Our Parents...Our Selves
Sermon by Steve Edington
May 11, 2008
A very long-time friend of mine - we're talking close to 40 years now - got out a book a couple of months ago that I've been working my way through. Her name is Irene. She's the wife of one of my closest friends from seminary, Dave. They live over in North Hampton where they share a therapy practice under the name of Pathways. The title of Irene Tomkinson's book is Not Like My Mother. So here I am - leading off a sermon on Mothers Day by referring to a book called Not Like My Mother.
Irene and Dave will both be here for one of our summer services on August 10th so I don't want to steal too much of Irene's thunder today. Mark the date of August 10 for what I know will be a great service. I should explain that the title is not primarily about Irene's mother at all. But rather it's Irene's way of giving herself a poke in the ribs. It refers to a desire she had, as she raised her two daughters from a marriage prior to her one to Dave, to not repeat all of the perceived mistakes and inadequacies she saw in her own mother. The largely unrecognized trap she created for herself with this approach was that with her benchmark for parenting being "not like my mother," she sometimes missed the mark when it came to being the mother/parent her daughters actually needed. The more universal issue behind this one story is one that challenges the readers to take a closer look at how the family into which they were born and raised affects - consciously or not - the families we then attempt to create.
Irene's personal story is a compelling one. It contains the often abusive family setting in which she was raised, and the abusive first marriage she entered into, ostensibly to move away from an abusive family of origin. I know I'm not the best person to give an objective accounting of this book since, as I already said, I've been close to both of the principles in it for some 40 years; and the two daughters Irene writes about called me their "Uncle Steve" when they were kids. But, ego-possessed soul that I can be at times, I'm going to read the passage where she describes her wedding to Dave. As a freshly minted and newly ordained minister at the time, it was the first wedding I officiated. To give this some context, Irene's first wedding had been in a Catholic Church:
"On August 21, 1971, I walked down another aisle, only this time in a Protestant church. I was dressed in yellow, and David played his twelve-string guitar while we sang a song that he composed for our special day. His mom and dad watched from the front row as we recited vows we had written for ourselves. We were pronounced 'husband and wife' by one of David's seminary buddies who was performing his first wedding ceremony. Two more of his best friends read original pieces. His mom kept asking if the service was legal, while my Catholic friends thought the whole ceremony was 'way cool man.'"
What I remember about all that was the flared, bell-bottomed pants I was wearing with my slightly elevated buckled shoes - and this tie, which I dug out of the back of a closet, with all these peace symbols on it. Hey, what can I say, it was the '70s and I was all of twenty-five years old.
I'm also aware that my wife at the time of that wedding is not my wife of today. The two other friends to whom Irene refers, who read at this wedding, have also seen marriages come and go. Four summers ago the four of us one-time seminarians re-connected after not being in the same place at the same time for a very long stretch of time - and now we make it a point to spend a week-end together every summer since then. We've already got our date set for this August. And when I think of some of the conversations the four of us had as we first formed our strong friendships in the late 1960s, when we shared an apartment together, and the ones we have now; something of a circle does come round.
When we could step back from the silliness, and from just some of the plain damned-fool antics we engaged in, we did have some pretty intense conversations about what we thought the course of our lives might be, the world in which we'd live them, and the "personal stuff" we saw ourselves walking around with. Some of that personal stuff had to do with the families in which we were raised: What we liked and what we didn't; what we could affirm and what we were going to avoid.
When we gather now, well, we still have something of a penchant for silliness, even though the foolish antics have been significantly tamped down. And some of our conversations now have to do with the families we've raised, or had a hand in raising, ourselves: What we like about what we've done and what we don't; what we can affirm and what we'd at least hoped to avoid. It all does come round.
With all of this as backdrop I'll take a run at the topic I've chosen for today: Our Parents...Ourselves. Just as Irene uses the personal to make her larger points, I'll do the same. Some of you have heard parts of this story already. About my parents:
My father was raised in the back country of West Virginia. His formal education went to the eighth grade. At some point in his late 20s he moved to the city of Charleston, West Virginia and developed a skill as a house painter. My mother was raised in Plymouth, England. She left school to take a job at the age of 14 or 15. She met my father - who was 16 years her senior - when she was 17, and he was a handsome petty officer in the United States Navy, stationed in Plymouth. He was 3000 miles from his West Virginia home. They married in 1944 and had their first child a year later (that would be me). By the time my mother reached her 28th birthday she was living in a small West Virginia town and raising four children - some 3000 miles from her home. My father set up shop as a self-employed house painter. Sometimes business was good; other times it wasn't. They managed as best they could.
When I was around 14 or 15 years old I had a paper route and was saving my money for something that was important for me to have at the time. So important, in fact, that I've now forgotten what it was. I had $20.00 saved up and stashed in a box in my room. My father had hit a real dry spell when it came to getting work, and I heard my parents talking one evening about how they were somehow going to have juggle things in order to buy the groceries that week. It was one of those conversations a kid wasn't supposed to hear his parents having.
In those days $20.00 would buy a week's worth of groceries for a family our size. I walked into the living room and said I could loan them the money for that week's groceries. They said no, that was OK. They would work something out; don't worry about it and go to bed. But the next day my mother told me they could use the money and would be able to repay me soon. To me it was no big deal. We needed money. I had it. I was repaid a week or so later and put the money back in the box in my room, and eventually bought whatever it was I was saving for.
I think it was because of the hardscrabble, close to the bone, way that my parents had to live as they were raising me and my sisters that caused my father, especially, to cling to his near-fundamentalist religion in the way that he did. He needed a rock of certainty in a world where just taking care of the basics of his family sometimes presented him with plenty of uncertainty.
While my mother was not raised in the same kind of religious atmosphere as my father was she more or less latched onto his as well - at least during the time my father was alive. My mother is now an active 82 year old woman, and has considerably broadened her horizons in her later years. Bless her for that. I also feel blessed that she's still present to receive my Mothers Day call. [Let that serve as a reminder for those of you who have moms to call on this day!]
Still, one of the images I continue to carry with me is that of my father, especially when times were tough, quietly sitting in his chair in the corner of our living room, reading his Bible for whatever comfort and reassurance he could find in it.
What I'm going to say next should not be taken as a political statement or as a political endorsement, because it is neither. A few weeks ago Senator Barak Obama got himself into some political hot water by suggesting - in the midst of the Pennsylvania primary - that in tough and uncertain economic times the people most affected by them often look to whatever certainties they can grab a hold of - including their religion. For making such an observation he was branded an "elitist." Well, I don't have to be an elitist to recognize that the Senator was speaking a simple truth; a truth that was revealed to me at a very young age in the family in which I was raised. On that note I'll move on.
I thought on all this as I read my friend's book. Both of my parents - but my father especially - saw their world through the lenses of limitations and scarcity, and with an accompanying need for certitude. They needed, and therefore saw, a world in which things were decidedly right or wrong, good or bad, true or false - with not much room for any ambiguity. And up to a certain age, the world you see is the world that is revealed largely by way of your parents - or whoever it is who's entrusted with your upbringing.
I'm aware now that among the things I value, some of them are mirror images of what was present in my family of origin. As a counter-point to limitations and scarcity, I value the exploration of possibilities and options; I tend to largely think in terms of what can be, and what I can cause to happen, rather than about what is restricted or walled off from me. And when it comes to my own search for what is true and meaningful in my world, I prefer to entertain such things as ambiguity and paradox and the open-ended question - and see where it all might lead me. One place it led me was to Unitarian Universalism.
But I've also gained a better understanding, over the years, as to why may parents saw the world - perhaps had to see the world - in the way that they did. I also know that times come for me, on occasion, when I do have to face my limitations and lack of options. There are times when I need a sure port in a storm; and I can appreciate the world view my parents had, even if I cannot embrace it. When it comes to things like my wanting and attempting to be a loving and caring and respectful person, there are indeed many positive cues I still take from my mother and father. There are ways in which I truly do want to be like them. But my world is not their world and I do not relate to it in the way that they did.
This all comes round when I think of the influence I've had, or tried to have, on my own child - who is now an adult himself. I want him to be a loving and caring and respectful person, as I believe he is. I also know that he will create a world view for himself that is meaningful to him - whether it reflects my way of seeing and relating to the world around me or not.
I'll move to a finish with this: When I conduct a Service of Dedication and Naming - as I've done at some of our Sunday services here over the years I say a few lines that state: "It is in the family that each person is shaped by all the interactions of thought, of affection, of act and of word. In the relationships of family we receive our sense of worth; our sense of what is right and wrong, our feeling of who we are and what our unique place in this world is." Those are very noble words. If I didn't believe them I obviously wouldn't say them. I'm also aware that they set a very high bar for parents - for mothers and fathers and any others entrusted with the rearing of a child. I'd say it's a bar we should strive for with the best of our energies while being prepared as well to forgive our parents and ourselves for those times when they and we don't quite always reach it.
The charge I give to a mother and a father in a Child Dedication service is one that applies as well to all of us as we share in this community: To be a place where we receive our sense of worth and personhood, our sense of what is right and good and true, our feeling of who we are and what our unique place in this world is. For we each and all carry these needs from the moment we embark upon life until the moment we take our leave of it. May we continue to find amongst ourselves new and creative ways of living out this charge so that we may each and all move to ever deeper levels of personal fulfillment - and a deeper sense of connection to a world that need our care.
Stephen D. Edington
May 11, 2008
