Clergy Family Confidential

We spent the weekend in Westport, Connecticut visiting our friends Harry and Andrea and their 7-year-old daughter Madelaine. Harry’s an old college buddy of mine from Tufts — we were both in Army ROTC together — so there’s lots of history.

The kids were great, basically babysitting one another while the adults ate, drank, and laughed a lot. The highlight was seeing Harry’s face after dinner when Madelaine asked her parents, “Can I sleep with Ben and Zack tonight?” Oh, to have a daughter.

Harry and Andrea were anxious for us to go to church with them on Sunday morning. They really like their pastor and particularly wanted me to meet him and hear him preach. They’ve become quite involved and Andrea just became the church treasurer! (God bless her). I’ve never been anywhere but an Episcopal church on Palm Sunday so I had no idea what to expect. A procession with a live donkey? Imported California palm trees for the sanctuary? Artichokes at coffee hour?

Their church is classic New England congregational (affiliated with the United Church of Christ). Founded in 1711, the current building dates from 1852 and is white on the exterior sporting a gracious steeple and very bright inside with clear windows. The congregation was very warm and welcoming — the usher even shook my hand on the way in. And the three kids trotted off to Sunday School together so I actually got to hear a great sermon.

The piece I struggled with was missing many of the elements I associate with the day — the blessing of the palms, the reading of the Passion narrative, communion, red vestments. When Episcopalians do Palm Sunday the liturgy dramatically moves from shouts of “Hosanna!” to “Crucify him!” I guess I’m just too much of a liturgist.

Fortunately, someone did hand us palms on the way to the “fellowship hour” after the service. Which meant the requisite palm branch sword fight in the parking lot between Ben, Zack, and Madelaine. I’m sure kids were doing the same thing when Jesus came in on that donkey. And that’s as much a Palm Sunday tradition as anything else.

I blog today with a heavy heart. The husband of my associate priest, the Rev. Kathy Corley, died suddenly yesterday after a massive stroke. We’re all in shock and mourning with Kathy and her two children, Andrew and Dan. Dave was 50 years, a financial guy with a passion for scuba diving, bird watching, and the gospel.

Please keep the family in your prayers.

Tim+

You can always tell when PBS is having a fundraising drive because they’ve got great programming interrupted by yapping. This is of course why God invented the clicker. After the kids went to sleep last night I found some footage they were airing of Jimi Hendrix playing the 1970 Monterey Pop Festival. For a $120 donation I could have had the CD/DVD combo but I preferred to watch it in installments via the clicker.

The snippets I saw were classic Hendrix — he was coaxing inimitable sounds out of his left-handed guitar. There’s not much more you can say about it — it’s simply guitar virtuosity. Yes, it’s Eric Clapton whose nickname is God — the height of heresy. But Hendrix at least sits at Clapton’s right hand.

The highlight for me was his version of Bob Dylan’s “Like a rolling stone.” Stunning.

But it also makes me wonder how to impart the appreciation of good music to Ben and Zack. My father probably thought the same thing — he was a symphony orchestra conductor — while I was listening to Kiss and AC/DC. But the songs they like, “Cotton-eyed Joe” and ”Bad Day,” aren’t exactly enduring classics. 

I guess all you can do is play decent music around the house and hope some of it rubs off. We forced them to watch enough Baby Mozart videos — some of this better take!

My sabbatical tour of local churches continued yesterday. I went solo since I couldn’t drag the boys out (see my previous post as to the reasons why — not pretty). But it was just as well since the service went pretty long and Ben and Zack have little tolerance for church as endurance sport. Of course neither do I unless it’s, say, Good Friday.

Last summer I took them to the cathedral in Baltimore for a service. Bryna slept in that day since she wanted me to experience sitting with the boys in church as a single parent. They did pretty well except Zack doesn’t suffer long, boring sermons very well. I presume none of us do but while we might read the bulletin, Zack comments. Loudly. So as this seminarian droned on and on from the pulpit, Zack waited for a dramatic pause and proclaimed, “Yeah, yeah, I get the point.” The truth was, he was right. And the preacher quickly wrapped it up.

The worst part of yesterday’s service for me wasn’t the sermon but the Lord’s Prayer. Evidently one of the congregation’s traditions is to hold hands while praying it. Ugh. So there I was holding hands with someone two rows ahead of me and someone else two rows back. I wasn’t sure if I felt more like a liturgical contortionist or a medieval prisoner stretched out on “the rack.” In either case it wasn’t the most prayerful posture. That little pious squeeze people sometimes give after holding hands in prayer didn’t help my frame of mind either. Just let go, please.

Cruel and unusual. That’s how I’d characterize Daylight Savings Time from a parent’s perspective. Throw in a Saturday night outing to Madision Square Garden to see the Knicks and it’s downright abusive. How was I supposed to know we’d be turning the clocks ahead when I bought the tickets?

The boys and I didn’t get home until 1:00 a.m. Okay, technically it was midnight but losing that hour made it an hour later. It didn’t help that the last-place Knicks decided to play just well enough in the fourth quarter to send the game to overtime. And at that point you can’t leave. I refuse to raise children who think it’s acceptable to leave sporting events before the bitter end. What kind of parent would I be if I taught them to leave baseball games in the seventh inning just because they were falling asleep or the home team was losing by 12 runs? You’ve got to have some standards. So we stayed until the Knicks imploded during the overtime period.

We’ll spend the rest of the week fighting about both bedtime and waking up for school. I think I need a nap.

Big night for Zack tonight — his first sleepover. He’s all fired up about it and he and his friend William have been planning out the evening’s schedule for weeks. I don’t think sleep is on their agenda but then it’s not at our house so who cares?

Zack’s been clamoring for a sleepover for two years now; ever since Ben had his first sleepover when he turned seven. And his packing list reflects the long wait. He’s certainly not traveling light: he’s bringing his comforter and pillow, some stuffed animals, clothes, pajamas, toothbrush (only because we’re forcing him), and his plastic Godzilla. At least that’s all I’m aware of. 

We’ll see if we get THE CALL tonight. You know, the one that comes from William’s mom at midnight when Zack is too afraid to fall asleep. I’m not expecting it since Zack is a great sleeper but you never know. Ben was fine for his first sleepover  — though Bryna and I were a bit traumatized. “Our baby doesn’t need us anymore!”

It’s all part of that parental realization that we don’t “own” our kids, we’re merely their temporary stewards. And that’s bittersweet.

One sure sign of aging is when you realize the grammar rules you learned in elementary school are obsolete. I spent yesterday at Coffee Labs going over, for the last time, the manuscript for “What Size Are God’s Shoes? Kids, Chaos and the Spiritual Life.” The book should be out in June (Morehouse Publishing) and I won’t see it again until it shows up in galley form. But it was returned to me for one last look after the copy editor got her paws on it and electronically marked it up. Most of her edits were minor – she fixed words like “minivan” which I spelled as two words and ”Wiffle ball” which is capitalized since it’s a trademark and ”SpongeBob” which is smashed together.

By the time the book comes out, I’m sure these grammar rules will have continued to evolve, and people will be wondering, “Why doesn’t he use very many commas?” Where’s Lynn Truss when you need her? 

**I asked Doug, the resident coffee roaster, about the name of this coffee which literally means “Table of the Saints.” He told me it refers to an area in Columbia that is especially suitable for growing beans that was originally owned and named by some monsignor.

NPR is airing an interview today with the Rutgers women’s basketball coach, C. Vivian Stringer. I really don’t care about women’s college basketball (or men’s for that matter), but whenever I see a name like this it naturally makes me wonder about the initial. What does C. stand for? Do people call her “C.” or “Vivian” or “C. Vivian?” What’s she hiding? Is she related to G. Gordon Liddy?

I’m not sure if a first initial is distinguished or pompous. Then I realize we’ve done the same thing to our son Ben. His full name is Andrew Benedict Schenck. Perhaps one day he’ll fancy himself A. Benedict Schenck. Which might look good on legal letterhead but may also be confusing during academic roll call for years to come.

He’s named Andrew for my late father, a symphony orchestra conductor and a wonderful dad. We didn’t call him “Andrew” because it was just too soon to have another “Andrew Schenck” running around. Plus I can’t stand the name Andy which is what it would probably have devolved into at school. He’s named Benedict for the saint — NOT the pope. We named him first in case you were wondering. 

But we usually just call him Ben. Unless he’s in trouble in which case his full name works beautifully when you yell it out on the playground. Interestingly, a bunch of his friends call him Benedict. He didn’t want to be confused with the myriad Benjamins in his grade and so in kindergarten he asked people to call him Benedict.   

If Ben decides to go with that first initial he’ll be in decent company. There’s F. Scott Fitzgerald, M. Scott Peck, and J. Paul Getty. We’ll just ignore J. Edgar Hoover and J. Danforth Quayle.

We stumbled into a “children’s service” at a local church on Sunday morning. I’d like to say I researched and then lovingly chose a family friendly eucharist for the benefit of the boys. But it was dumb luck.

One of the things I’ve learned on sabbatical is that getting the boys out the door to church is a nightmare. I have new-found respect for Bryna’s heroism as a single parent on Sunday mornings. This week we fought with Ben and Zack about everything from getting dressed to putting on shoes to wearing jackets to buckling seat belts. In the background was the constant refrain, “I’m not going to church!” I know they didn’t sign up for my sabbatical practice of going to different churches but as much as they usually complain about going to church, they can’t wait for my sabbatical to end so they can return to “our” church.

Of course once we finally got there, they were great. I wasn’t exactly in a worshipful frame of mind after pleading, arguing, threatening, and yelling all morning; I could have used a stiff drink. But they were little angels, following along in the bulletin, singing the hymns, putting money into the collection plate (without trying to pocket it).

As annoyed as I get with families at the parish who are on the one or two Sunday a month plan, I have to give them credit for just getting out the door. It’s not easy. Even when you resort to bribes about going out to brunch afterwards.

The service itself was blessedly short — well under an hour. This was perfect for the average child’s attention span. Certainly for my children’s attention span. For the sermon, all the kids were called up front and a woman read “Horton Hears a Who” by Dr. Seuss. And, while it captured their imagination, I have no idea how it related to the gospel. Sure, “A person’s a person no matter how small” but what does that have to do with Jesus and the woman at the well? Uh, not much.