I don’t know how many of you are familiar with NPR’s Speaking of Faith, but it’s a wonderful weekly radio program that explores different spiritual traditions and topics. This week’s show is called "The Spirituality of Parenting", and as if that were not exciting enough, I may be on it! I definitely have a short piece (along with several other parents from different traditions) on their web site from Thursday, June 15 through Wednesday, June 21. It was an interesting exercise, trying to sum up my experience with parenting and spirituality in a paragraph. It was also fun recording my words, though I don’t yet know if my clip made the radio broadcast. With baseball playoffs and school ending, I don’t have time to figure [...]

I have an ambivalent relationship with privilege. My mother worked as the cafeteria cashier in the elite private school that I attended. My Irish grandmother worked as a maid in the neighborhood where I now worship and have many friends. Neither of my immigrant grandparents got as far as eighth grade, and my own parents graduated from high school, but not college. I, on the other hand, have an MA from Yale and a BA from Duke. When I was twenty, I thought my education made me smarter than the rest of my family. Now I know I was just luckier.I’ve been thinking about my Duke education since receiving the most recent issue of the alumni magazine, which traces the recent controversy surrounding rape allegations [...]

A few moons ago I mentioned the possibility of writing for ClubMom, a web site that provides information and shopping bonus points to mothers. Well, I am now officially a Mom “Expert” which really means that I’m a professional writer who writes about motherhood. (I believe we’re all experts after the first 100 diapers.) My first articles on ClubMom may sound familiar to those of you who have been reading this blog for a while, but you might enjoy checking out the site. Andi Buchanan and many other mom writers are posting pieces of their work there. There are also opportunities for mother bloggers who are interested in expanding their audiences.

I’ve taken to giving myself mini retreats every few months, or whenever I feel I’ve misplaced my spiritual compass. My favorite spot is the Quaker study center Pendle Hill, just south of Philadelphia, where I used to live and work. The other day I showed up for a few hours with my lap top, though I didn’t write much, other than brainstorming what my focus should be for the last few weeks of school. Once school ends, I’ll have four weeks of no child care, so it feels important to use this time well. Instead of rushing headlong through more books on race, as I have been doing, I decided to stand still for a few hours and get my bearings.I didn’t have any glaring [...]

I’ve been trying to swim lately, since the gym elliptical has been irritating my heel spur. Unfortunately, the crowded pool has been irritating my spirit. First, there’s my reluctance to share. I’d much rather head down the lane without having to watch out for oncoming traffic. But part of my reluctance comes from the fact that I can’t count on the person I’m sharing with to really give me half the lane. The last guy I swam with seemed to make no effort to stay on his side, and since he was bigger than me, my swim was not very meditative. The next time I started swimming alone and found myself keeping my head down so as not to make eye contact with the next [...]

I rarely help out with the children during Quaker meeting for worship, but they needed a substitute last Sunday, so I volunteered. In the days leading up to my big teaching gig, I received two phone calls from our very efficient coordinator and e-mails from four members of the Religious Education Committee, including an attachment with my lesson plan all spelled out. So it was pretty funny when another teacher and I finally sat down with the kids, and the lesson plan was derailed within a few minutes.The stated objective of the lesson was “to explore how the choices we make about our food affect our relationships with the earth, each other and with God.” We were given a series of questions to discuss, with [...]

Yesterday Luke did cartwheels on my mother’s grave. The weirdest thing about it was that the grass hadn’t fully grown back yet, so we could see the rectangle traced like a shadow. We let Luke do cartwheels, but scolded him when he started climbing on the headstones, so he ran off to climb a nearby tree while Megan, Tom, and I said a prayer for my mom.Afterwards, at the Chinese restaurant where they took me for Mother’s Day, I asked the children if they thought of my mom much. Megan said, “Sometimes. It’s weird to wonder where she is. Is she just hanging out with God and all the other dead people? Or maybe she’s right behind me, or right in front of my face?” [...]

We were driving up Germantown Avenue when Luke asked if Halloween was a long way away because he was hoping his hair would be long enough to have a thin pony tail in back like the jedis in training because next Halloween Luke wants to be a spy/jedi (a combination Luke says no one has ever been for Halloween before). Luke’s hair is already pretty shaggy, so I said if he lets me cut most of it for summer, he can keep a thin pony tail in back.It’s not that often that Megan sweetly offers to help her younger brother, so there was something touching about it when she said, “Luke, if you’re ever going out and don’t want people to see your pony tail [...]

I’m reading an amazing book at the moment called Complicity: How the North Promoted, Prolonged, and Profited from Slavery. After 155 pages of terrible stories that none of us learned in school, I finally got to the chapter called “Hated Heros,” which included two stories that jumped out at me.First was the tale of Prudence Crandall who started a Connecticut school for girls (white girls, it went without saying) in 1831. When a free black woman asked to attend, Prudence consulted her Bible and landed on a passage that talked about comforting the oppressed. She admitted the young woman and, after most of the white students withdrew in protest, decided to specialize in educating “young ladies and little misses of color.” After multiple threats of [...]