of Susanna Wesley's child-raising rules:

*Subdue self-will in a child.

*Teach him to pray as soon as he can speak.

*Give him nothing he cries for, and only what is good for him when he asks politely.

*Punish no fault confessed, but let no sinful act to go unnoticed.

*Reward good behavior.

*Strictly observe all promises you have made to your child.

There's other stuff like if you must cry, cry softly to avoid punishment; eat everything put in front of you; and learn the entire alphabet on your first day of lessons at age 5 (!?) but those 3 minutes of googling didn't yield the complete list in a convenient package, so since I am an American in this age of instant gratification, you'll just have to look up the rest for yourself. :P

There goes the "that's just the way I am" excuse

"Much of what I thought was my personality was just sin."

--Andree Seu

(In one of her WORLD magazine columns from forever ago; I've forgotten all but this one line, which continues to haunt me.)

Where have all the Lutherans gone? Long time passing

Dad estimates that average weekly attendance at his larger church is around 90. Summer services are more sparsely attended. This past Sunday, though, attendance was 144. Whose Ablaze!itude do we have to thank for this?

That would be one Mr ----- who turns 90 this week. As it happens, this venerable patriarch is a father of nine. Only six of his children and their families were able to join him for the Divine Service at our church three days ago to kick off his birthday celebration. Yet even this 66% turnout rate of one person's family increased our congregation's size by something like 63%.

Census takers, consider yourselves notified. And why don't you see if you can't get Mr and Mrs ----- onto your strategic planning committee.

Childolatry vs. Negligence

Lately the two-year-old has been so convinced that he needs more of my attention that I’m almost starting to believe him (where his arguments lack in rationality, they more than compensate in volume and violence). Three months into his big brother gig, he vehemently adores BabyBoy, but is still prone to destructive sprees when the new guy nurses, despite my best efforts to do all those things “the books” recommend, like giving him a special toy or offering to read to him and cuddle with him while the baby eats (ha!).

Here’s the problem: there’s only so much pie, no matter how you slice it. BabyBoy needs big helping right now. And my job description, as near as I can figure it, includes not only entertaining/educating the babes, but also dealing with that stack of bills, that empty kitchen table and its sidekick, the full sink, that trail of laundry winding its way through the house…

Stating the obvious: It’s not good for children to grow up thinking that the sun rises and sets on their every whim. Neither is it good for children to grow up thinking that a clean house (or a sibling, or the computer, or whatever) is more important than they are.

And so the game goes. Every day, each child and each chore vies for a larger share of the pie, and I allocate it to the best of my judgment. But I hate those days where I feel like everyone goes to bed still hungry for attention they haven’t gotten, to say nothing of the house’s endless accusations of neglect.

On the darker days, I can console myself with the thought that at least I’m not paying to outsource the neglect of my children, since I’m so perfectly capable of accomplishing that myself :O