KIDS // PARENTING // SABBATH
IX. Kids’ Books
The Peculiar Miss Pickett, Nancy R. Julian. 1972, 91 pages ***
Miss Pickerell Goes to Mars, Ellen MacGregor. 1951, 94 pages ***
Chronicles of Narnia, C. S. Lewis. *****
This summer my boys were 7, 5, and 2. As soon as school was out, we began reading one chapter together of Chronicles of Narnia before bed most nights, beginning with The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and finishing with The Last Battle later this fall. One of the adults would read while everyone else listened, in varying degrees. The 7-turned-8 year old thought they were fantastic – still emphatically his “favorite books ever!” (And he is emphatic and enthusiastic about hardly anything.) The 5-turned-6 year old loved them. The 2-turned-3 year old was impatient at times, but mostly would just eventually fall asleep to them, having read “his” other book or two before we began.
Ramona the Brave, Beverly Cleary. 1975, 190 pages ****
Our family has a particular fondness for Ramona because she has such a similar {strong} personality to one of our boys. It is clear to me that Cleary either had that personality herself, had a close friend or family member with that personality, or raised a child with that personality. That said, I learn so much from Ramona’s mom, Mrs. Quimby, in each of the Ramona books. Ramona the Brave is my clear favorite. It makes my husband and me laugh and cry at how much it seems we are raising a male-Ramona; it gives us a much deeper appreciation and love for him. After one of my Enneagram retreats this year, to decompress, I pulled it off the bookshelf in a coffeeshop and read it in one sitting.
Ramona Forever, Beverly Cleary. 1984, 182 pages ****
James and the Giant Peach, Roald Dahl. 1961, 119 pages ****
X. Parenting
Parenting from the Inside Out, Siegel & Hartzell. 2003, 250 pages ***
The main thing that I remember from this book is that the authors basically defined love as holding someone in your mind’s eye (or being thoughtful of them and what is best for them) even when you’re not with them. I really resonated with that and felt challenged and reinvigorated to parent my children with depth and thoughtfulness and empathy.
Parenting without Borders, Christine Gross-Loh. 2013, 270 pages ****
Raised amidst the influences of both American and Korean cultures, Gross-Loh compares and contrasts the parenting styles, traditions, assumptions, etc. of several diverse cultures, including but not limited to Japanese, German, French, Korean, American. I found the book very thought-provoking as it challenged my western status quo. It helped me think outside of the box and get to the roots of why I parent the way I parent. It might be a bit of a difficult read for the idealists among us, but just keep leaning into the idea of small changes that can make the best of what we have…
XI. Sabbath
Sabbath as Resistance, Walter Brueggemann. 2014, 89 pages ****
Brueggemann is simply a brilliant human being. His insights always challenge me and my ways of thinking. This little book had on it a big call: to contemporize and to argue for the essential nature of the fourth commandment (“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy.”), what Bruggemann regards as the hinge command between the first three (regarding how to relate to God) and the last six (regarding how to relate to others). He did an excellent job, as he always does, of demonstrating the Way of Yahweh as opposed to the oppressive, insatiable gods of culture / today.
The Sabbath, Abraham Joshua Heschel. 1951, 101 pages ****
A classic which hadn’t grabbed my attention until this year when a few of the books I read recommended it. While I read, I had at least one of those moments of sensing that Heschel is on to something utterly life-altering: that Time does not move or change, but that we change as we move through Time. Heschel calls for an entire reorientation to Time, especially in a respect for the sacredness of Time (via Sabbath) rather than our usual recognition of the sacred within our Stuff (i.e. our Bibles) and our Spaces (i.e. our church buildings) only.
The Sabbath World, by Judith Shulevitz. 2010, 217 pages ***