The Spirituality of Parenting

June 15, 2010

Shortly after my son Drew was born, one of my rabbinic school friends lent me a copy of Parenting as a Spiritual Journey: Deepening Ordinary and Extraordinary Events into Sacred Occasions by Rabbi Nancy Fuchs-Kreimer. Perhaps not surprisingly, six months went by before I managed to even crack the book. But once I did, I found her words resonated with my experience, starting with the Prologue, where Fuchs-Kreimer writes:

During those 4:00 A.M. feedings I gradually figured out one thing. All the theology I’d studied would not help me raise my children. But it might work the other way. Raising children might help me learn something about God. Theologians spend most of their time in their studies. But the best ones, I noticed, had done some fieldwork in living. I would do mine in play groups.

Throughout the book, Fuchs-Kreimer interweaves stories of her own parenting journey with stories from other parents, people who are planted in every religious tradition (and in none), in a way that skillfully highlights the spirituality which can be found in the universal experiences of caring for our children.

Often the stories left me nodding my head in recognition–like the one about how Fuchs-Kreimer decided one day to make family meals “more spiritual” by insisting that everyone sit down, be quiet, and listen to a prayer. Unsurprisingly, it backfired, and resulted in chaos and yelling and tears. Afterward, she remembers, she and her family talked about what had gone wrong, and found themselves laughing:

Moments of faith rarely come when we expect them, and especially not when we plan them…I could not prepare, serve, and feed faith to my children like home-made, nutritious baby food. But I understand what Fuchs-Kreimer experienced. As we parents try to create meaningful experiences for our children, it is often in the moments when intention breaks, the moment of laughter as we move past anger to the joy of connection, when we experience something larger than ourselves.

As a metaphor for parenting writ large, Fuchs-Kreimer tells a story about being on a snorkeling trip with her daughter. As the two of them stood on the deck of the boat, Fuchs-Kreimer was feeling afraid to leap into the sea…until she realized that her daughter was picking up on, and beginning to share, her fear. So she marshaled her courage, took a deep breath, and jumped in. She writes:

As new parents, we find ourselves jumping in over our heads, suddenly granted lifetime tenure in a job for which we have no degree, perhaps have never even taken a course. We have the power to make profound choices for someone else, choices that involve basic values and beliefs.

Jumping in over our heads: yeah, that’s about right. My partner and I have been making profound choices for Drew from the get-go, and that’s only going to continue from here on out. That’s humbling and awe-inspiring when I stop to think about it. But if we can accede to that experience instead of fighting it, there’s so much we can learn.

For those who have no organized spiritual practice, parenting can offer one. For those who do have a spiritual practice (or did, before the kids came along), the challenge may be to learn to sanctify the ordinary moments of parental life instead of yearning for the luxury of the kind of quiet contemplation we enjoyed once upon a time. I’m in the second category, which is why I have been particularly struck by stories which arise out of that experience.

In Fuchs-Kreimer’s book, I thrilled to read about other nursing mothers who felt new connection with the God Who nourishes creation, about the father who used to take his infant son to synagogue and hold him on his lap, unable to manage a prayerbook but receiving sustenance from the experience of being there with the baby even so. There’s comfort in knowing that I’m not the first to have these experiences or to make meaning out of them in the way that I try to do. I imagine that as Drew ages, and my experience of parenthood shifts, I’ll find different things in this book which resonate with me.

In the epilogue I found one of my favorite passages in the whole book:

It is all real. The walks in the woods. The spit-up. The birthday parties. The nights in the emergency room. The anger at the kids for growing up too slowly, for growing up too quickly, for never putting the tops back on the markers. The separations, physical and emotional, premature and long overdue. The drudgery. The exhaustion is real too. And then there is the sheer wonder of it all.

I’m reminded of one of my favorite books about the Days of Awe, Rabbi Alan Lew’s This Is Real and You Are Completely Unprepared ,which I wrote about back in 2006. The same could be said about parenting. It’s real, and we’re never ready, and we do it anyway. I’m grateful to Nancy Fuchs-Kreimer for articulating some of her truths about this spiritual journey so wisely and so well.

Rachel is writing a poem cycle about coming into motherhood, which her regular readers can find on her blog, the Velveteen Rabbi. Here are two of the poems from her forthcoming collection.

NIGHT FEEDING

Three in the morning:
you’re curled on my shoulder

like a hermit crab out of its shell,
warm as a blanket out of the dryer

when I lift you down from your perch
your dark eyes are wide open

as a hind longs for water
my soul longs for sleep

but I pace the round carpet
until I can crawl into bed

praying that I get a whole hour
before you summon me with your cries

which call in equal measure
my milk and my tears

WALKING AND FALLING AT THE SAME TIME

Remember the warm flat river
which smelled like walnuts,

the hum of the motor idling
the peel of wet rope through your hands

how it felt to bob, cradled
in the life jacket’s embrace

then the boat would pick up speed
and you’d rise out of the water

feeling it thrum underfoot
as the cliffs whirled by

falling asleep is that way too
you have to learn how to float

in these warm waters, to hold fast
to the rope towing you forward

until the great green world blurs
and you fly away