Books
by Laura Hileman
Spiritual life involves stillness in the presence of God—a solitude that yields a little uplift, some productive prayer, a ray of enlightenment and a certain peaceful, centered wisdom that makes the day’s challenges somehow manageable. Right?
Not likely, especially not for parents, says Bonnie Miller-McLemore, professor of pastoral theology at Vanderbilt Divinity School and mother of three. In her refreshing book, In the Midst of Chaos: Parenting as Spiritual Practice (Jossey-Bass, 199 pp., $21.95), she makes a number of claims that parents will be relieved to hear and those without children will do well to understand.
First, says Miller-McLemore, that rigid model of holiness doesn’t work for everybody. And it’s downright punishing to spiritually inclined parents who long for regular prayer disciplines in the frenzy of modern family life. Like all enlightened folks, Miller-McLemore looks directly into the heart of the problem to find its solution. So chaos is the difficulty? Fear not, for God is in the chaos: “Faith is not one more thing to check off the list…. It is what we do in time and space, with our bodies and through our movements.” Miller-McLemore invites parents to be aware of what they’re already doing that embodies faith in the family’s daily living—and then do those things more intentionally and wholeheartedly.
Some of these practices are surprising. Playing, reading, taking children seriously—aren’t these just normal parental things? Yes, exactly the point, says Miller-McLemore, as she rounds out and deepens the possibilities in these activities, demonstrating how they open the family to the presence of God by “sanctifying the ordinary.” Noting that we all too often “consume spirituality while leaving justice on the plate,” she emphasizes the mandate, in both Jewish and Christian tradition, “that families are obligated to love their neighbors and promote the common good.”
Miller-McLemore is nowhere near a feel-good, New Age stance on how these values thrive, however: “Preservation of ideals such as human rights, care for the environment, and social justice depends precisely on the vitality of particular religious traditions and communities.” But she’s adamant that those institutions be held to their own essential standards. Like old veggies in her eco-conscious compost pile, some traditional claims about family values need radical transformation before they can help nourish a modern family.
This theologian is totally grounded: the insights come while bathing toddlers, playing laser tag, negotiating the chore list, being interrupted every few seconds, loving Dr. Seuss and being appalled by The Giving Tree. Any parent who can compose a rational sentence at the dining room table is admirable; Miller-McLemore not only writes her whole book there, but also blesses the crazy feast of family living. “Amen” to that, sister.