dear friends,

i heard my friend, mark, mention a few years ago that he takes on the practice of writing one letter per day during the season of lent. since then, i have spent several lenten seasons writing letters, and I have found that connecting with others in this way is also a profound (and fun) way to connect with god.

speaking of fun, my friend, susan, and I are up to our ears in the process of opening a new fabric store! We hope to be selling bright, modern, quilting cottons (and much more) at our 688 south cox location at the end of april/beginning of may.

so… in a crazy attempt to combine my love of god and fabric AND gather god energy in our wonderful new space, I am having two…

LENTEN LETTER WORKSHOPS.

tuesday, feb. 28th from 6-8:30 & wed., march 7th from 6-8:30.

$10 per night, and all materials are included.

we’ll talk a little bit about the theology and spirituality surrounding the practice of letter-writing, and then we’ll get out the fabric scraps, sewing machines, etc. and create little works of art, sure to elicit smiles from recipients and postal workers alike!

no prior sewing experience is necessary. We’ll be learning/applying a technique that is foundational in quilting. Space is limited. Email me to sign up (themsrevolution(at)gmail(dot)com).

stay tuned for more info about “sew memphis,” as we will be called. the facebook page and web page are coming soon.

love,

mary allison

every year on new year’s eve, andy and i (and some of our dear friends) set personal intentions for the year ahead by giving it a name.  perhaps the most significant year-naming for me was “the year of rearranging,” which resulted in this proud post.

but the year of rearranging is over. i am now 19 days into “the year of gratitude.”

if you are rolling your eyes with associations of new-agey, blissed-out, shallow pronouncements of happiness, designed to mask all that is wrong with this world, STOP RIGHT NOW. if you were thinking more along the lines of  the dalai lama, you can stop that too. sadly, he and i have little in common.

i simply found myself, during those last few days of 2011, on my knees (not praying but scraping already-chewed-gum off of the kitchen floor); having a mountain top experience (wherein i observed my children happily eating greasy goldfish crackers, on the couch, in my bedroom, under a two-weeks-high mountain of clean laundry); in the wake of a come-to-jesus-talk with my husband (that didn’t involve jesus at all but rather another baby, the third one that we won’t be attempting to have due to our divergent viewpoints about how many people we want in this household); and i realized that much of what enrages me about my life has to do with the way that i form, internalize, solidify, and live by GREAT EXPECTATIONS. and by “great” i mean sometimes soul-killing.

my friend, erika, gave me a little ledger for christmas where there is a space to name what i am grateful for each day. i confess that i have no idea where i put that thing. but it (and she) inspired me to spend the year taking an honest look at the beauty and bounty that is instead of the beauty and bounty that is not.

the best thing about the year of gratitude is that it does not come with any presumptions of forward progress. all i have to do each day is name one moment in which i witness a spark of the divine outside of myself and one moment in which i witness a spark of the divine inside of myself (the latter is the more difficult). i send these brief musings to myself in daily emails, which, unlike all of the other emails in my inbox, i do not expect myself to read unless i want to.

so far i have been grateful for things as shallow and profound as yoga, the bird’s third birthday, trader joe’s dark-chocolate-pistachio-covered toffee, our new montreat house, and this song. andy’s year-naming has given me much to celebrate as well, but more on that later.

this is less about an attitude change (though one might say that i need one!) than it is about clarity. both of my vocations, motherhood and ministry, take place where great expectations meet mixed messages about the value of tradition and the right way to do things. i cannot distill any of that into something that makes sense, but i can intentionally notice the good in my life.

it’s about doing something daily that is positive, not overwhelming, and just for me.

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.

two weeks ago, back when the world was new, the act of fetching the bird from school came with the added boost of accolades from his teachers about his “near perfect behavior.” in fact, i owe the bird a lot of credit for my easy transition into campus ministry in january. he surprised me with his instant comfort with school rituals, peers, and even group nap time.

that was before he grabbed a handful of the face of another child who was “using his outside voice inside.” there were no accolades that day, of course. just instructions to cut the bird’s fingernails and to insist upon good behavior at home.

we’ve de-clawed our child, who now spends 87.5 percent of his life in time out for clocking his brother on the head with various objects. with every school pick-up, i hope for a report of improved behavior. but the bird is consistent in his resolve to fully embrace the “terrible twos.” it seems that in parenting, there are no immediate results.

there are no immediate results in campus ministry either, as it turns out. i am wrapping up my first semester at the university of memphis, and my offerings of engaging programs and free food are not exactly wooing the masses. i was reporting this phenomenon to a member of my campus ministry board last week, and he encouraged me to think of my work as the act of planting seeds.

i burst into immediate laughter as i recalled what a friend had said to me just the day before. she was surveying my front yard, a space that was completely under construction two years ago due to a drainage issue. i, a novice gardener, researched what plants would be happiest in our wet soil and in full sun. i made dozens of trips to nurseries and googled the names of the foliage on the shelves. and then, much to the entertainment of friends, family, and neighbors, i made what several of them described as the beginning gardener’s classic mistake. i planted one of everything. (i really planted about three of everything but this fact didn’t seem to matter.)

as my friend was surveying my yard, which is now full of all sorts of interesting leaves and textures and colors, she said, “your yard looks great! it’s almost as if you knew what you were doing!”

i guess the same goes for all types of seed planting – parenting, campus ministry, et cetera. there are no immediate results. in the present, we just have to persist with near-knowledge and experimental expertise. then, if the sun shines just right, something beautiful will emerge.

 

elizabeth agonized over her decision to return to full-time work in 2010 as a certified financial planner. she feared that her children would not transition well to aftercare, and she was right. seven-year-old A confessed that she “has never felt so lonely in her entire life.” W, age-five, regressed and started wetting his pants at school every day. “we were all grief-stricken,” elizabeth laments.

in her book perfect madness, judith warner describes the silences that fell in her interview groups with mothers because,

“there are things that are sayable and unsayable about motherhood today. it is permissible, for example, to talk a lot about guilt, but not a lot about ambition.” there is an underlying assumption that we “cannot really challenge the american culture of rugged individualism… we lack the most basic notions now of what a different kind of culture might look or feel like” (31-32).

elizabeth broke the silence and confided both her guilt and her ambition to her dear friend angela, a teacher by trade, who was working part-time in addition to the full-time responsibilities of raising her two nine-year-old boys. together, the two hatched a plan that does challenge the american culture of rugged individualism. elizabeth withdrew A and W from aftercare, and angela quit her part-time job to integrate A and W into her family’s weekday life.  

 elizabeth admits that she did not put much stock in the initial chatter about such an arrangement. “how would this mother of two be able to go to three different schools every afternoon, much less herd this group of four children?” she questioned. “i knew i could never do it myself.”

but in december, angela made it clear that she was serious about the idea of caring for A and W. she approached elizabeth with a proposal, and the two talked candidly about fair compensation, day-to-day details, and looming fears. 

“i will always remember sitting in [angela’s] kitchen making this agreement, and the enormous feeling of relief that washed over me,” says elizabeth. “i started to cry; i was so grateful. when angela responded that ‘we are helping each other,’ that really resonated with me. we’ve been helping each other ever since.”

angela describes the process as an easy decision, informed, in part, by her own experience of returning to full-time work when her boys were five years old. “it was tough on them. they would cry and pitch fits whenever they had to go to aftercare. elizabeth’s situation struck a familiar chord,” she explains. “her family was in need, and i was in a position that allowed me to help her. i am very comfortable looking after children!”

on a typical day, angela fetches A from school at 2:45, drives eight to twelve minutes to pick up her boys, S and L from school, and finally makes her way to a third school to pick up W. once her honda accord is packed to the gills, the entourage returns to elizabeth’s house, and the older kids finish their homework. angela uses this time to practice numbers, letters, sounds with W. she even unloads the dishes if they’re clean! all of the children have after-school activities that vary throughout the year. A currently plays soccer soccer on wednesdays and S has basketball on mondays and wednesdays. for a change of scenery, the group gathers at angela’s house on friday afternoons, snow days, holidays, and other vacation days during the school year.

“the kids get along pretty well,” angela muses. “they are like typical brothers and sister. not every day is perfect, but it’s always an adventure! A and L play very well together. W really looks up to S, and S takes being a big-brother-type seriously. he is always talking about W, and he even taught him how to shoot a basketball and jump rope.”

both angela and elizabeth credit the the success  of their arrangement to continued flexibility and open conversation. they have tweaked the details of their partnership as needed. angela recommends this kind of innovation only in cases where “both moms communicate openly and go with the flow. nothing is ever the same twice with this many kids in the mix. everyone is growing and evolving, and i think it’s important to keep this in mind.”

both moms describe the entire collaboration as a MakeShift moment. from impromptu rainy day walks that combat cabin fever, to the occasional depositing of children at elizabeth’s office, the little crew of six is making it all up as they go. 

on collaberative mothering, perhaps elizabeth says it best:

whenever i watch a show on lions or elephants or primates, i get sad.  i see how other creatures nurture their young together. other creatures have not forgotten that it takes a village, a pride, a pod or a pack, to raise young. yet in our “modern” society, we have alienated mothers from each other, and mothering has become quite an isolating experience. having this relationship with angela makes me feel like we, as mothers, are helping each other, the way god intended.  it is such a blessing to 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?

when andy and i were pining away for children (in between jumbo margaritas at el porton or after the seventh consecutive episode of 24), we looked forward to things like playing outside with them, showing them our favorite mountains, and generally introducing them to all that is enjoyable and beautiful. even then, i knew that disciplining children would be my weakness. i looked upon the prospect of setting rules and enforcing time-outs as a dreadful necessity. and now that i am four years into parenthood, i would like to congratulate my twenty-something self for her accurate foresight. setting rules and enforcing time-outs is, in fact, a dreadful necessity.

the child experts say that children thrive under the presence of two equally present conditions: high nurture and high structure. the former is something that comes easily to me, and especially to andy. we try to mirror and help the kids name their feelings. we plan ahead for shared experiences that are enjoyable and beautiful. but when it comes to the latter, there is much less planning ahead. though the kids rely on a pretty steady routine and schedule, the discipline piece is often spur of the moment (and ineffective). in the grand game of parenting, i make up the rules as i go and announce them to the younger players, who return my half-hearted efforts with half-hearted compliance.

enter the wii.

after the second week of house arrest due to sub-arctic temperatures, andy and the kids braved the icy roads and returned home with a wii. it was fun for a while. there were family bowling tournaments and ridiculous collective attempts at nailing m.c. hammer’s dance moves. and then, without warning, the monkey stumbled into a deep, black, techy hole, and nobody has heard from his former self since. as recently as last week, he could be heard uttering heartbreaking phrases such as,

 “i don’t want to play outside in the warm sunshine. i want to play wii.” 

the wiihas brought the need for discipline and limit-setting in our home to a level that is far beyond the reaches of spur-of-moment-rule-making. so in a reluctant act of planning and plotting, andy and i discussed and created this chart to regulate wii time and create incentives for the monkey to act like a civilized human being.

though this is not the hand-held chart that the tech-crazed monkey requested, (he wanted one “like a smart phone”), it is actually becoming the key to pleasant life around here. the monkey earns stickers for being sweet and cooperative, and each sticker translates into ten minutes of wii time. he can earn up to an hour per day, and a strategically-placed timer above the wii lets him know when his time is up. i am utterly shocked that the monkey loves this new system. he loves rules. he loves structure. he now gets himself dressed, takes bottles to the recycling bin, makes his own breakfast, and quits playing the wii when asked, all for precious stickers and minutes spent clutching the white plastic control.

it turns out that my twenty-something self was only half right.  setting rules and enforcing time-outs is, in fact, a dreadful necessity. but the absence of structure and discipline is fifty times more dreadful. rules simply make life easier. and we can’t have all that is enjoyable and beautiful without them.

one of the best parts of facilitating this little makeshift blog is that readers regularly send me recent and provocative articles about the state of modern motherhood. thank you, and keep ’em coming!

the last two articles i received are friction-inciting commentaries on the cultural construction of motherhood. one deliniates the high child nurturing standards held by american women. the other investigates the high career-related standards held by this same set. taken together, these articles reveal a veritable fog of ridiculous expectations obscuring nearly every aspect of women’s lives.

the first is a wall street journal article by erica jong describing the attachment parenting craze as a sort of self-inflicted prison for mothers, who, despite their best kid-wearing, cloth-diapering, baby-food-making efforts are never able to meet the socially accepted standard for mothering, which was created in large part by dr. sears. but no matter what one’s thoughts are regarding attachment parenting, it’s hard to disagree with jong’s lament: “rarely does a new mother hear these golden words: “do the best you can; there are no rules.”

the second article is jessica olien’s slate magazine exploration into the culture of motherhood in the netherlands, where part-time work, outings with friends, and self-care are celebrated ways for moms to spend time. as opposed to the guilt felt by american mothers who remove themselves from the full-time workforce, dutch women do not seem to link their self-esteems to their workforce prowess. the conclusion is that the drive that american women have assumed in order to further women’s progress has “set us up for a world in which none of us is having any fun.”

olien writes,

“…american women as a whole are not getting any happier. if anything, the studies show that we are emotionally less well-off than we were before.”

high standards have the potential to launch us into more meaningful, productive, and useful lives. but perhaps something has gotten lost in translation between our feminist fore mothers, who constructed domestic co-ops and deconstructed glass ceilings, and those modern women who have inherited big tasks that have somehow become detached from the big dreams that birthed them. what was once a grand vision of equality seems now to feel more like a universal clamoring for perfection in every arena. the guilt that ensues squelches the kind of big dreaming that women once had for the state of the world. and so, in the words of jong, we reduce our visions to the scope of our homes and families. “[we] substitute our own small world for the world as a whole.”  

standards ought to be the bi-product of dreams, the way they came into this world in the first place. so perhaps the key to generating a world that is fairer (and for heaven’s sake, MORE FUN) is to leave our faithful posts as the keepers of the rules and ideals. if we join the ranks of the dreamers, perhaps the standards we generate will make more sense in our contexts. perhaps standards will not imprison us but free us. but the only way to get there is to start where the women before us started: with a vision of a better life.

if i could imbue my children with one virtue, one tool to be used in the face of life’s wonder and challenge, it would be CREATIVITY. it takes creativity to do things like improve the economy, convey truth and meaning, patch an oil leak, develop a vaccine, negotiate a real estate transaction, keep a baby off the stairs, generate personal narratives of hope and healing, wire light fixtures, and the list goes on.

though i want my children to be creative, this does not mean that they are required to be artists, chefs, or musicians, though creativity might very well encompass such delightful propensities. i want the monkey and the bird to be capable of “divergent thinking (generating many unique ideas) and then convergent thinking (combining those ideas into the best result).” this is the language used by e. paul torrance  in his longitudinal creativity study that began in the fifties. according to a recent newsweek article entitled the creativity crisis by bronson and merryman, torrance’s assessment of children’s creative tendencies (CQ tests) proved to be accurate over time and are still the “gold standard” in measuring creativity today. however, while IQ test scores are on the rise, CQ test results show that the creativity of american children has been on the decline since the nineties.

the cause of this decline is unknown, though there is speculation that kids’ increased time in front of the television and video games could be a culprit, as could the school system’s rigid and standardized measures of success. but it’s also possible that common misperceptions about creativity have contributed to its decline. one such misperception is that creativity is something that pertains to the arts, not the sciences. another is that it should be separate from actual, factual learning. and finally, many folks falsely believe that creativity cannot be taught, a notion successfully disputed by three recent university studies conducted in georgia, oklahoma, and taiwan.

such  information is enlightening to this mother, whose home is filled with music, cooking projects, and art supply explosions at every turn. but fostering my boys’ creativity is about more than making pumpkin bread with my children (something we do often). it’s also about helping them to solve problems by engaging all the parts of their brains (something we do much less often). this means that the constant “why is the sky blue” questions are more than just annoying. they are gateways to more questions, brainstorming, further research, an atmosphere of continuous learning, and the celebration of curiosity. according to the above mentioned newsweek article,

“highly creative adults tended to grow up in families embodying opposites. parents encouraged uniqueness, yet provided stability. they were highly responsive to kids’ needs, yet challenged kids to develop skills. this resulted in a sort of adaptability: in times of anxiousness, clear rules could reduce chaos—yet when kids were bored, they could seek change, too. in the space between anxiety and boredom was where creativity flourished.”

 i’m not sure how to provide for my children “the space between anxiety and boredom.”  but i am going to try to introduce them to this thought sequence developed by creativity theorists: problem-finding, fact-finding, idea-finding, and solution-finding. and because i am making up these policies as i go along, there will still be pumpkin bread and art supply explosions. this is not about getting these boys into college. it’s about teaching them how to get themselves out of trouble. it’s about helping them to construct meaningful lives in the face of life’s wonder and challenge.

 for further reading on this subject, check out“more than cupcakes: supporting your child’s creative potential,” an interview with dr. don treffinger.

as someone who seeks middle ground motherhood between the extremes of june cleaver and superwoman, i must take a minute to reflect on the recent death of barbara billingsly, the woman who brought june to life, warm rolls to the dinner table, and visions of peaceable family existence into the american consciousness.

 june never ordered takeout. she never poured herself a glass of wine at exactly five o’clock. she never forgot to shower or brush her teeth. she gave her full attention to her children and husband, even while whipping up culinary delights and wearing recently ironed clothing. some viewers saw reflections of their own family lives in the cleaver household and derived a sense of okay-ness from such screen-lit similarity. others escaped their own family dysfunction and entered a miraculous world where all conflicts were resolved neatly at episode’s end. for all of the flack that i have given billingsly’s character for helping to create monolithic and impossible standards for wives and mothers, even i must admit one thing. the mothers who came before us, those who gave expression to their gifts and desires during a time when there were fewer options for doing so, cannot be faulted for aspiring for and achieving near-perfection in the realms over which they had charge. there is something to be said for doing a good job, even if that job is more narrowly defined.

yesterday’s “my thoughts” column by bill haltom  in memphis’ commercial appealwas about the reassurance june cleaver brought into american homes during the time of sputnik, bomb shelters, and fears of war with russia. haltom writes,

“And then there was June, the quintessential 1950s mom. While Sputnik in the skies above terrorized us, the very down-to-earth June Cleaver reassured us that everything was going to be OK. She wore pink dresses and beautiful white pearls. She stayed at home while Ward went to the office and Wally and Beav went to school with Larry and Eddie…. 

It was the American family at its best. It was America at its best — America at work, at school, at peace, at home.”

was this really “the american family at its best?” perhaps this was merely television at its best — distracting, inspiring, giving viewers a brief respite from their anxieties. this kind of simplistic nostalgia is unhelpful for those of us who are attempting to take the realities of today — the thrilling and overwhelming abundance of choices many women now possess — and construct authentic lives of meaning and contribution. 

i’d like to think that barbara billingsly was willing to re-imagine women’s roles in a way that her character, june, was not. perhaps this kind of resolve is what led her to play the cameo part of “the jive lady” in the movie airplane in 1980. i leave you with this little clip. perhaps i could even say that it is american film at it’s best…