Betrothed at Birth

I have an arranged marriage. As long I can remember, Janet was my wife....my betrothed actually, but that was just a detail. We didn't take vows until the appropriate time, but regardless, the decision had been made for us by our parents when we were only a few weeks old. It never occurred to me that I shouldn't already know who my wife would be; it was just a part of everyday life. We grew up in the same neighborhood, and came to know each other as well as.... married people, more or less. But when I became a young adult I rebelled against my parents' plans: went out with other women, paid no attention to my betrothed, wanted to make up my own mind, shop around. As it turned out, I chose to marry Janet, and that was the right decision. In retrospect, I never really doubted the betrothal, but isn't it important to decide on your own? On one hand I envy people who chose to marry whomever they wanted without the nudging of their parents' preconceived presumptions; but on the other hand, my parents chose wisely. If I had exercised my own autonomous judgment, would I have done so well? I don't know. But I think of the thrill other people must have had, picking freely from a sea of potential mates. But then again, because we were betrothed, we had a much earlier start on our marriage's foundations. We'd been part of each others' lives, imaginations, visions of the future since were were tots. How could you compensate for that in a marriage between two people who'd first met only a couple of years before the wedding?

I am kidding you....my marriage was not arranged.

Our church has a lot of converts, including my wife. I, on the other hand, am a Cradle Catholic. I didn't experience the great sea change of conversion, the drama, the turmoil, the Sturm und Drang....the awful autonomous choice. At best you might say I'm a revert, returning with an adult's commitment to the faith chosen for me as a baby by my parents. Sometimes, like today, I was talking to a couple who came into the Church this past Easter. How exciting: they're like people in the New Testament, hearing the Good News, making the leap of faith....wow. I'm like the kids who were baptized as part of their households: whoop-de-doo.

And yet...I grew up in the Church. I'm soaked in the culture, have a Catholic imagination. The Church is in my bones, like marrow. How wonderful is that? The Pope, saints, Body & Blood, holydays, Confession, Latin, incense, Sacraments, Calvary with a crucifix, Bible stories learned from statues & stained glass windows, Easter and Holy Week bigger than Christmas, Good Friday veneration of the cross, getting whacked by nuns, Jesus in his little house, Hail Marys, praying to my dead (sorry, sleeping in Christ) relatives, apostolic succession, celibacy, all as normal and familiar as breathing. Based on my experience with languages, it's like the difference between one's mother tongue and an acquired one.

I am not going to digress on language.

So I was trying to explain to these adult converts today about why a Cradle Cat'lic might envy them their journey, and used the marriage analogy above; which also reminded me of why I shouldn't be so envious of their journey, but rather be thankful for my own.

Letter to Parents

For any catechists out there, this is the letter I send home with each student after the first class. If you have anything similar, I'd like you post it in the comments.

September 9, 2009

Dear Parents of 6th Grade Religious Ed Students,

My name is Christian LeBlanc. Mrs. Jones and I will be teaching your children this year.

Here is some basic information for the class:

1. You are invited to come to class anytime. Parents who do come tend to enjoy it, and every additional adult in the room improves the learning environment.

2. Most of classtime is spent discussing that week's chapter in the textbook. Since we don't read from the book during class or refer to it directly very often, please have your child read the appropriate chapter each week before class. They'll be told each week what next week's chapter will be. More important is that students be prepared, pay attention, participate, and do not interfere with other students' learning.

3. We take attendance; please have your child come to class regularly and on time.

4. Encourage your child to contribute to discussions, and to ask questions fearlessly. At the start of each class students can ask any question about God/ religion/ Christianity/ Catholicism/ current events/ encounters with non-Catholics/ you name it. We want the kids to get answers to their faith questions (last year we had over 100), and if they don't ask 'em we can't answer 'em!

5. No sitting in the back row! Our class isn't so big that anyone has to sit in the back. Encourage your child to sit in the front row; it's the easiest place to learn, and harder to be bored there.

6. You can contact me at 230-5473 or chrisleb1@aol.com with any questions or comments.


Thanks for your support,

Christian LeBlanc

To Book or Not To Book

A recent post at Joe Paprocki's catechist blog prompted me to think about my use of the textbook & workbook in my 6th grade class. As I mentioned in an earlier post, 30-Step Program, our texbook is designed for a 180-day schoolyear, not a 30-night schedule. So there's way more stuff in the book than we can deal with.

The first year I had the kids take the book home to read the next chapter and also bring it to class. That didn't work: not enough kids brought the book to class. Plus, those that did used the book as a toy when I wanted them listening and participating in discussion. And there were times I'd ask a question, and the kids would go to the book instead of their brains: no looking in the book! Shut those books! I already know what the book thinks, I read the chapter. I want to know what you think! And of course, anyone seeing the chapter for the first time in class is confronted by a week's worth of information, not an evening's worth. 11-year-olds weren't managing that well, regardless.

Likewise with the workbook: doodling, looking at pictures, flipping pages, whatever. And the time spent distributing and recovering pencils and workbooks cut into classtime. The workbook questions were good though, but the friction costs of using the actual workbook itself were high.

So in the second year, I kept the same deal on the textbook (home & class), but the kids never saw the workbooks. Instead, I blended some workbook questions into the lesson plan. That worked, but the textbook problems remained. More learning was lost through the book's misuse as a distraction and a crutch than was gained through its use as a resource. Plus, the kids that had read the chapter were peeved that other kids would just scan the book quickly for a correct answer without really trying to learn anything.

In year three then, this was the deal:

1. The textbook & workbook stay home.

2. Read the chapter before you come to class, it won't take 5 minutes, and then you'll like class better.

3. If I find out you didn't read the chapter, you don't get to ask any questions (which can be a big part of the discussion), and only get to answer my questions after kids who did read it have a chance to answer. Generally the kids who have the most to say are least likely to read the chapter. They chafe in class if their participation is truncated, and will typically announce the next week that they indeed read the chapter this time.

This will be my sixth year of teaching 6th graders; I don't expect to change the book policy. I imagine that for older kids, using the books in class might work out fine; or even for younger kids, I just have no experience with either group.

.

.

PS See that? That's my class!

plus de Tempus Fugit

Time does fly. Check out these photos of two of my kids.

This is Christian and Francesca, aged 4 and 2 or so. Taken at my parents' house, Janet & I call this picture "Barflies" because it reminds us of an old married couple having yet another round at the pub. We have laughed about this pic for more than 15 years.


The next picture I stole from my daughter's Facebook today. It's France and Christian down at the College of Charleston celebrating her 18th birthday. Or studying. Or something.

In some ways time flies; in other ways, things don't change all that much, do they?

Metamorphosis

In response to the prior post about my rapidly emptying nest, a friend sent me a link to this article Michael Coren: Battling the barren concerning the decision to have or not to have children, and its consequences for the would-be parent in terms of life experience.

Coren's article reminded me of something I'd written years ago along similar lines. Here it is in edited form:

"The recent discussion about the West's segregation of generations from each other prompts me to make a similar observation regarding those who are, as they describe themselves, "childfree": a willfully childless person is selfishly segregating parts of himself from the rest of himself, with similarly poisonous results.

A married couple that decides to not have kids is simply opting for a stunted existence both as individuals and as a couple. In my own life as a father to 5 children, I have likened the transformation of myself from husband to husband/father to that of a larva becoming a butterfly. In other words, the transition from single man to husband was not transformational, having that first child was. And the change was too great to have imagined it before the change was made.

I had felt God as a modest presence in my life prior to parenthood, especially when He gave me my wife, whom I am fabulously undeserving of. In fact marrying my wife was such evidence of divine intervention that she and I from the get-go felt that the marriage involved three people: her, me, and God. But while I was grateful to God for this, I wasn't very much changed by it. That image of a threesome left little question, though, that we'd have children as they came. Having our mutual love continue God's creation by bringing children into the world brought about a complete (but imperfect) change in me. I could not have imagined before parenthood what effect it would have, any more than a larva can imagine life as a butterfly, even if there are plenty of butterflies to observe. How could a butterfly explain to a larva why it should metamorphose, when it's perfectly content to be a larva?

So I tend to see the problem of willful childlessness in terms of what people can imagine. Our image of marriage included God as an active participant, and that let us imagine ourselves as agents of His creation. This was enough to proceed to have kids, whose presence in our lives wrought such profound changes in my concept of self. In other words, my image of parenthood before we had actual kids turns out in retrospect to have been very puny, but it was the best I could do. However, it was big enough to get me to the next step, the step that these childless couples refuse to take. Because they don't imagine marriage as something other than a kind of cozy, shared selfishness, they remain larva.

For all the objections to raising children, such as:
I don't like children;
I can't afford children;
I don't want to give up my career/ interests/ freedom/ options;
I don't want to take a chance that the baby'll be deformed;
I don't think I'm cut out to be a parent;
I offer some responses based on my experience of having children:
Raising children will transform you for the better;
Raising children will turn you into a parent;
Raising children will set you free;
Raising children will elevate your worldview;
Raising children makes you more alive.
Raising children makes you more human.

Unfortunately, Western culture pushes a stunted image of life: simply a chance to consume as much as possible for as long as possible. As Viv Savage said in Spinal Tap, "Have a good time...all the time. That's my philosophy..." And if that is your image of life, then it crabs your image of yourself as a spouse, your image of yourself as a parent, and your image of yourself as a chunk of God.

But I'm optimistic (of course I am, I have kids). My wife and I make it clear to our kids why children are such blessings to parents, and I do the same in 6th grade Sunday School. The kids are curious and interested to learn about God, marriage, love, children and life. They want to hear that stuff has its uses, but is not important. They are ready to imagine that life can be much more the modern world says it is.

But first they have to hear it, explicitly.

Last of the Mohicans

Today we took two of our children to college and I'm feeling....nonplussed. We have 5 kids: Jacob (33), Michael (21), Christian (20), Francesca (18), and Alexandra (17). Jacob is married, has a 2-year old son, Jacob Jr., whom we care for a few afternoons a week. Michael is on his own, also lives in town. Last year Christian was at school, and the daughters lived with us. Even though we were down to the two girls, they kept the household lively. Parents will know what I mean: a household with children is uniquely full of life, and one gets accustomed to their vitality and energy....and wants to have it around pretty much all the time!

We have an offbeat family: I have one stepson, Jacob (my wife's prior marriage was annulled); two adopted children, Michael & Sandy; and two birth kids, Christian & France. They all seem the same as far as being our kids. Of course, I knew the two 'birthies' from conception. They're the only ones whose whole lives I witnessed: photos on my wall from ultrasound to graduation. As of today there's a practical end to both of these people residing in my house in any permanent sense; they join their two older brothers.

So these two are effectively out of the nest, and we are living with our youngest child, Alexandra. She and her sister were inseparable, now....? So change comes to Sandy after a lifetime of sharing everything with France, happily together every day.

I'm not sad that my kids are all growing up and leaving the nest; but I do feel, well, less than happy? If I define my adulthood as starting when I got married, then adulthood has been inseparable from childrearing. When Sandy leaves that'll be the end of decades of life as a 'houseparent' (in this case meaning a parent with live-in dependents), which is the only way of being married my wife & I have experienced. She's my best friend, we'll still get on like gangbusters when it's just the two of us. But being a houseparent has been such an integral part of our lives, I do wonder if something else will fill in that space. Now that I'm experienced at parenting, I'm running out of kids to parent. Last year for about a week we flirted with adopting some more kids...decided we were too old (both in our 50s now). Tempus sho' do Fugit. Maybe the houseparent phase is drawing to a natural close, and that pitcher will just be empty, but unexpected, new pitchers will need to be filled. Sounds good anyway. In the meantime, the kids, who have been like oxygen, are running out.

Who doesn't love this from Psalm 128:

Thy wife shall be as a fruitful vine by the sides of thine house: thy children like olive plants round about thy table.

That verse has lived in my house: how many thousand laughing meals did we have at our dining room table, and I'd see my fruitful wife at the other end, between us our children shooting up, and God just bursting like the sun out of everyone? And I'd think over and over: I'm just like the guy in the Psalm. And now: the two of us and our last daughter, soon to be gone. Per Psalm 127, a quiver full of kids is good, and we're down to our last arrow.

Not much to laugh about today. But plenty to be grateful for. And God flows out of the grandson at dinner as surely as He has from our children.

And there's this: having children liberated me (more or less) from being a slave to myself (I'm sure I'm not unique in this, I just don't presume to speak for others). How surprising it was to feel more free because of parental responsibilities. Learning to be other-directed without even having to think about it. Who would I be without the lessons learned through my kids? And for all these years I never had to wonder: what are doing with your life? Why, I'm raising kids! I'm making a big contribution! Once my kids are all autonomous, what answer will I give?

As Pee Wee Herman once said, I don't know!

I'm still nonplussed.

Ignore the Endless Hours

I like sad songs better than happy songs. Not that the sad ones are more pleasant; or pleasant at all, for that matter. But I remember the sad ones, and take their lessons to heart. Even when I was a kid, I'd be drawn to sad songs I wasn't old enough to fully appreciate. As time passed I built up a modest library in my head of sad lyrics, and they functioned as little cautionary tales about Romance. Sad songs forewarned me of missteps in life and love.

Speaking of sad songs, I read something striking today in church. Our parish provides Bibles in the pews, so it's easy to read from one before Mass starts.

From Ecclesiastes:
Sorrow is better than laughter, for by sadness of countenance the heart is made glad.
The heart of the wise is in the house of mourning;But the heart of fools is in the house of mirth.
It is better for a man to hear the rebuke of the wise than to hear the song of fools.

Written about 300 BC, this passage reminded me of the following lyrics, recorded by Frank Sinatra in 1969:
Pretend there is no silence, alone in your apartment
Don't notice things that once were hers
Ignore the endless hours
Don't chase the dream that your hearts were after
Children's laughter
Somehow believe in living, forget about the giving
Just tell your life it must go on
Run from yourself until you can't be found
But don't remember, refuse to remember
Forget to remember love

The "rebuke of the wise" is still sung 2300 years later.



*Speaking of cautionary tales, the image is of Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler.