I facilitate a Family Covenant Group at my church, for families/parents with kids ages 5 and younger. The kids enjoy supervised free play with a child care provider while the adults have a focused, facilitated discussion about a preselected topic. We meet twice a month. Next time we meet, one of the adults in the group is going to lead the group in an exercise in which we each examine what our lives *really* say about us. It's one thing to tell yourself (and everyone else) that your priorities are your family, being peaceful, being eco-conscious, or whatever. It's quite another to actually *live* your professed values. So, I'm simultaneously looking forward to --- and feeling a bit intimidated by --- this process of taking a hard look at what the way I actually live my life reflects what my priorities are.
I say I care about the environment, but I don't live downtown where I can walk to places. I need to drive every day. I say that my family - including both my nuclear family and my family of origin - matters most to me, but I'm sitting here next to a box of random things, hand me down type stuff, that I'm planning to give to my sister --- and it's been waiting to be shipped for weeks. Ok, I lied. Months.
I will post about this topic again after I've engaged in this self-inventory. But for now, I will just predict here that (a) some of what I find, I'll like; and (b) a lot of what I find, I'll realize, is going to create a call to action for me to change my ways. I already know this, just doing a casual look at how I spend my days and evenings, and how I spend my money, just to name two ways of measuring true priorities.
I'm curious to engage in this kind of examination in an organized way. Curious and scared.
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4 comments:
ooh... how verrrry interesting...I'm so curious!
Hi Christine. I don't know if you'll see this, but I wanted to say hello-- we both commented on Sari Weston's article about vaccinations in Brain, Child. So I clicked on your info and found your blog and I just wanted to say I can relate to a lot of what you've written about. You write so well about a lot of issues of motherhood (like the uniform!) that are familiar to me.
Anyway, thanks!
PCJ, thanks so much for posting! I meant what I said about you in the vax blog thread. Where in Appalachia do you live? Thank you for the kind compliment. I look forward to hunkering down with your blog over the coming days and weeks!
I think we would all benefit from doing this type of exercise!
Thanks for your posts, for sharing your thoughts with us all and for being you.
In PEACE
Jennifer
aka Montessori Mama
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