one a weekday morning in 2005, university of pennsylvania psychology professor martin seligman was fortuitously double booked. his contribution to the positive psychology movement had caught the attention of dominic randolph, headmaster of one of new york city’s most prestigious private schools. it had also attracted the company of a pioneer on the other side of the educational spectrum: david levin, co-founder of KIPP charter schools, which exist to “prepare students in underserved communities for college and life” (KIPP website).

seligman combined the meetings. and just for fun, he invited his colleague christopher peterson. the two had just finished co-writing character strengths and virtues: a handbook and classification. the discussion between the four men was an explosion of creativity. randolph and levin found exactly what they didn’t know they were looking for: a breakdown of character strengths thought to produce happiness and success in a variety of cultures.

they found themselves wrestling with questions that have long confounded not just educators but anyone trying to nurture a thriving child or simply live a good life. what is good character? …which qualities matter most for a child who is trying to negotiate his way to a successful and autonomous adulthood? and are the answers to those questions the same in harlem and in riverdale (what if the secret to success is failure, paul tough, nytimes)?

the four worked together in the months that followed to develop a list of character strengths that proved to be even more related to report card grades than students’ IQs. levin points out that the list is not

a finger-wagging guilt trip about good values and appropriate behavior but [rather] a recipe for a successful and happy life (tough, NY times).

so randolph and levin, and those in their increasing realms of influence, began identifying, assessing, and inculcating the following character strengths in their students:

zest

grit

self-control

social intelligence

gratitude

optimism

curiosity

students at levin’s KIPP schools now receive character and academic report cards. newly developed assessment scales for qualities such as grit are routinely used to quantify and improve character markers of success. KIPP students are graduating from college at an increasing rate.

at randolph’s school, the emphasis on character is more subtle. he explains,

i don’t want to come up with a metric around character that could be gamed. i would hate it if that’s where we ended up (tough, NY times).

but it’s randolph’s take on character education that speaks most to me, an upper middle class parent, raising two upper middle class children, in an upper middle class environment that is all about minimizing kids’ suffering and maximizing their success.

faculty at randolph’s school relay that many of their students’ parents hold their children to high standards of performance while they protect their kids from the kinds of hardships that lead to grit, self-control, gratitude, etc. (tough, NY times). sheltered students are deprived of the kind of learning that happens through risk and failure. tough writes,

it is a central paradox of contemporary parenting… we have an acute, almost biological impulse to provide for our children, to give them everything they want and need, to protect them from dangers and discomforts both large and small. and yet we all know — on some level, at least — that what kids need more than anything is a little hardship: some challenge, some deprivation that they can overcome, even if just to prove to themselves that they can.

i’m not sure what this philosophy will look like as i try to put the proper amount of scaffolding in place around my monkey and bird, who are at once rambunctious and sensitive, privileged, and not immune to life’s limits. but perhaps my less-than-perfect parenting will prepare my kids for their less-than-perfect bosses, their less-than-perfect partners, their less-than-perfect surroundings, and their not-yet-realized dreams. what characteristics lead to a successful and happy life? if the answer to this question is the same in harlem and in riverdale, maybe it is the same for my children as it is for me.

my post today is an essay i wrote for a fabulous blog project called “a liberated life.” vanessa and sarah solicit and post essays wherein women of every age and stage chronicle their joys and concerns along the path toward liberation.

here’s an excerpt, but you’ll have to scurry over to “a liberated life” to read the rest:

Liberation, as it turns out, is not as simple as a dream job or a grad school diploma, or a positive pregnancy test, or a happy home. In fact, I cannot even begin to envision what a liberated life might look like for today’s mothers, whose souls brim with enough passion and opportunity to fill a warehouse full of moon bounces and inflatable slides. There is an anxiety that comes with motherhood that has far outgrown the widespread dreams for balance and the tired juggling metaphors. Scientists study it, and talk show hosts allude to it, but this anxiety, for the most part, remains undefined.

how would YOU define a liberated life?

until six weeks ago, the monkey was a strict observer of naptime. to say that he was an “observer” of nap time is to say that he spent two hours per day holed up in his room. sometimes he slept, but most of the time he invented games for himself to play within his four walls.

for example, it was not uncommon for me to open his door after naptime to find a “puzzle piece room,” a carefully created state of affairs wherein the entire floor was covered in adjacent blankets, er, i mean “puzzle pieces.” other days were “sorting days,” and the monkey would spend the two hours organizing and cataloging his stuffed animals, game pieces, markers, and books. still other afternoons were spent “reading.” once, i walked in on this scene:

but times are different now. i gave in to the monkey’s complaints that he was bored in his room, and now, while his brother sleeps, he does things that require much less imagination (many of which involve the television and/or the wii). perhaps this is because i have not made the shift away from cooking dinner, folding laundry, and catching up on work between the hours of two o’clock and four o’clock. or perhaps it is because the monkey and i are both drawn to what is easier. for him, making a puzzle piece room takes more effort than wii bowling. and for me, extracting him from the tv takes more effort than cooking dinner in peace.

the problem with this scenario is that i don’t want to deprive the monkey of the gift of boredom. catherine newman, author of an essay entitled bored again, which appeared in the fall 2010 issue of brainchild magazine, defines boredom as “that agitated space between relaxation and action: dialed down, it can become a pleasant kind of inertia or a meditative stillness, where it feels good to sit quietly with your own thoughts; cranked up a notch, it can produce creative release.” newman goes on to write,

“i’m not trying to sound like one of those crafty-mama blogs that makes you want to kill yourself, the kind you bookmark one day because you think that putting out a wooden bowl of felt gnomes sounds like a good idea… and yet. you do have to learn boredom, learn to live with it, to manage it with the power of your own mind, without recourse to video games or bungee jumping or sniffing glue or starting a nuclear war or date raping your roommate’s girlfriend. the most dangerous people we know are the least able to sit still, to be inside an absence of motion.”

i definitely don’t want the monkey to become “a dangerous person,” but that’s not my main attraction to boredom. i simply think that boredom facilitates creativity and imagination, and these things are what ultimately make life beautiful.

our family spends significant periods of time away from our memphis routines and addictions to technology. our family camp weekends and julys in the north carolina mountains are hopefully deterrents from future glue-sniffing tendencies. but building boredom into our daily memphis routine, one that must also include my own significant accomplishments on the home and work fronts, is becoming increasingly difficult.

is there any way to give the monkey the gift of boredom (and creativity and imagination and beauty) without forcing him to play with a wooden bowl of felt gnomes?

i love me some note cards.

i never leave home with out them. they are the perfect place to record a genius idea, deposit toddler scribbles, and spit out used gum. i wrote all of my school papers, from tenth grade through graduate school, by putting one fact one each note card, arranging them into themed stacks, putting the stacks in order, and settling down in front of my computer in the midst of a veritable note card village. i even wrote my most recent homily this way.

when i started the re[frame] productivity system for creative people a few months ago, it wasn’t so much because i had friends who had successfully completed the program and were happy with the results. nor was the main draw its enticing low price of $42 for six weeks worth of daily emails explaining a detailed process in simple, attainable steps. it was the note cards, folks. i loved the idea of writing one “to do” on each note card and organizing them in a cute little box under headings for each day of the week. so excited was i about the power of this little box and its contents to transform my chaotic world that i diligently worked the note card system for months.

during this time, i returned emails and phone calls promptly, sent school picture money back on time, made headway on long overdue projects (the sewing room reorganization, for example), and developed a regular schedule for household tasks such as doing laundry and making dinner. i was the very picture of productivity. the problem was that i wasn’t feeling very creative anymore.

there was no time to whip up crazy pants for my boys in my newly organized sewing room. i began having visions of things i wanted to paint or cook, but there wasn’t time to bring them to life. i pictured myself (and still do) dropping by amro music of an afternoon, renting a fiddle, and spending “free time” indulging myself and horrifying others with the excruciating cacophony only a beginning fiddler could produce.

so for the last six weeks or so, i have abandoned my dear note cards. we are living in piles of laundry and dirty dishes but the laundry now contains several pairs of fabulous new crazy pants for the kids, and the dirty dishes are the result of creative cooking experiments. i have devoured a few great books (both the for-fun kind and the brain-stimulating kind) but there are an embarrassing number of unread emails in my inbox.

i generally prefer allowing my intuition to guide me from one task to the next. the only problem is that my intuition is not so good at taking care of business. and after a while, it becomes evident that i need things like friends, and clean underwear, and an unsoiled mug for my coffee. 

so today, i’m getting back on the re[frame] wagon. i’m returning to the world of note cards. however, instead of attacking every piece of unfinished business in my life the way  my dog attacks his breakfast (in an near-violent frenzy), i’m going to take a more measured approach. i have only one goal for the week, and that is cleaning out the bird’s closet. i know there must be clothes to fit this child in there somewhere!

is there any way to be both productive and creative at the same time? or is this particular brand of balance just another part of a mother’s quest for pie-in-the-sky equanimity? i think i’ll just write these questions on note cards and carry them around in my purse.

andy and i have never exactly been the late night partying type. even before the monkey and bird hit the scene, we could rarely stay awake for so much as a late movie. i know. it’s pitiful.

but even now that our late-night drowsiness is justified by early rising and toddler-chasing, we still love to imagine ourselves as the kind of people who can stay out past ten o’clock without turning into pumpkins. we set our sights on an occasional party or the midnight bike tour, for example, arrange for the kids to spend the night with their grandparents, and count down the days ’til our big blowout.

but something always happens in that liminal time after we drop off the kids but before we arrive at our destination. the thought of simply going to bed at 6:30 creeps its way in, and in an instant, our wild self-ideations are replaced with the allure of an entire night of uninterrupted rest, complete with comfortable pajamas, bad television, and takeout supper.

i have no idea why andy and i were able to resist the bed’s magnetic force last night. we came thisclose to bagging our plans to hear our favorite college band, jackopierce, play at the levitt shell. and i will admit that it wasn’t until we were sitting snugly on our quilt listening to the soundtrack of our college days that we turned to each other and said,

“i’m really glad we came!”

don’t get me wrong. sleeping is still my all-time favorite activity. but last night i remembered that listening to good music, re-living good memories, and resisting the rut can be energizing too.

and p.s. if you want to know what cary and jack have been up to, check out this link.

lately, i’ve been reading geneen roth’s women, food, and god, a book i passed over the first four times it called out to me from the best-seller rack at target. the book is a spiritual approach to disordered relationships with food, exercise, and the body, disordered relationships that used to be landmarks in my own internal terrain. in light of new found and much appreciated health in these areas, i was hesitant to read about what women do to mask, override, indulge, project, and protect our hungers. it’s better just to celebrate that the real struggle is behind me, i thought. it’s better not ask too many questions.

roth describes addictions to food, thinness, exercise, et cetera as coping mechanisms for more existential struggles and longings. in order to avoid “trusting our less tangible hungers (for rest, contact, meaning),” which are often surprising “doorways into a blazing inner universe,” women often use food, rigid discipline, dieting, and the like to transform our existential angst into something more manageable (14, 15). and there are secondary gains that come when we buy into the widespread weight loss industry. this industry has given women a language to speak about our shortcomings. it has given us the illusion that we can control our fates. it has given us company in our loneliness. but as roth points out, it also traps us in the cycle of losing and gaining the same 18 pounds, 30 different times, over a lifespan of about 80 years.

in my reading of women, food, and god, i have recognized myself in what roth describes as “creating a secondary problem when the original problem becomes too uncomfortable” (52). it has occurred to me that a good bit of the energy i used to exert over body image issues is currently channelled into another common secondary problem: finding that ever-elusive balance between love and work. perhaps the real struggle is not behind me after all. perhaps it has merely changed forms.

though i swore off dieting many years ago, i am enjoying similar secondary gains in the quest for balance. once again, i have a language for articulating my grief, a notion that i can control my fate by making the right choices, and a community of other women who are trying along with me to restore equilibrium to our lives. and it strikes me that this quest might also trap me in a similar cycle of losing and gaining my balance 30 plus times for a lifespan of about 80 years (or at least until my children are launched).

i’m now asking myself what deeper hungers are masked by the ever-popular quest for balance. have i internalized systemic ills and personalized the great imbalances around me? are my feverish engagements with the working world merely escape attempts from a basic loneliness that could be a “doorway to a blazing universe?” is my decision to spend most of my time at home a way of taking myself out of a game i fear i’d lose?

i don’t know the answers to these questions but i think they are worth pondering. it seems entirely possible that fullness is achieved by embracing our hungers.

[source for this post is located on the bibliography page in the sidebar to your right.]

a few weeks ago, my friend maryann reminded me of this wonderful quotation about motherhood and ministry, found in the equally wonderful book listening for god by renita weems. i think it can be easily stretched to speak to all mothers who are modifying and trying to integrate their visions of vocation and motherhood. i forgot to breathe while i was reading these words: 

“i will never be the writer i would have been had i not become a mother. nor will i be the minister or professor i could have been if i hadn’t had to suffer the interruptions of a sulking child or the vibes of a brooding husband transmitted under the door of my study. i give up writing the book i might have written or the sermon i might have preached every time i wander out of my study and follow the smell of popcorn wafting in the air, follow it in to the family room, where the rest of the family is watching the lion king for the forty-second time. i’ll never be able to recapture the fine sentences swirling in my head, or the fresh revelations that were about to lay hold of me. but for the joy of getting down on the cold hardwood floor and singing, “hakuna matata,” i’ll settle for bits and pieces of revelation god sends my way, and see what, if anything, i can make of them when i can. because today is today, and that’s all i have.”

and now, in light of a restless night with the bird and the inevitable morning-after fog that now surrounds me, i’m going to “wander out of my study,” as renita writes. happy thursday!

and p.s. renita still managed to be a wonderful professor. i was lucky enough to have her for hebrew bible at vanderbilt.

[the source for this post can be found on the bibliography page located in the sidebar to your right.]

this is my “to-do box.”

this is what the bird thinks of my “to-do box,” and all of the various lists, reminders, work obligations and home-related chores that reside on note cards therein:

what a perfect metaphor for what it’s like to try to be a “work-at-home-mom!”

i catch myself envying moms who work full-time outside of the home and those who leave their jobs completely to become stay-at-home-moms. surely life in these neatly defined categories is, well…neater.

but then i remember these wise words from lisa belkin’s life’s work: confessions of an unbalanced mom:

“i have yet to hear from anyone who feels they are doing everything right. so it’s not just me who can’t do this — and it’s not just you, either. not a one of us seems to be able to give 100 percent of themselves to their job and 100 percent of themselves to their family and 100 percent of themselves to taking care of themselves. small wonder. yet we all seem to think someone (else) out there is getting it right; people who work full-time think people who work  part-time are doing it, and people who work part-time think people who don’t work at all are doing it, and those who left the office to tend to home think that if only they could escape back to an office, they might find sanity. but all of this misses the point. no one can do it, because it cannot be done…. this emotional and economic tug-of-war is the central story of our generation” (14 , 16).

belkin is no longer in search of balance. now she’s just after “a close approximation of sanity.”

i think she might be on to something.

[bibliography is located on the sidebar to the right.]

when i was in divinity school, i was surrounded by people who had very specific callings. some knew they would be working as chaplains in prisons. others  were going on to work in public policy. one of my favorite colleagues was dead set (pun intended) on entering the field of thanatology.

because my husband’s job ties us to memphis, my vocational narrative has always been a bit different. out of necessity, my calling has always been to find meaningful work in ways that  fit well within the parameters of meaningful family life. luckily, i don’t have the slightest predisposition toward teaching snow skiing in colorado or studying the chestnut blight in appalachia. the field of ministry is, itself, a vast city with major thoroughfares and meandering back roads. somehow, i have always known that the backroads are my place.

after the monkey was born, i gave up the traveling supply preaching gigs and the late-night college chaplaincy commitments. i traded these things for a regular preaching gig in a nearby church and the chance to lead several weekday morning study groups. when the bird was born, i cut back on the preaching even more but started this blog and increased the number of other commitments such as weddings, funerals and baptisms. all the while, i have been thankful for a vocation that can take on so many forms.

but somewhere along the way, in trading the risky thrill of writing on a sunday morning deadline for the even pace of study-group-prep, i have sacrificed some things that i am good at. and, in so doing, i have sacrificed some of the meaning. but i don’t know how to restore meaning to my vocation without taking away from the meaning of family life.

so i’m trying something new. i have removed myself from some major, long-standing work commitments, AND i am not going to fill this time immediately with other work commitments.  i am uncomfortable with empty space, and saying no, and the long rambling answer i give people when they ask if i work outside of the home. but for the first time in a long time, i’m beginning to get that old divinity school feeling back — that blind sort of trust that meaningful work will present itself if i am open and patient.

i guess, in a sense, i am returning to my place in the world: the indirect but infinitely interesting back roads.

a mailman nearing retirement laments that he will miss reading the series anonymous love letters that have made their way to his “dead letter file” over the years.

a frazzled therapist leaves her abusive husband to start a new small town life.

an infamous, preppy, womanizing, frat boy-bigot-turned-radio-personality goes missing, and nobody seems to mind.

a beloved former school teacher with a mysterious past opens up an unconventional smoking cessation clinic.

these are a few of the eccentric characters in jill mccorkle‘s carolina moon, a 1996 national bestseller that made its perfectly-timed entrance into my world just a few weeks ago.

i enjoyed the book, which is no surprise given that mccorkle considers lee smith to be her mentor and harper lee’s to kill a mockingbird to be the supreme example of literary genius. but the real gift to me was the interview with the author included in the back of the book. about the structure of carolina moon, an interwoven collection of narratives and letters voiced and penned by a handful of bizarre characters, the interviewer asks,

“the structure of this novel is perhaps its most striking aspect; reviewers seem to either applaud its ingenuity or criticize it as confusing. if you could do it over again, would you have changed the way you handled the plot structure?”

to this question, mccorkle replies,

“no. it really is the novel I wanted to write. if I had had the luxury of an everyday writing schedule it might have turned out differently, but this novel was written during a very busy time and there was no way for me to shape the story as if it was one big lump of clay. i was making tiny little pictures and hoping that eventually they would all connect.”

as someone who writes sermons during a “very busy time,” and as someone who dreams of publishing a book someday, i was simultaneously inspired by mccorkle’s answer and curious as to what she was doing in the years preceding the 1996 publication. could she have perhaps been the mother of small children?

i found my answer on the writers write internet writing journal, where in a 2000 interview mccorkle explained,

“before my children were born, i had the luxury of–if not a daily schedule–at least a more structured schedule. now i just write whenever i can get the time. i’m constantly taking notes and writing smidgets of things, because, in desperation, that’s the only way i can get there.”

well jill, (can I call you jill?), thank you for this bit of honesty. clearly you “got there,” and so then just maybe i can get there too.

maybe we can all get there, whether we have writing aspirations or not. after all, aren’t we all, as mothers, simply making tiny little pictures and hoping that eventually they will all connect?

[for publication information about carolina moon, see the bibliography page located on the sidebar to your right.]