Our Children's 'Becoming'

Before we left for our Thanksgiving in Ohio I spent a morning with my Just Faith group. We were writing Christmas cards for men and women held in detention for immigration-related offenses. As we scissored, colored, and signed our cards we went around in a circle saying listing things for which we were grateful. I stumbled over my big-ticket item, which is being alive and healthy to watch my children 'grow up.' My friend Jeri nodded in understanding and put it in better terms; we're grateful to witness our children 'becoming' what they are meant to be.

On the plane headed via jet stream to the Midwest I read several fascinating articles in The Sun (thesunmagazine.org) related to the complex issues of parenting and watching our children become. In an article titled "The Dog-Eared Page" (excerpted from The Little Virtues, by Natalia Ginzburg), I was startled into underlining and highlighting the following exceptional paragraph:
   
"What we must remember above all in the education of our children is that their love of life should never weaken. This love can take different forms, and sometimes a listless, solitary, bashful child is not lacking in a love of life. He is not overwhelmed by a fear of life; he is simply in a state of expectancy, intent on preparing himself for his vocation. And what is a human being's vocation but the highest expression of his love of life? And so we must wait, next to him, while his vocation awakens and takes shape. His behavior can be like that of a mole, or of a lizard that holds itself still and pretends to be dead but in reality it has detected the insect that is its prey and is watching its movements, and then suddenly springs forward. Next to him, but in silence and a little aloof from him, we must wait for this leap of his spirit. We should not demand anything; we should not ask or hope that he is a genius or an artist or a hero or a saint; and yet we must be ready for everything; our waiting and our patience must compass both the possibility of the highest and the most ordinary of fates."

Amazing, fascinating, striking at truth. We must wait, in extended advent, for our children, just as we wait in this season for the coming of perhaps the world's most famous child. Whereas the Christ-child brings joy and spectacle without doubt, the unwrapping of our children's future brings profound mystery, a requirement of readiness, and the challenge of remaining apart.