GIVING YOUR CHILDREN YOUR BLESSING
Nearly every religion talks about
blessing other people. In some religions you bless animals and objects as well.
Most people use the word “bless” to mean send good
wishes. I found in research for the
sermon on “Choosing to Bless the World” that The I Ching says to bless means to
help. The Hebrew for blessing “bareich” means to draw God down into a thing, a
person or a situation, to expand it with the Holy, to saturate it with the
Divine. I called this sermon “Giving Your Children Your Blessing,” but it could
be about blessing friends and family as well.
In the Hebrew Scriptures, in the 27th
chapter of Genesis, you can read about Abraham and Sarah’s son Isaac, when he
was old and feeble, giving his blessing to one of his sons. He and his wife Rebecca had twins, Jacob and
Esau. Jacob was quiet and dark, and stayed around the tents. He knew how to
cook, and he was his mother’s favorite. Esau was a hunter, the first-born of
the twins. He loved the fields and
woods. He was hairy all over. You may know the story of how Isaac called Esau
to his bedside and asked him to go bring home some wild game and prepare a
savory stew for him, and after he ate he would give him his blessing. Rebecca
overheard this. She told Jacob to go get two little goats and they prepared a stew. She told him to go in,
pretend to be Esau, and get the blessing from his father. “How will he think
it’s Esau?” Jacob asked. “He is hairy and I am smooth, plus if he finds out, he
will curse me instead of blessing me.”
“Put
this hide around your arm and he will think you are your bother. If a curse
comes from this, let it fall on me.”
Jacob fooled his old blind father, and he got his father’s blessing,
which was a declaration for his life, that his relatives would be his servants,
that he would be prosperous and powerful.
Almost the moment they were through, Esau came in with a steaming stew
for his father to eat, and Isaac realized he had given his blessing to the
wrong son. In this case, a blessing was
something like a wish, more like an arrangement of power, a super- will.
Whole books are written about a time that a person finally felt
their parent’s blessing. In our culture there is a tremendous father-hunger in
men and women who never felt good enough for their father. There is
mother-hunger in people who never felt good enough for their mother. There is a soul-satisfaction in remembering
times when your parents were proud of you, especially when they really saw you
for who you are, and they were well pleased with that.
Here are a couple of things I’ve noticed in my twenty-something
years as a therapist.
1.
People show
love in their own way, and it’s sometimes not read by others as love. We miss
it altogether sometimes because we are looking for something else, something
that says love to us. We are speaking different languages of love.
2.
Sometimes a
parents self despising spills out over their family. No one could be any good
because they aren’t any good. If you love them, that just shows how little
sense you have. They can’t imagine they have something their children need, any
blessing to give at all.
3.
Certain
generations didn’t believe in saying they were proud of you because it would
“give you the big head” as we say down here. Other generations of parents
oooohed and aahhhhhhed over every little thing, until if you didn’t get a big
hooray, you felt criticized.
4.
Children always
seem to believe that their parents want them to be perfect. In a way, we do see
our children as shining stars of possibility when they are young, as if they
will never have a mediocre job or get fat, or have marital problems or
financial woes or make stupid choices with their lives. Parents have to ask
themselves: ”Will I be happy if my children turn out pretty much like me?” If
you are okay with that, then you’ll be okay. So children sense this view of
them as shining possibility, and they have this dreadful sense that they will
need to live up to that.
Raising
children is an impossible job. No one does it perfectly well. That said, what
are some ways for you to go about giving your children your blessing?
You already know the answers. Listen to
them. Spend time on them rather than only money. Know that they will watch you
like TV with the sound turned down: they will see what you do and who you are
rather than listening to what you say. So spend time and energy becoming the
person you want them to see. Ask yourself as you make decisions: is this a
decision I would want my child to make when she or he is in this position? Is
this a stance toward the world I want my child to inherit? Your job is to teach them to be people who
are pleasant to be with. Give them well-thought-out limits and stay firm with
them. Lack of limits feels like abandonment.
Make little rituals with them, light a candle at
dinner, go for night walks, have special food on certain days, set off
fireworks, say bedtime prayers, make a secret family handshake, make Tuesdays
secret good luck days, or good deed days -- they will have ideas if you ask.
All the authors I read recommend reserving some time each day to hear
about joys, triumphs and frustrations.
Jean Nieuwejaar, in her book “The Gift of Faith,” proposes using
this time to reflect on the same 3 things every day:
1.
something from the day which you each are thankful for
2.
something from the day that you each are sorry for
3.
something you each intend for tomorrow.
Notice what they are good at. Ask them
questions. Be interested in them and proud of who they are, even if it’s not
what you wanted. Ask yourself “What
would I want my parents to say to me? Say that to your kids.
What if you don’t feel that you ever got your
parents blessing? Some brave souls will actually go see their parents as adults
and ask about it. “Why don’t you approve of me?” or “What could I be doing now
that would please you -- describe the person I would be if you were going to feel
you had done a good job, that I had done well.” Most of the time those conversations don’t satisfy. Parents will
feel blindsided or ambushed, or confused, or they will lie out of politeness
and love -- “I think you are wonderful.”
Something else to try is this. There is a Japanese spiritual path called Naikan
that is also a kind of psychology. In contrast to the Western therapies,
which follow the threads of pain in your life to bring you wholeness, this
method asks you to gather data on the support and nurture you received, down to
how many diaper changes you would guess you were given, how many rides to
soccer games, how many loads of laundry, Christmas presents, meals you were
given so you could stay alive and thrive. Even when there are traumatic events,
this spiritual path asks you to see those as part of a whole picture, rather
than as defining moments. Your life experience is built out of what you pay
attention to. If you are on your way to work and your car won’t start, your
coffee spills, the copier is on the blink, you might come home and tell your
day that way. You could just as well
say “I didn’t have any flat tires, no one ran into my car, the heat was working
at the office, and I went to lunch with friends.”
If you feel unblessed by parents, this
path would as that you consider three questions.
1. What did you receive from them (counting diapers
is part of that)
2. What did you give to them? (Including Mothers Day
cards, dishwashing, help with nursing home care)
3. What trouble did you cause them?
Maybe
they were trying to bless you, using a different language from what you were
looking for. Maybe they were unblessed themselves and couldn’t imagine how to
pass that along. Maybe they were as
pleased with you as they were with themselves, which is often not much. Maybe you can find blessing for who you
are amongst your friends and chosen family, from your experience of love from
the Spirit,
For
more information:
(psychologists)
Mimi Doe and Marsha Walch “10
Principles for Spiritual Parenting”
(
UU minister) Jeanne Nieuwejaar, “ The Gift of Faith”
“Many
Thanks” Angela Winter The Sun, Dec 2004
Closing
Words – Robert
Coles
So
it is we connect with one another, move in and out of one another’s
lives, teach and heal and affirm one another, across space and time – all
of us wanderers, explorers, adventurers, stragglers and ramblers, sometimes
tramps or vagabonds, even fugitives, but now and then pilgrims: as children, as
parents, as old ones about to take that final step, to enter that territory
whose character none of us here ever knows. Yet how young we are when we start
wondering about it all, the nature of the journey and of the final
destination.
|
by Meg Barnhouse |
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Free for
personal use. All others, please send written request. |