Be Holy, So That Your Children May Be Holy
Patterns for Life audiobook Chapter 8
We often default into thinking about relationships in one-to-one terms: I meets Thou in parent-child, husband-wife, and friend-friend dichotomies. But if we broaden our understanding to meditate on the Holy Trinity, it gradually unfolds that even our I-Thou relationships are not simply linear or planar, but exist within a medium, revealing a third dimension. Something lies between us. Psychologists recognize the existence of this plane and sometimes refer to is as an “interactive field” that is affected by both people involved in conversation. Observing the space between us during an exchange — Does it feel comfortable? Loving? Dangerous? — can yield emotional awareness in both parties.
But even more than mere emotion, between myself and you lies the spiritual substance of communion: our Lord and God and Savior Himself. Becoming aware of His presence in this way can sanctify even the most ordinary of encounters. What this means is that our relationships with each other and with our children are very much entwined with our relationship with the Holy Trinity; picture the intricate whorls and knots in a Celtic design. Whatever we do in the spiritual realm will necessarily entwine with and affect our children.
~ Patterns for Life, Chapter 8
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Thus far we have mostly discussed what we want in a Christian educational philosophy. In this chapter we see immediately from the title that no matter how perfect our philosophy, how sound our pedagogy, when it comes to implementation we as parents and teachers have a huge part to play, though not in the way we might at first think.
We don’t get good character, or (to use the buzzword of the day) virtue, in our children by choosing the Perfect Books, or associating with the Right People, or using the Perfect Curriculum, or presenting the image of a Perfect Family. Character comes about as the result of our own interactions with our children and our own example, as well as the example of others in our/their lives. Character is brought about by relationship.
This means that we have work to do in examining our own behavior and finding those things that we need to repent of in our own lives. We can’t give from what we don’t have.
Of course, we can also use books to help us put examples of good character in front of our children. There are plenty of characters in literature that can help drive home the Ideal in character, and if we are not familiar with literary characters it’s never to late to start broadening our knowledge base! But we also have The Prologue as an especially good resource to show what it means to be an Orthodox Christian.
Often, in a culture that values peer relationships and age-segregated classrooms and activities, it becomes easy to forget that children are really not mature enough to meet one another’s emotional and attachment needs. We must remain aware that a God-oriented culture is the only antidote to peer-oriented culture run wild.
The chapter closes with an explanation of the pattern that we see Charlotte Mason laying out for us over and over again in her writings:
Attention
Relation
Incarnation
We are invited “… to give our full attention to an idea: to see it for what it is, and to behold the glory of God in the way it participates in Beauty, Goodness, and Truth. We then receive God’s grace as we show hospitality to a beautiful idea: we accept it into our minds and welcome it as we learn how to relate to it properly. When the relationship has been established, we bring the idea to life by living it out concretely, by incarnating or embodying it. In this way we enact our priestly function as Christians, by uniting heaven and earth via our own lived experience.”
Some questions to ponder:
How do we cultivate a God-oriented culture?
How do we set an example of good character? Why is our example so important?
What can we do when we mess up (because we will)? Why is it actually ok to mess up?
Why is apparent perfection not the answer?