Turn of the Century

IC XC
✙
NI KA

HERE’S A STORY from my misspent youth which, in this case, is my mid-thirties. In ’98 or ’99, when I was attending an Episcopal congregation we got a new priest. For privacy I will call her Mary although any of my readers from that point in my life will know who I’m writing about. Anyway, she had a small baby who was at that stage of two-ness, terrible and toddling. And he was noisy. By noisy, I mean shaking chairs, screaming, crying, throwing keys out of Mom’s purse onto the floor, basic normal child behavior that says, “no one is paying attention to me.” But for our community, used to our quirky self-made liturgy, this was chaos in a bucket, mixed up with bleach, and thrown all over our icons.

After a few weeks, I complained to the pastor. Who, I wondered, seriously, who could pray in that chaos? And when we were just sitting in Zen Silence after a particularly tasty reading, adjusted for modern ears, who could handle another volley of yells and demands? We had a play room for kids off the main sanctuary. We had Sunday School and Child Care. Why did this priest insist on bringing her live-action noise maker into the service? I was livid as I asked.

My Episcopal Pastor, wise, gentle, loving, was not at all smiling when he asked, very calmly, “Why do I always find myself having this conversation with childless men of a certain age?” It wasn’t exactly phrased like that, but I wanted to convey the gist. I was stung to the core. Why, indeed?

The new priest shared some of her story one Sunday. We were not her home parish. My pastor was always taking in stray puppies and lost children. She came to us after being shipwrecked in her first assignment. As she was celebrating the Eucharist one Sunday, her husband sat in the pew holding the baby who cried out since Mommy was no where to be found. Her Pastor, a childless man of a certain age, demanded that, in the future, the Husband and Child go sit in the vestibule, but they could come in for communion. And so, the next time she was celebrating the Eucharist, she could hear her child screaming for Mommy from the Vestibule, and she, too, began to cry on the altar. And after communion that day, she reached out to her friend, my pastor, the Good Shepherd of the Lost Sheep of the Bay Area.

That is a question that has haunted me for twenty-five years or so. I know it was not his intent, but my pastor’s question put me on a path of exploration that eventually led me to question everything I knew about myself. Why did I not have children? In the course of such questions it was evident that – my freedom of choice aside – it was my childlessness by choice that was strange. What was my obligation to those who had children, especially to those in Church? As Mrs Clinton said, it takes a village. I’m in this village. Catholic theology would say I’m obligated to the community in any number of ways, but it took me two decades to come to that realization. One does not get to sit idly by and let others parent the next generation – this is an obligation that impinges on all of us. We literally take vows as people are baptized to support the new Christians. We are part of their family now.

I have since used that same question in a conversation at an Orthodox Church with two men wearing cassocks. They sounded exactly like I did that day as an Episcopalian as they discussed a family with four young children who ran around liturgy, had fights, and stood too close to each other. “Why,” I wondered out loud. “Am I always having this conversation with…” Their immediate, violent reaction – acting like two-year-olds and stomping off – showed that I had hit the nail on the head – just as my pastor did earlier.

It is possible, of course, to live in a world where people have sacrificed their natural functions for disordered desires, selfishness, and fur babies. But that’s not the world to which God calls us. What was I to do? Eventually I reached the age where to have children (by artificial means or even by adoption) would have been another essay in pride: look, I’m at a point in my life where I can afford to do this, don’t I look even more successful with this child I’ve acquired? A child who needs play and exercise would find me going to bed at 8PM and saying “be quiet” all the time.

Having reached the age of my own grandparents without fulfilling my natural function as a human being (a replacement and at least a spare) I felt a profound loss which has yet to go away. Since I am now a different certain age, I’m left deciding between spiritual fatherhood or no fatherhood at all.