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.

torrance

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.

people are poor predictors of what will make us happy.

 it’s like that time when i was in middle school and i begged my parents for a liz claiborne purse. my new bag did not transport me into a world devoid ofangst, pimples, failed flirtations, and latin tutors. i would need something else to make me happy: a spot on the basketball team, acceptance to the college of my choice, an adventurous summer trip, a boyfriend, a husband, a house, a meaningful vocation, children, children who take long afternoon naps, decent savings, balance, and the list goes on. according to a host of articles and popular books  written by daniel gilbert and his posse of fellow harvard researchers , i am not alone in my often misguided planning for a happy future.

“we treat our future selves as though they were our children, spending most of the hours of most of our days constructing tomorrows that we hope will make them happy. rather than indulging in whatever strikes our momentary fancy, we take responsibility for the welfare of our future selves, squirreling away portions of our paychecks each month so they can enjoy their retirements on a putting green, jogging and flossing with some regularity so they can avoid coronaries and gum grafts, enduring dirty diapers and mind-numbing repetitions of the cat in the hat so that someday theywill have fatcheeked grandchildren to bounce on their laps” (from dan gilbert’s stumbling upon happiness).

of course, we cannot simply forget about the future. i’m going to keep brushing my teeth twice a day to ward off future root canals. but gilbert’s findings could bring about a paradigm shift for people of every age and stage. perhaps the empty-nester who is plotting out a happy retirement, the young mother who is pining for the day all of her children are out of diapers, and the upstart professional who revels in visions of a corner office would live differently if they believed that,

“bad things don’t affect us as profoundly as we expect them to. that’s true of good things, too. we adapt very quickly to either” (from a new york times interview of dan gilbert).

last week, i started making a list of things that make me happy. these are not things that i imagine will evoke happiness in the future. rather, when i am in the middle of my every day life, and when i have a sudden flash of awareness that i am, in that very moment, experiencing happiness, i write down what i’m doing. so far, it appears that i will not have to finagle an extraordinary future to enjoy my life. as it turns out, i am happy when i am folding clothes on the bed while my children are snuggling together watching word world. i am happy reading outside in the sun during my children’s nap times. i am happy when i am doing things that are athletic. i am happy when i’m sharing a bag of kettle corn with a good friend. i am happy when i am pondering a new idea.

this is helpful information, since the enterprise of parenting is so future-oriented. i will always probably be a poor predictor of what makes me happy. but, perhaps, with a little more awareness, i will begin to recognize happiness when i stumble upon it, not in far off dreams of  diaper- free days, not in fleeting visions of a more career-focused life, but in the present moment, as messy and harried and beautiful as it is.

my new friend caroline recently shared with me that many of her women role models don’t seem to balance love and work as much as they appear to be merely surviving love and work. implied in this statement is the notion that mothers are in a constant state of reaction to life’s curve balls: forgotten lunches, toddler illnesses, workplace dramas, heaps of laundry, et cetera. the holy grail (which i often mistake for a wine glass or champagne cocktail) then becomes that rare stillness that gives rise to intentionality. it’s the chance to act, and not react. it’s about making wise choices about those few moving parts in our lives that we can actually control.

for me, it’s difficult to imagine what a life of balance could look like when mere survival seems to be the most prevalent motherhood mode. but in the words of carolyn g. heilbrun, “what matters is that lives do not serve as models; only stories do that.” essentially, even as most of us are caught up in the business of reaction and survival, we have moments when our thinking shifts, when we trust our instincts, make counter-cultural choices, take charge, and replace conventions and expectations with trail-blazing honesty. even those of us who live lives of survival have a story or two to tell about a moment of balance. and in the words of my new friend caroline, “stories take us beyond abstract theory and into the world of the living and integrating.”

there are tales of a new way lurking in every person’s history; there is potential of trail-blazing honesty in every encounter. the key is to extract these stories from others and to share our own. when we do this we are collectively constructing a new narrative — one that has the power to draw us out of survival mode, even if it’s just for one moment at a time.

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

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.] 

as my parents tell the story, i began begging them for piano lessons just a few weeks before i turned four. when my requests persisted long enough to surpass the lifespan of most preschool whims, they took me to my first lesson. i had four different teachers in 13 years, during which time i discovered that i inherited the “playing by ear” gene from my great aunt billie. this discovery corresponded with my prideful refusal to practice and my less-than-enthusiastic attitude toward reading music… but i digress.

now that my little monkey is living out the last few weeks of his third year, i find myself hoping that he will clearly articulate or exhibit some sort of special interest in something. i don’t expect him to be a prodigy, nor do i want to usurp all of his free time (and mine) with a slew of resume-building activities. i do not want to enter him in pageants or groom him for the u.s. olympic swim team. but i do feel responsible for introducing him to activities that he might enjoy and arenas where he might experience success. these expectations seem reasonable enough, right?

but bordering on ridiculous is my somewhat unreasonable dream that one of my sons become a bluegrass fiddle player. this dream is merely the resurrected form of my own desires to play the fiddle. these desires died a painful death after a three-month fiddle rental and the fact that the excruciating series of cat mating sounds that followed caused my husband to question his decision to marry me. i now surround my children with bluegrass fiddle music and take every opportunity to impart to them my appreciation for its beauty. in my more generous moments, i have even been known to expand my hopeful projections to include instruments such as the banjo and the mandolin.

even so, i agree with ayelet waldman, who writes in her book, bad mother, that “the point of a life, any life, is to figure out what you are good at, and what makes you happy, and, if you are very fortunate, spend your life doing those things” (205).

it is my job to help my children do this. it is not my job to raise little people to fill the gaps in my own talents and sense of happiness.  i know this. and i know how to use the cd player to fill my home with bluegrass music, and how to play the piano by ear (thank you mom, dad, and great aunt billie). what i am less sure about is how to weave together the monkey’s leanings and my instincts, how to avoid over programming him and under programming him, and how to help him gracefully accept the inevitable failures that are mile markers on the way to success.

thoughts?

the monkey fully embraced life in the mountains. he spent the month clad in silly bands, lanyard necklaces, shoes that were perpetually wet from creek walking, and a wide, sticky, ice-creamy grin. nothing spells camp like tight sweaty ringlets, the constant talk of  counselors and fellow campers, and a slew of silly songs playing on repeat inside an almost-four-year-old head.

meanwhile, the bird picked up his new favorite hobby: throwing rocks in the creek. he replaced his barely distinguishable babble with real words that actually made sense in context, and thereby joined fellow toddlers throughout time and space in demonstrating for their elders what a miracle the human grasp of language really is. he had his own pair of perpetually wet shoes and his own allotment of silly bands (thanks to the monkey). like his brother, he waltzed into clubs every day to a chorus of counselors’ welcomes.

is is possible that my children did an entire years’ worth of growing up in one month? from certain angles i took in their shaggy hair and occasional nonchalance and imagined their impending teenage years. i saw that what my friend steve says is true: “with parenting, the days go by slowly but the years go by quickly.”

or perhaps it was my own relaxed, campy persona that gave me pause to take a broader view of my children and their progress. with both children in childcare for the first time, i found myself hiking on mountain trails, practicing yoga in a local studio, and sipping coffee on the porch. this time afforded me a glimpse into a future stage, with increased spare time and possibilities.

parenting’s relentless onslaught of joy and duty seems to evoke a delayed sort of processing. there is no time to sift through the realities of one stage until the next stage is dawning. i have been a parent for almost four years now, but this recent preview of the future is the first real glimpse i have gotten of life beyond babyhood. i was able to remember what i liked to do before i had kids and imagine a life that will return me to those things someday.

but for now i am content to re-enter our memphis routine — the onslaught of  joy and duty. however, i do this with the new knowledge that though the days go by slowly, the years truly do fly by, carrying the sweet sounds of baby babble with them.

one of the best parts about spending the month in western north carolina is getting to spend time with my brother, who lives in asheville. and one of the best things about his status here as a local is that he takes us on adventures that cannot be found on trail maps and in guidebooks. who knew that there are hidden trail heads on exit ramps and places on earth where poison ivy and private property give way to scenes like this?

the monkey and bird were experiencing  their first day of clubs, a day camp at montreat, while the adults were embarking upon waterfall hike. but i could not help but be distracted by daydreams of a future time, when my little boys will be big boys, old enough and eager to climb the rocks and dunk their heads under the rushing water. sometimes there is so much promise in the future that it is difficult to stay in the present.

in our current stage of toddlerhood, afternoon naps, and the boys’ almost constant need for assistance, it is so easy to get swept away by far off notions that someday, adult conversation and uninterrupted sleep will re-enter our lives. and then i catch myself forgetting that this time of sloppy nose-kisses, uninhibited delight, the honest articulation of fears, sweet sweaty ringlets, triumph over small accomplishments, and the natural wisdom of innocence is fleeting and precious.  i know i will long for this stage when it is gone.

when we were on our way to the mountains on friday, i received an email from the rental company pressuring us to decide upon our rental plans for next year. never mind that we had not even begun our mountain adventure for the current year. never mind that we were, at the time, simply trying to make a bag of pipe cleaners last for the remainder of our trek down I-40.

the world will lure us prematurely into the future if we haven’t already wandered there ourselves. for me, being fully present in the moment is something i talk about and value, though i find it almost impossible to do! apparently, as i learned on our hike, wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with the words, “BE PRESENT” does not automatically calm the multi-tasking mind.

funny how this does, though:

i take solace in the fact that there are moments scattered here and there that seem to stand outside of time. thank goodness for a spontaneous plunge into frigid water; the surrender of the bird, who stops resisting his nap long enough to rest his head on my chest; and the first cup of coffee enjoyed on a tree-top porch.

speaking of coffee, let us not underestimate its importance when it comes to living in the present and parenting small children.

i returned last night from the young clergy women’s conference, the topic of which was “leading as ourselves.” as i sat in the sub-artic environs of our candler divinity school classroom and looked around at my fellow girl preachers, i was struck by both awe and jealousy. many of these women work full time in the church or other para-church settings. some of them have children, some of them work part-time or half-time, but very few seemed to be on the piecemeal job plan as i am, stringing together a haphazard collection of part-time gigs with the trials and rewards of stay-at-home motherhood.

i learned later, of course, that i am not the only one holding my life and life’s work together with odd combinations of pipe cleaners, vestments, therapy, wine, and a steam mop. the room was full of those who long, as i did, to have children; those who struggle for balance of all kinds; those who are facing transitions; and those who are wrestling with issues of identity. 

i did not know all of this on day one, though, when one of our beloved speakers, melissa clodfelter, asked us what leadership-related topics we would like to cover in our time together. so, i raised my hand and explained that i am often trying to lead from the margins. because of my simultaneous frustration and delight with the church and my desire to spend the majority of my time with the monkey and the bird, i am never central to the church’s power structures. i often feel like an outsider, and i wonder if i can ever actually effectively lead from this position. though i felt as if i were speaking only for myself at the conference, i know that the world is full of women who feel marginalized in the workplace, whether for reasons of choice or unfair circumstance. what kind of leadership do we, the women on the fringes, have to offer?

i was relieved when melissa answered that the margins are the places from which true leadership emerges. it is only by stepping outside of the structures that rule our world that we gain the perspective needed to change things. fitting in is not a prerequisite for effective leadership, as evidenced by gandhi, martin luther king jr., and jesus christ, himself! in fact, affecting change requires an uncomfortable, liminal type of existance.

i am beginning to see that leadership, from my own personal margins might look like this:

• changing the world, by raising boys who are emotionally intelligent, compassionate, and justice-seeking. brown eyes over scrambled eggs, and all that…
• remaining on the fringes of church in order to speak from a place of perspective and insight.
• remaining connected to the church so that my perspective and insight will matter.
• writing here about what it’s like to try fashion a real, meaningful life that honors my own leanings as well as the legacies handed down to me by superwomen, fifties housewives, and everyone in between.

but mostly, i’m beginning to be thankful that i never quite fit in anywhere. in an odd sort of way, i am in good company. and there is meaning to be found in the margins and proclaimed to the world. thanks for joining me in this process — this little makeshift revolution.

my friend and boss, jarad, came up with these few lines the other day. they came just in time to remind me that my work in the home is important. i hope they do the same thing for you.

it doesn’t take a whole village
or a new paradigm
or any other grand thing
to make the world better,
not if the world is sitting across the counter-
brown eyes over scrambled eggs-
looking at you.

(the world happens
just like that.)

if you’ve ever heard the song, “one voice” by the wailin’ jennys, you know that it’s the kind of music capable of convincing people, if but for a moment, that life is redemptive and beautiful, that the human community is an ever-flowing source of support and love, and that god is the best possible kind of mystery.

so, tonight (tuesday june 22nd), kimberly baker, katherine baldwin, steve berger, jarad bingham, martha kelly, john mcclure, and virginia murphy’s playback memphis improv theature ensemble are joining me in turning this beautiful song into a worship service.

pie in the sky
gathering and pie at 6:00 p.m.
worship and kids’ programming at 6:30
5530 shady grove road (at the corner of shady grove and yates)

whether you are spiritual, religious, or somewhere in between, this service is for you. come check out what happens when beautiful music and a crazy idea are coupled with soulful voices, and improv theatre. it will be pie in the sky…