Week 4: Mountain Music
Whether you have a boundary-testing toddler or an increasingly independent teenager, this week’s essay is for you!
Check out this audio recording of the essay “Mountain Music” by Scott Russell Sanders, published in Chaos, Wonder, and the Spiritual Adventure of Parenting. Let’s light our chalices together, breathe, listen to a story, and reflect.
Questions for Reflection
- Sanders writes, “My quarrel with Jesse changed nothing about the Rockies, but changed everything about the experience of the place. What had seemed glorious and vibrant when we set out that morning seemed bleak and bare.” Have you ever had experiences of conflict with your child that made the world seem “bleak and bare”? Have you ever had harmonious experiences with your child that made the world seem “glorious and vibrant”, or where it seemed “as if, for a moment, the same music played in both of [you]”? Why does this parent-child relationship have such power to shape the lens through which we view the world or the landscape in front of us?
- Now, just as when the author was writing this, there is so much wrong with the world, so much to worry about, so much that does seem bleak. When there’s so much in the world to despair about, how do your children bring you hope, and how do you share hope with them?
HERE is a link to the words of Kahlil Gibran I reference in the recording.
With you on the adventure,
Rev. Beth
