by Rev. Dr. Marilyn Sewell

A sermon given April 13, 2008

First Unitarian Church

Portland, Oregon

CALL TO WORSHIP

Good morning!

We come together this morning

To give thanks,

To make confession and ask for forgiveness,

And to be reminded once again of our highest aspirations.

Come now, and let us worship together.

This morning I’d like to begin with three stories about three children, all of whom are in trouble.  One is middle-class, one is working-class, one is upper class.

At a conference recently, a minister friend told me a horrifying story about his young adult son.  It seems that the son is addicted to video games.  He’s in his early twenties, and for a couple of years, he had spent all of his time in a virtual world, with virtual people, trying to accomplish virtual feats of honor and glory.  He had become grossly obese, and his health was in danger.  His parents told him that he could return home on two conditions:  (1) that he would look for a job; and (2) that he would give up his computer.  For months, he refused—he just could not give up his computer or his games.   Now, he’s finally back at home again, and in recovery.

Story number two— these are the words of a twelve-year-old African American girl who had been bussed to a previously all-white Boston School,

"I guess I’m doin’ all right...  A lot of time, though, I wish I could walk out of that school and find myself a place where there are no whites, no black folk, no people of any kind!  I mean, a place where I’d be able to sit still and get my head together; a place where I could walk and walk, and I’d be walking on grass, not cement with glass and garbage around; a place where there’d be the sky and the sun, and then the moon and all those stars.  At night, sometimes, when I get to feeling real low, I’ll climb up the stairs to our roof, and I’ll look at the sky, and I’ll say, hello there, you moon and all your babies—stars, I mean!  I’m being silly, I know, but up there, I feel I can stop and think about what’s happening to me—it’s the only place I can, the only place.”[1]

There are children who live in San Francisco who have never seen the ocean.

There are children who live in Atlanta who have never seen a live chicken or a cow.

And our third story— this one is a composite of children I have read about in the N.Y. Times.  They are nine-year-olds who have decorators come into their home to discuss the décor of their bedroom.  They are first-graders who have birthday parties that cost $25,000.  They are middle-school girls who have their own hairdressers, and they insist on having their hair colored and streaked, as mother does.

These children are all deprived, in one way or another.  All three are living in a culture whose values are corrupt.  The first is connected not to people, but to a machine, his computer; the second is living in a world of concrete and steel and trash and garbage, and the third is being taught a terrible lie: that happiness comes through things and more things, rather than a giving of one’s self.  Not one of these children is connected to the natural world, and not one understands the rhythms of nature or their relationship to the earth.  And they are all suffering from the economic disparity in this country.  Even the wealthy child?  Yes, because indulging a child is just as bad as depriving a child, in terms of character development and sense of self. 

So what is it that children really require of us?  I think they require three things:  (1) to feel safe, (2) to feel loved, and (3) to feel hope.  Children get these qualities from positive contact with stable, loving adults.  Most important of all is consistent positive contact with a primary caretaker, especially in the first 18 months of life. 

We know what happens at the outward margins of neglect.  We note the responses of foster children who are moved from home to home because they are difficult; they have trouble trusting others, and they often have deficits in language and social skills, due to early patterns of neglect or abuse. 

But it’s not just the neglected or abused child who is in trouble.  The consensus of child development experts is that perhaps the majority of our children are not getting the care that they need in order to grow into healthy adults, emotionally and psychologically sound.   These researchers are pointing to a troubling shift and change in ordinary child-rearing patterns.  Since the 1970’s, there has been a huge increase in the number of families whose babies and young children are being kept in day care.  The most comprehensive studies show that the quality of day care in the vast majority of centers is not of high quality—in fact, 85 percent were found to be not of high quality for preschool children, and over 90 percent for infants and toddlers.  Childcare workers are not paid well, are often not highly motivated, and the turnover is very high, so children in such centers have little continuity of care. 

Even when children are cared for at home, there has been a shift toward impersonal care.  A report from the Kaiser Foundation revealed that children are spending an average of five to six hours a day in front of the TV or computer screen.  Alarming numbers of elementary school children— and even pre-schoolers— are being put on medication so their caretakers and teachers can deal with their “acting-out” behavior.

So what is going on here?  Should we lay this all to the wicked women’s movement that took women out of the home and ushered them into the workplace?  Let me be clear here: I am not blaming the many parents who have no alternative except to seek out day care for the children.  I am unwilling to blame mothers, who are singled out far too often when their children have problems.  I do not believe we can deny women the right to become whole persons in the world, but neither can we deny the nurturing needs of our children. 

It seems to me that our national policies have given priority to the economy and have neglected some basic needs of developing children—and now a new balance needs to be found.  Both parents should be able to share in the nurturing of the children. If one parent wishes to be the primary caretaker, so be it, or if they want to trade off—whatever.  But right now, work demands, business practices, and government policy are all on the side of the economic machine and not of the developing child.  There is no other advanced country in the world that takes so little into account the needs of children through maternity and paternity leave, on-the-job child care centers, and flexible work hours for parents. 

My research about children’s needs took me back to my own upbringing.  My parents were divorced, my mother gone, my father given to drink, but I had a lot of what a child needs.  I lived with my father and my grandparents, and my little brother and sister, in a semi-rural area, where we grew just about everything we ate.  I had a large extended family of aunts and uncles that I saw frequently, and who acted as positive role models.  In my small town where everybody knew everybody else, if I made a misstep, my grandparents would know about it before I arrived home.  Everybody watched everybody else’s children, and nobody moved away from our neighborhood, ever, the whole time I grew up.  School and church were there for me.  It was truly a community—everybody was tied to all the others and somehow responsible to them. 

Let me illustrate; I remember the day our coach left town for good.  Our whole senior class remembers that day.  He came into our English class to tell the teacher good-bye.  His right eye was swollen and purple.  It appeared that the coach—a man with movie-star good looks—was having an affair with the tall, statuesque wife of Doodlie Peterson, son of bootlegger Pee Wee Peterson, from whom my father got his bootleg whiskey, at the filling station catty-corner from the Baptist Church where I went to services twice on Sunday and then again on Wednesday night.  See what I mean?  The fabric was woven tight.

Anyway, Doodlie had beaten up our coach and had told him to get out of town that day, or he would kill him.  Knowing Doodlie, I expect he would have.  All of us in the class looked at one another.  We knew it had to be something like that.  We sighed.  Now for the rest of the school year we would have to make do with the assistant coach, who everybody agreed was not the brightest bulb on the marquee of life.

I am not saying that everything was picture perfect in that little town in North Louisiana.   I am saying that children need a sense of belonging, a sense of place; a deep knowing that they are children, and that adults are adults.

For a child to feel safe, they have to have grown-ups for parents.  They have to know that the parent has values they admire and can emulate; they have to know that boundaries will be set, or else they cannot feel safe.  And they have to know deep in their bones that their parents find life joyful and good; full of hope, not tragic and mean.

For children who don’t have such parents, maybe they have another figure—an aunt, a grandfather, a teacher, a neighbor—who models joy and hope for them. 

Who was your model?  You did not survive and flourish by accident.  Perhaps you can be that model for a child who does not have one, and can make all the difference. 

You know, I am well aware that one of the main things I do as a female minister is just to show up in this pulpit so that little girls can see me here.  I had no such model; I was well into my 40’s before I learned that I could dare walk into a pulpit and preach.  And now, when little girls come through the line after church and want to meet me, sometimes one will reach up to touch the velvet of my robe, and I smile, and I know that that is reason enough for my being here.  Little girl, you can do whatever you want to do.

I want to talk for a moment now about families living in poverty—one of every 5 children lives in such a family.  For such families, a joyful, satisfying life is a fantasy, a dream.  The greatest disgrace in this nation is what we do to our working poor.  They sometimes work at two or even three jobs, often doing the work that nobody else wants to do: cleaning the toilets, lifting the heavy boxes in the warehouses, killing the chickens, washing the dishes at the restaurants where we eat.  Economic inequity is at the root of so much of our national suffering, and so much of the suffering of our children.  You cannot separate the anguish of children from the poverty and suffering of their parents. 

So how do children grow up feeling safe and secure?  There are some basics. They need to have enough to eat, and that food needs to be healthful—and you know many, many children arrive at school hungry each day.  Children need a structured home environment, with parents who have the time and energy to nurture them.  They need to be kept away from the excesses of the popular culture—the destructive video games, the constant noise and advertisements and violence of the TV, the electronic gadgets that are such a poor substitute for human warmth, guidance, and companionship. 

They need spiritual guidance—a church school—not just the middle-class pursuits of ballet and art lessons and soccer practice.  They need some time in the natural world.  They need to be loved for who they are, intrinsically, not as products to show off or as another commodity to make their parents seem accomplished.

And the schools—how are we doing there?  Our community mirrors others around the nation; some of our schools are excellent, others are struggling.  It depends on where they are and who attends.  It depends on economics, mainly.  Consider the following: in a study of 5,000 students in Dallas, Texas, 25% of them could not name the country that borders the U.S. to the south.  In Boston, 38% could not name six states in New England.   Depending upon how you count, the number of children who drop out of high school before they finish is anywhere from 20 to 30 percent.  Where are those kids going to go?  What kind of jobs can they hope to get?  Where will they end up? 

How do children grow up with hope, with confidence in the future and their own place in that future?  Right now, we are urged by our government to live in a climate of fear.  This is most apparent when you go to the airport and are told that the security alert is up to ORANGE and you know that is just beneath RED, the highest alert possible before the President goes off to a concrete bunker somewhere.  Then you go to the security checkpoint, and you see them wanding an 89-year-old who cannot step out of his wheelchair to walk through the screening device.  You do not feel more secure, you feel that you are in some kind of bad science fiction movie!

And then, speaking of hope, the big question that our children and grandchildren and their children will be asking is: are we going to have a viable earth?  Right now, we need to begin answering that question hopefully. Yes, it is possible to change, and no, it’s not too late, and yes, Mommy and Daddy are going to do everything possible to be sure that our Earth is protected.  And then we need to do that—all of us.

Those of you who come here regularly know that every Sunday that we have Together Time, and the children are with us here in the sanctuary.  Cathy always begins the story time with the question: “And how are the children?”

That question comes from the Masai tradition.  The Masai are among the most accomplished tribes of Africa, their people deeply intelligent, their warriors fearsome.  It is telling that the traditional greeting passed between Masai warriors is “kasserian ingera,” which means, “And how are the children?”  This greeting acknowledges the high value that the Masai always place on their children’s well-being.  Even warriors with no children of their own always give the traditional answer:  “All the children are well,” meaning of course that peace and safety prevail; the young and powerless are being protected.  Masai society has not forgotten its reason for being.

I wonder how it might affect our consciousness if in our culture we took to greeting each other with this same question:  “And how are the children?”  I wonder if we heard that question and passed it along a dozen times a day, if perhaps we ourselves would begin to change our priorities.  What would it be like if the President began every press conference by answering the question, “And how are the children, Mr. President?”  What if every governor, every legislator of every state, had to answer the same question with every public appearance?  “How are the children in your state, Senator?” 

What would happen if every adult, parent and non-parent alike—every citizen—felt responsible for our children? I do not mean just our own birth children; I mean all the children; knowing that all the children are our children.  I wonder if then we could truly say without any hesitation, “The children are well, yes, all the children are well.”  And then, if the children were well, all would be well in our land.  So be it.  Amen.

PRAYER

Spirit of Life, help us to remember how it was to be little and vulnerable and dependent upon grown-ups.  May we be those grown-ups now for the children who are given to our care—all the children, for all are deserving of care, attention and love.  May we get our priorities straight in our own hearts and in our government, that our children might grow up tall and confident, with joy and hope in their hearts.  Amen.

BENEDICTION

As we leave this place today, let us give thanks for those adults who cared for us and nurtured us when we grew up, and let us pass those blessings on to the children in our lives.  Go now in love, and go in peace.

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Copyright 2008, Rev. Dr. Marilyn Sewell.  All rights reserved.