Newspaper Page Text
Thursday, November 9, 2000
C©jmm@mtsury
Everyday Graces
The Southern Cross, Page 5
Parenting is a delicate balancing act
O ne morning I was about to
start the routine drive
to school, when from the
inside of the car, my son,
Charlie, pulled the rear
door of the station wagon
down on his hand. The
door latched with his hand
mashed in its frame, and I
needed the key to open
the door and release his
hand.
I grabbed a bag of frozen peas
from the freezer and told Charlie to
place it on his hand. Then, as he
cried in pain, I drove to the nearest
medical center to have his hand
examined and X-rayed. As it turned
out, we were fortunate. Charlie’s
hand was only bruised, and he was
well enough to attend school later
that morning.
But my experience of suddenly
shifting from my normal routine to
an emergency reminded me how
vulnerable we all are, how in an
instant something awful can hap
pen to change our lives forever.
How do we parents cope with that
knowledge?
Well, we certainly can’t dwell on
it. If we consider every move our
families make as potentially dan
gerous, we’d be unable to leave the
house. It requires a leap of faith for
Mary Hood Hart
us to go about our daily rou
tines, driving here and
there, making decisions,
allowing our children
certain freedoms while
restricting them in
other ways. We do our
best to keep them safe,
but experience teaches us
that even the most mun
dane activity, like clos
ing a door, can lead to accidents.
As my children mature, allowing
them independence has become an
even greater challenge. While I
trust their judgment (usually), I
don’t trust everyone they’ll
encounter as they make their way
in the world. Last spring, during a
school break, my 17-year-old
daughter was offered an opportuni
ty of a lifetime. She was invited to
go to a resort, Casa de Campo, in
the Dominican Republic with her
best friend from school. The trip,
for both girls, was all-expenses
paid, including meals and activi
ties. Katie’s friend’s father had won
the trip through a business incen
tive. Unable to go, he gave it to his
daughter, who asked Katie to come
along.
When Katie called and asked our
permission to take the trip, I strug
gled. I trusted Katie and her friend,
Catholics a
who are both smart, responsible
girls of good character. I trusted the
judgment of her friend’s parents,
whom I’d met on several occa
sions. But I worried about what
two teen-age girls might encounter
traveling in a foreign land. What if
they had an accident or became
sick? What if they are too trusting
of strangers? Jim and I talked it
over for hours, making phone calls,
checking the resort out on the
Internet. We decided to let Katie go
once we were convinced that some
adults on the their trip (business
partners of the father) would be
able to watch out for the girls. We
gave the girls a list of precautions
and insisted they keep in touch
with us by phone.
As it turned out, Katie and her
friend encountered no problems.
They had the time of their lives,
and they behaved responsibly.
Traveling independently has
sparked in Katie a new confidence
in herself, a desire to travel the
world, and an interest in foreign
languages. We took a risk letting
her go, but the rewards were great.
Most days, I am not faced with
such huge decisions. Most days,
the freedoms I allow or forbid my
children are less dramatic, less
stressful. Still, even in those small
daily decisions, something could go
wrong. Like the routine morning
Charlie hurt his hand, my best
attempts to keep my children safe
will sometimes fail. Like permit
ting Katie to travel to the
Dominican Republic, the risks I
allow them to take can expand their
horizons, enrich their lives.
It’s a delicate balancing act, pro
tecting our children and knowing
when to let them go. It’s a balanc
ing act I’ve been practicing since
the first time I relinquished my
infant Katie to a baby-sitter’s care.
I still don’t have it right, and I
don’t think I ever will. Contrary to
what parents of young children
may think, this part of parenting
doesn’t get easier over time.
Though I’ve been a mother for 17
years, I still struggle to discern
what is too much freedom and what
is not enough.
The anxiety of this struggle is
relieved, however, when I entrust
my children to the constant protec
tion and guidance of our loving
God, the perfect parent, the only
one who knows beyond a doubt
what’s best.
Mary Hood Hart lives with her
husband and four children in
Sunset Beach, N.C.
Remember that the first disciples, the apostles,
and the first martyrs were
Jews
By Father Michael J. Kavanaugh
M ary C. Boys’ book, Has God Only One
Blessing?, has the challenging subtitle,
“Judaism as a Source of Christian Self-
Understanding.”
The title is derived from the story of the twins
Esau and Jacob {Genesis 25:19-34; 27:1-45), a
story of deception, disappointment, and, in a
sense, displacement. The second-bom twin,
Jacob, prompted by his mother Rebekah, steals
his elder brother's blessing from their blind
father, Isaac. When Esau, seeking this blessing
as is his right as first-bom, discovers that the
blessing has already been bestowed, he cries,
“Have you only that one blessing, father? Bless
me too!”
Having already given his choicest blessing to
Jacob, Isaac remains silent while Esau, coming
to terms with his loss, wept aloud {Genesis
27:38). Has God Only One Blessing? transfers
the question asked by Esau to the relationship
between Christianity and Judaism as a means to
draw readers into a consideration of the ques
tion of the relationship between the Church and
the Synagogue.
In the past, Christian artists have depicted this
relationship by presenting the contrasting
images of two women; one Ecclesia (the
church), robust, upright, and resplendent; and
one Synagoga (the synagogue), drooping,
blindfolded, and carrying a broken staff. (One
of the most well known examples of this con
trasting imagery can be found in the cathedral
in Strasbourg, France).
- “There is a great deal of
‘Jewishness ’ in the Catholic
faith. ”
What this imagery fails to take into account,
however, is the Jewish roots of Christianity.
Jesus, his mother Mary and her husband
Joseph, not to mention Abraham, whom the
First Eucharistic Prayer (the “Roman Canon”)
reminds us is “our father in faith,” were Jews.
Their understanding of their relationship with
God, their obligations to each other, and their
place in the created universe were of Jewish
origins. That they were Jews ought to come as
no surprise. That Jews, in later centuries,
should be so hated and reviled, should surprise
and shock us, given what we know of the
Jewishness of the early church.
There is a great deal of “Jewishness” in the
Catholic faith. The belief in one God comes to
us through the Jews. Our primary act of wor
ship, the celebration of the mass, has several
aspects taken from Jewish worship and prayer.
(“Blessed are you Lord God of all creation;
through your goodness we have this bread/this
wine to offer...” is taken directly from Jewish
table prayers for the blessing of food.) And, of
course, we share with the Jews a reverence for
the books of what we call the Old Testament:
the Pentateuch, the Prophets, and the Writings.
For a Christian it is not unfair to say, then,
that hatred of Jews is hatred of self. Unless and
until we understand how Jewish we really are
—and this is the point of Has God Only One
Blessing?—we cannot understand who we are
as Christians.
Father Michael J. Kavanaugh is dioce
san director of Ecumenism. This is the
second in a series of articles on Jewish-
Christian relations.