SIMPLE QUESTIONS

Galen Guengerich

May 13, 2001

Holidays are an invitation to celebrate and to reflect. The celebration is usually the obvious part: gifts at Christmas, fireworks on the fourth of July, cranberry sauce and pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving. The reflection comes when we ponder the ideal captured by the holiday and think about how we might express it more fully in the present. The gratitude of the Pilgrims, the self-sacrifice of those who died for our freedom, the saga of repentance and renewal on Yom Kippur, the story of rebirth on Easter. At their best, holidays inspire us to be more thoughtful, more courageous, and more compassionate in our own lives.

Mother's Day follows this pattern, but often with a perverse twist. The ideal expressed by Mother's Day celebrations is usually the greeting card variety: the perfectly loving mother perfectly idolized by her children, who at least for one day act as if the ideal is true. Which it usually is not. Besides, even when it is, Mother's Day may still be the worst thing that ever happened to mothers, because it suggests that one day of adoration justifies 364 days of neglect. And even Mother's Day itself can be a mixed bag. "What do you get on Mother's Day if you have kids?" asks the writer Liz Scott. "You know what you get," she replies. "A card with flowers that are made out of pink toilet paper--a lot of pink toilet paper. You get breakfast in bed. Then you get up and fix everyone else their breakfast. And then you go to the bathroom and you are out of toilet paper."

It's true that being a mother is not easy. As someone once quipped, if being a mother were easy, then fathers would do it. The fact of the matter is that some mothers and some fathers are good at nurturing children, and some are not. But that doesn't change the expectations. Our culture has equated the physical ability to give birth to a child with the emotional capacity to nurture a child. As a result, we expect women to be good at nurturing children, and we expect men not to be.

Last weekend, I went to a business leadership conference in Boston attended by twenty-six hundred top business executives from across the country. All of the other attendees were women. Although it may strike you as odd--or perhaps appropriate--that the male presence among twenty-six hundred women executives was provided by a Unitarian Universalist minister, the real reason I for my attendance was that I am married to one of the conference speakers.

My experience at the conference was enlightening. In the presentations by Holly and the other speakers--people like Madeline Kunin, Doris Kearns Goodwin, and Deborah Tannen--the issue of raising children was center stage. It came up again and again, not merely as an occasional digression or in a footnote, but as a primary theme. Finding the time both to nurture children and compete equally as a professional was a key concern, as was how to raise girls who aren't held in check by low self-esteem and boys who don't assume entitlement.

The irony is that many of the women at the conference had not given birth to a child. But the topic was nonetheless central to the way they thought about the life of business. These are obviously not issues only for women; they deeply affect all of us. Even so, I find it hard to imagine these topics receiving much attention at a conference of twenty-six hundred male executives. Or even twenty-six hundred male ministers, for that matter.

The expectation that women are the ones who nurture children makes mothering difficult, as does the context in which children are nurtured today. It's a lot more complicated than it once was. Sixty-four percent of families today--virtually two-thirds--include some form of divorced and/or stepfamily relationship. My family is one of them. Paid caregivers, whether in the home or elsewhere, are an increasingly significant presence in the daily life of many children. And the so-called second family--made up of a child's peers and pop culture--wields more influence than ever before. In other words, while biology still has almost everything to do with how children get born, biological relationships have less and less to do with who nurtures our children as they grow up. Given this situation, what we need is a different way of understanding the nurturing role, one based less on maternal biology and more on something else. As we move toward equality of opportunity in the professional arena, and equality of responsibility in the parental arena, we need a new way of envisioning what I call the architecture of love.

When I consider where we are today and the challenges we face, I am reminded of a poem by Jeredith Merrin, which both lampoons our sometimes bizarre family situations, but also states clearly what we need to focus on within them. It is titled "Family Reunion."

The divorced mother and her divorcing
daughter. The about-to-be ex-son-in-law
and the ex-husband's adopted son.
The divorcing daughter's child, who is

the step-nephew of the ex-husband's
adopted son. Everyone cordial:
the ex-husband's second wife
friendly to the first wife, warm

to the divorcing daughter's child's
great-grandmother, who was herself
long ago divorced. Everyone
grown used to the idea of divorce.

Almost everyone has separated
from the landscape of a childhood.
Collections of people in cities
are divorced from clean air and stars.

Toddlers in day care are parted
from working parents, schoolchildren
from the assumption of unbloodied
daylong safety. Old people die apart

from all they've gathered over time,
and in strange beds. Adults
grow estranged from a God
evidently divorced from History;

most are cut off from their own
histories, each of which waits
like a child left at day care.
What if you turned back for a moment

and put your arms around yours?
Yes, you might be late for work;
no, your history doesn't smell sweet
like a toddler's head. But look

at those small round wrists,
that short-legged, comical walk.
Caress your history--who else will?
Promise to come back later.

Pay attention when it asks you
Simple questions: Where are we going?
Is it scary? What happened? Can
I have more now? Who is that?

No matter how we were raised, all of us as adults find ourselves separated from the experience of innocence and security, isolated from the feeling of wholeness. Wherever security and wholeness come from, the world is less complicated there, and the issues are simpler: Where are we going? Is it scary? What happened? Can I have more now? Who is that? The question is how we create a secure world like that for our children to grow up in. What does the architecture of love look like? I believe it looks like a doughnut every Sunday morning, or a story after dinner each evening, or a song to snuggle down with at bedtime. The architecture of love is made up of everyday rituals that give children a sense that their world is secure and reliable. What the icon of motherhood symbolizes is someone's commitment--be it mom or dad, stepmom or stepdad, caregiver, guardian, grandparent or friend--to preside over those daily rituals.

Emile Durkheim, one of the founders of the field of sociology, established the principle that ritual is what gives people a sense of belonging, a sense of togetherness, a sense of rootedness. He observed that the higher the level of ritual in a particular family or group, the higher their level of solidarity. That's particularly true in the religious domain. The Jewish and Catholic traditions have remained strong and vital over the centuries because their rituals remind each new generation of believers who they are, where they come from, and what they believe. The Muslim faith is even more ritualized. Five times each day the faithful get down on their knees and renew their commitment. The Rev. Tony Campolo puts it this way: "A ritual takes what happened a long time ago and drags it into the present so you can experience it here and now. Rituals keep us from forgetting what must not be forgotten and keep us rooted in a past from which we must not be disconnected."

This principle also holds true in family life. Though we often make fun of them, rituals remind us of who we are and what is important. Many families have elaborate holiday rituals. At Christmas, for example, the youngest person gets to hand out the gifts, but only after someone else has read A Christmas Carol in its entirety and everyone has called Grandma and Grandpa to say Merry Christmas.

Mealtimes are often heavy with ritual as well. Two weeks ago, when our Coming of Age class gave their credo statements, Margaret Niemiec told us that the tradition in her family is to say a particular prayer before dinner. As soon as Margaret was old enough to memorize the prayer, she and her older sister used to argue over who got to say it each night. At some point, her sister decided she didn't believe what the prayer said, so Margaret got to say it every night. But then Margaret decided that the words of the prayer didn't suit her either. But she didn't stop saying the prayer; she re-wrote it, and her rewritten prayer was the focus of her credo statement. Margaret told us that one of the things she likes about her prayer is how it helps those who hear it remember that if they have food on their table, they are privileged; and it reminds them to be grateful.

Put simply, prayer before dinner in the Niemiec home--in both its standard and revised versions--is a ritual that keeps them from forgetting what must not be forgotten. The specific words don't matter all that much. What matters is the reminder to pause and be grateful. Philip Reef, a professor at Penn who is a leading social theorist and doesn't believe in god, once said "The family who prays together stays together, whether there is a god or not."

In other words, the truth of the ritual's content matters less than the persistence of its form. Rituals come in all shapes and sizes: a candle at the dinner table, a glass of water five minutes after lights out, a final wave goodbye from the school door. Some rituals give comfort. A couple of years ago, Zoe decided that Holly and I should say a blessing to her each night as she went to bed, an idea she got from a book for children of divorced parents called It's Not Your Fault, Koko Bear. The blessing goes like this: "You are the Zoe for whom we care. You are so blessed: none can compare." What's the point of these few simple words? When Holly and I tuck Zoe into bed at night, we don't know all of the things she has experienced that day. Maybe her teacher was brusque with her, or she got pushed down on the playground. Maybe her world fell apart in another way, but at the end of the day somehow those few words help put god back in her heaven and make everything right. That's what ritual does: it restores a sense that everything is secure. When we are lost, the rituals remind us who and where we are. They set the architecture of love into place.

Rituals can also remind us of what is important; they hold up before us the ideals and commitment we want never to forget. By any measure, Eleanor Roosevelt was one of the greatest women in American history. Her accomplishments on the national and international stage are legendary, including her pivotal role in drafting the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. What was the secret of her success? Every night before she went to bed, Eleanor Roosevelt paused to recommit herself to those ideals she most cherished and those goals she longed for most fervently. She called it a nightly prayer; but whoever else was listening, Eleanor Roosevelt was. And each morning she would get out of bed and work to uphold her ideals and reach her goals.

Spirit of Life,
who has set a restlessness in our hearts
and made us all seekers
after that which we can never fully find:
forbid us to be satisfied with what we make of life.
Draw us from base content
and set our eyes on far-off goals.
Keep us at tasks too hard for us
that we may be driven to Thee for strength.
Deliver us from fretfulness and self-pitying;
make us sure of the good we cannot see
and of the hidden good in the world.
Open our eyes to simple beauty all around us
and our hearts to the loveliness others hide from us
because we do not try to understand them.
Save us from ourselves
and show us a vision of a world made new.

What would happen if we, too, paused each day to remind ourselves of what we long for? What would happen if our children grew up in a world filled with constant reminders of the architecture of love? On this Mother's Day, think back to when you were a child: what rituals do you remember? What did you and your family always do? Perhaps more importantly, what rituals are you using today to build a world that is both comforting and restless? What rituals could you start: in the morning? In the evening? Together? Alone? Whether we are nurturing our own lives or those of our children, these reminders are, in Eleanor Roosevelt's words, the best way to make us sure of the good we cannot always see.

"Family Reunion" is from Bat Ode by Jeredith Merrin (University of Chicago Press, 2000). Eleanor Roosevelt's nightly prayer is adapted from Mary Ann Glendon, A World Made New: Eleanor Roosevelt and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (Random House, 2001).

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