(This picture has nothing to do with this post, but look at my adorable kid in his adorable suit.)
I have sung hymns without hearing them, have read prayers without meaning them, have parroted responsive readings without listening. But the words are in my heart, even if I don’t know it. I can recite the night office and the Lord’s Prayer and “Be Thou My Vision.” I don’t have to think about them. When I do, I realize how much they mean to me. They are part of the generations in my bones.
When I was away from Atticus to be at the Glen, I missed watching him learn. I missed singing him songs. Part of my vocabulary was absent, and I felt the loss of it. I am discovering that parenting has a liturgy of its own. Every day I say the same things: Big truck. Big car. Ball. Up. Down. Careful. Airplane. Baby. The wheels on the bus. Banana. Cracker. Thank you. Dog. Monkey. Kitty. Turtle. Moon. Light. I love you. This has changed, and it will change again. But these are (some of) the words I repeat, over and over, for now.
I can ignore the words, let them roll off me, refuse to listen to myself. They are tiring and Atticus has so much energy and sometimes we all need naps. I can choose to inhabit them as the liturgy of my life, being present for these moments that I can already tell are fleeting. Or I can be realistic and realize that I will do a little bit of both. The words I say, over and over, bring to mind the preface of Leaves of Grass. And your very flesh shall be a great poem. Inhabiting the words is to inhabit what is, these days, the mundane and the beautiful of my life.
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[...] friend Kari recently wrote about the liturgy of parenting. While I’m not a parent (though perhaps I will be someday), I’ve been thinking about [...]
[...] get that if so much your day is the taken up in the same fifteen phrases, the liturgy of parenting (as this blogger puts it)? I feel as though I often spend so much of my best “thinking hours” enjoying the simplicity [...]
7 Comments
This: “I have sung hymns without hearing them, have read prayers without meaning them, have parroted responsive readings without listening.”
Yes, 1000 times, Yes.
Such a lovely, lovely blog post, Kari. I found your words beautiful and challenging this morning!
“The liturgy of my life” – I love this. Makes me think about the words that make up the liturgy of my present life. Beautiful, Kari.
The words our little one uses that I find easiest to inhabit: “I did it!” The words I find hardest to inhabit: “No, Daddy.”
smiles…that which is so engrained in our lives that we repeat it with out even thinging does work we do not know…i think on one hand we should be mindful and pay attention to what we are saying but i do think there are times that we say them and did not even know we needed them…
you are an incredible writer, friend. i always look forward to your posts. your words are a beautiful liturgy, indeed, and that suit? sigh. i’m smitten.
Thank you. For putting a new spin on parenting for me. I have my own dozen words for my son too of course, which I never quite thought of in that way. And it makes it seem incredibly beautiful.