Mitten Strings for God: Reflections for Mothers in a Hurry

by Katrina Kenison

Yet we also know that our relationships—with ourselves and with each other—need time if they are to flourish. Parents and children alike need time for solitude, time to stretch and think and wonder, time to become acquainted with ourselves and with the world around us. And parents and children need sacred time together, time that is carved out of our busy lives, protected and honored but not scheduled. Time, instead, for just being.

We can be easier on ourselves and demand less of our children. We can protect and honor quiet, unscheduled time, and we can bequeath it to our sons and daughters.

I wrote this book because I needed it myself—and because I suspect that I am not alone, that other mothers, too, yearn to offer their children an alternative to our culture’s noise, pressures, and materialism.

It is about paying more attention to the life you already have, about taking your own life back as you protect your children from the pull of a world that is spinning too fast.

True happiness is found within ourselves and in quiet harmony with others. Yet if we let this inner knowledge slip away, our children may never learn it themselves, for we are their first teachers. It is up to each of us to set the example, to show by our own actions our respect for intimacy, contemplation, and wonder. This is perhaps the greatest legacy we can bestow on our children: the capacity to be enchanted by the quiet gifts of everyday life.

Ours is a society that places high value on achievement and acquisition. The subtle rewards of contemplation, quiet, and deep connection with another human being are held in low esteem, if they are recognized at all.

We provide our children with so much that the extraordinary isn’t special anymore, and the subtle rhythms of daily life elude us altogether. We do too much and savor too little. We mistake activity for happiness, and so we stuff our children’s days with activities, and their heads with information, when we ought to be feeding their souls instead.

When I stop speeding through life, I find the joy in each day’s doings, in the life that cannot be bought, but only discovered, created, savored, and lived.

So often we bemoan our children’s hyperactivity and short fuses. But what kind of example do we set for them as we race from here to there ourselves, trying to accomplish more, have more, experience more, in the course of a day?

Only by slowing down do we make time for one another. Only by stopping long enough to observe our surroundings can we bring form and meaning to our lives and make the small adjustments needed to stay on course.

And just as our children depend on us for three meals a day, they also need us to prepare peaceful spaces for them in the midst of this busy world.

There is no peace to be found in our culture. So I try to build the margins in, to keep our days from being inscribed

In stillness, we find our peace. Knowing peace at home, we bring peace into the world.

Our children are exposed to incessant commotion in the world that exists beyond our walls. Let home be the place where they can find the peace and quiet they need to make sense of it all. A place, too, where we can nurture our inner lives without distraction. The soul speaks softly.

So often, it seems, we are the ones who make our own lives more complicated than they need to be. We set the bar too high, take on too much, turn small doings into big ones.

There is more to see, more to do, more to buy, than ever before. And how easy it is to fall into thinking that living well means partaking of all that’s offered. With so many options and opportunities to choose from, it can be a challenge just figuring out where to draw the line.

If I pause long enough to listen to my own inner voice, rather than heeding some external call to go, see, and do, I make better choices for us all.

In simplicity there is freedom—freedom to do less and to enjoy more.

Now, many children are being raised by the media. TV characters tell them what to buy, how to dress, what to eat, how to talk, what to aspire to, what to love, and what to scorn. Given the power and the pervasiveness of TV and media in our lives, it is not surprising that so many parents feel helpless or have lost faith in their ability to set limits and raise their own children.

Once we see our homes as sanctuaries from a hectic world, then television begins to feel more and more like an unsavory intruder, robbing our rooms of life and meaning, stealing our time, and preying on our souls.

So much of the structure that we impose on our children’s lives is really intended

to make our own lives easier. We don’t want to give up our freedom, and so we fail to grant our children theirs.

We learned, as Wordsworth wrote, to see through “that inward eye that is the bliss of solitude.” These were valuable lessons—and I fear that our own busy, well-entertained children may not ever have the chance to learn them. Inventiveness and self-reliance are being scheduled right out of them.

But many of us are just as confused as our children. We fail to distinguish real needs from wants, and we focus on what we don’t have rather than on the abundant gifts that are already ours. When we are consumers, we teach our children that it is good to consume. When we try to resolve conflicts or to buy happiness by spending money, we teach our children to look outside themselves when they feel needy.

Telling a story is really a way of breathing deeply with our children. Taking that deep breath, exhaling, and putting ourselves at the mercy of something universal, we allow our own voices to become instruments of our souls.

When we tell stories to our children, we reweave our connections to nature, to the spirit world, and to our own sense of holy wonder—connections that are too often broken down by our culture’s surfeit of noise and activity.

Someplace deep within me, I carry every story I have ever heard, every story I have ever lived, every story I will ever need.

Mothering does not just mean caring for; it also means caring about—recognizing each of our children as unique individuals and cherishing them just as they are.

Jon Kabat-Zinn, a meditation teacher who writes about mindful parenting, suggests that we think of our children as Zen masters housed in small bodies, who come into our lives to push at all of our fixed ideas. They are our best teachers, he says, and one way or another they will teach us whatever hard lessons we most need to learn.

Sometimes our children’s needs do not coincide neatly with our own beliefs.

Do I try to control every aspect of our family environment, or do I allow others to help shape it, too? Do I always enforce the rules, or do I sometimes step aside and trust my children to find their own way? Surrendering is always an act of faith, and letting go is never easy.

There is another kind of surrender involved in being able to trust that your children and partner can manage for a time without you. For some of us, this letting go is hardest of all—if a thing is going to be done, we want it done our way. But our own desire for control can become a prison.

It is good for us mothers to remember that, while we may be irreplaceable, we are not indispensable. Life will go on without us—it will just go on somewhat differently.

In surrender, I clear a space in which something new can grow. I place my faith in something larger than me. I trust.

Breathing in I calm my body. Breathing out I smile. Dwelling in the present moment I know this is a wonderful moment. —THICH NHAT HANH, Being Peace

Ask your children to listen to the world around them for two or three minutes—and then compare impressions of what each of you heard.

We can all find a moment in every day for listening, a moment in which we gather our children close, open our ears, and luxuriate in the sounds of our world, wherever we may be.

Listening, we open ourselves to the soul’s true voice and to the world’s music.

I think we parents have come to think of nature as something we need to teach our children, something we are meant to provide as a part of their well-rounded education, like music lessons and team sports.

The encounters with nature that mean the most to them are those that happen without any agenda at all, beyond going forth to see what’s out there.

When we open ourselves to nature, when we explore the world around us with our feelings and emotions rather than our intellects, we engage all our senses—and we invite our children to do the same.

The world, seen through the eyes of a child, is a delicious, irresistible place.

A child who is allowed to fully experience the beauty and power of nature receives a gift for life, a gift that will deepen and grow in meaning over all the years to come.

It takes self-discipline for me to refrain from nagging my children to eat more of this or that, but I realize that it also takes self-discipline on their part to learn to sit at the table, to feed themselves graciously, and to enter into the conversation. We do our best.

Be realistic in your expectations and relaxed about the things beyond your control. Strive for harmony. Keep the mood light, don’t get sucked into arguments, and remember to aim for progress, not perfection.

Rituals are pathways back to rhythm, to the universal pulse that sustains us all.

Rhythm returns our attention—gently, yet over and over again—to the present moment, to the ebb and flow of hours, days, and seasons; to the familiar refrains of our own souls. When we begin to celebrate life moment to moment, we show our children that their own lives are also worthy of observance and celebration.

Once we begin to see our lives within our own families as opportunities for spiritual development, the possibility

of inner growth is unlimited.

Just as our sons have brought forth in us the very best we have to offer, they have brought