Striving for Parental Love A Practical Guide on Giving Parental Love to Children by Peter Falkenberg Brown The World Community Press Portland, Maine / USA .... "... To be a large shade tree of parental love in the `family garden of heart' so that others might come and rest on the soft moss growing beneath." .... To Order More Copies of "Becoming a Parent of True Love" email us at: 'publisher@worldcommunity.com' Volume discounts available, with options for book retailers, educational groups, general retailers, employee gifts and product premiums. ............................... Comments from Readers... ------------------------- "As I read Peter Brown's compelling dialogue on parental love I found myself saying yes, yes, yes. His reflections and meditations are as refreshing and nourishing as a drink from the purest mountain stream." David Manning White, Ph.D. Author, The Search for God Professor Emeritus, Virginia Commonwealth University "A revealing look at the mysterious and powerful nature and source of parental love." Dr. Marilyn Meyer Pediatrician "Striving for Parental Love .... who hasn't? .... who doesn't? But if you are now on the giving end of bestowing this precious commodity upon your children this is the one book, or at least the first book, to get you started....and keep you going in pursuit of that noble profession called "parenting". Read it.....often!" Stephanie Pyle Producer of Weekly Children's Show, Rocket Radio Public Radio, WCVE--FM, Richmond, Virginia "Finally, a guide for parents that does not require degrees in psychology, sociology or a myriad of other fields. A small book with a towering message of love. A handbook that every parent and parent to be should have to read often and in depth." Dr. Gerald S. Leighton Former Dean, Southeastern University "In an age when over one-half of parents now come from broken homes it is not without understanding as to why the crisis in parenting has reached epidemic proportions. It is vital for `how to manuals' to be directed toward this floundering generation. Peter Brown has done just this. A must read for all parents." Dr. Donald N. Sills Chaplain, World Conference of Mayors Washington, D.C. "Peter F. Brown has described in simple terms, understandable to any parent, what depth psychologists and learned theologians have consistently tried to express about the importance of love as formative in the development of human life." Dr. V.T. Jordahl, Ph.D. Medical Ethicist, Roanoke, VA "Peter speaks about the love of parent and child with such a depth of sincerity, yet adds humor to show one of the facets of the most divine `human' relationship". Sgt. Susan J. Dunston, U.S. Marine; former Coordinator "Toys for Tots", Richmond, VA "Like most of us, I want to be an excellent parent. Peter Brown's book offers more concise insight about how to actually bring out the very best in myself and my children than anything else I've ever read. I can already feel a difference in my family as I try to practice the wisdom in his book, and plan to give `Striving for Parental Love' to as many people as possible." Victoria Clevenger Editor and Publisher, "HeartWing" Newsletter "Growing up together with Peter, as his brother, I feel that he has touched upon one of the most important issues in today's society. Improving this country's well-being starts at home. His message is very simple and yet profoundly significant. Required reading for everyone!" James Chantler Brown Staffer, NBC Television "As a mother of two children under the age of three, I hardly have time to read. But I was able to read `Striving for Parental Love' in one sitting....a very readable book indeed! I'm so inspired, and have already put into practice some of the suggestions on how to love children." Mrs. Monique Brodie British Columbia, Canada "A practical, helpful testimony about the power of loving families." Mose Durst, Ph.D. "With thoughtfulness, warmth, and sincerity Peter Brown explores `parental love'. His book should serve as a source of inspiration and guidance for all who treasure children." Dr. Chet Johnson Pediatrician "Crying for peace is putting the cart before the horse. Our cry should be for our return to family values. Malachi's admonition should be ours, to `...turn the hearts of fathers to their children and the hearts of children to their fathers...'. "We need not perish for lack of knowledge, as Peter Brown shares his insight to serve as a blueprint. Allow his discernment to take root and bear fruit. A nation's power lies in the tenacity of the family." Dr. Alyce Lane, N.D., Ph.D. Social & Human Services Coordinator Richmond, Virginia **** Striving for Parental Love - A Practical Guide On Giving Parental Love to Children - (C) Copyright 1992-2001 by Peter F. Brown All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher, except in cases of brief quotations embodied in articles and reviews. Fourth Edition, First Printing Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 92-76078 ISBN 0-9635706-0-9 Book & Cover Design by The World Community Press Sketch of Tree by Rhonda Williams To order additional books email: 'publisher@worldcommunity.com' The World Community Press specializes in the publication of educational books, publications and materials. **** Dedication ----------- This book is about giving parental love to children. What could be more appropriate than to dedicate it to the One who has loved children more than any other parent? Without delving into the murky waters of doctrine or sectarianism, I would humbly like to dedicate this book to God, the First Parent of all humankind. For the sake of true parental love, so that we may become true parents, reflecting the utmost quality of unselfish care for all children, I dedicate this book to God, to True Parents, and to Children everywhere. **** Acknowledgements ----------------- Writing a book about parental love requires a huge awareness that one had better not be too proud of oneself. Having written this book with the earnest hope that it would have value to its readers, I must continually guard against the egregious trap of thinking that the author is equal to the topic. Simply stated, this book could not have been written unless many very loving and parental people had loved me above and beyond the call of duty. I was loved unexpectedly, when I was both good and bad. Sometimes the love was sweet, and sometimes it was very challenging. More than anything else, it was love based not upon my value, or my love, but upon a higher and more unselfish love. To list all of those who cared for me must indeed start with my own parents, aunts, uncles and relatives who knew me when I was the size of a tree frog. It also must include the many wonderful and parental people who, although they were not related to me by blood, showed me an amazing standard of sacrificial parental love. I must also thank my wonderful wife, Kim, and my four beautiful children; Tymon, Thea Grace, Ranin and Tadin. Without them, I would have a hard time indeed talking about parental love! I am overwhelmed sometimes that God has blessed me with a wife and children such as these. I can only conclude, finally, that the honor and acknowledgement for this book must go to those precious elder parental people who tried to love me in spite of myself. Ultimately, no one has loved us more sacrificially than God Himself. Truly, the honor and glory belong to Him. **** About the Author ----------------- Peter F. Brown and his wife Kim are the parents of four children; Tymon, Thea Grace, Ranin and Tadin. His wife, Kim, is a wonderfully devoted person who provides strength to the whole family. Mr. Brown is the founder and owner of The World Community Press, a firm that publishes educational books and materials and conducts educational seminars. He has been active in community work for over twenty five years and has conducted seminars for individuals, ministers, community volunteers, parents, and children, on a variety of topics. He has lectured on family issues, politics and world affairs, educational issues and others. Mr. Brown is the principle speaker for the "Becoming a Parent of True Love Seminars" sponsored by The World Community Press. Mr. Brown is also an Internet programmer specializing in Perl and MySQL web databases. He is committed to the field of education and is constantly seeking innovative ways to teach and motivate others. Most of all, he loves children. **** Table of Contents (page numbers correspond to printed book) Part 1 - Our Desire as Parents..........................1 1 - Parental Love is an Exciting Topic!............3 2 - We Want to Love Our Children...................5 Part 2 - What is Parental Love?.........................9 3 - Feeling Loved.................................11 4 - "Heartistic" Antennae.........................17 5 - Responding to Love............................21 6 - Initiating Creative and Subjective Love.......25 7 - Parental Love is Eternal......................29 Part 3 - Where Do We Learn to Be Good Parents?.........33 8 - The Source of Parental Love...................35 9 - Have Parents Received Enough Love?............39 10 - When We Were Children in the School of Love...41 11 - Finding "Teachers" of Parental Love...........47 Part 4 - Our Vision and Hope for Our Children..........57 12 - Children of Filial Piety......................59 13 - The "Heart Thread" in Our Life................65 14 - Living Together in True Love..................67 15 - Children of Parental Love.....................69 Part 5 - Becoming a Parent of True Love................75 16 - Their Idols Have Feet of Clay.................77 17 - Scolding with Hatred will Hurt Our Children...81 18 - "The Buck Stops with Me"......................87 19 - Transforming and Growing Our Hearts...........91 20 - Resurrecting and Uplifting Our Children's Hearts........................101 21 - Building a Family of True Love...............105 22 - Giving, Serving and Loving...................113 **** Part 1 Our Desire as Parents **** "There is no friendship, no love, like that of a parent for the child." Henry Ward Beecher [one] Parental Love is an Exciting Topic! ------------------------------------ Parental love is a wonderful topic. It's an exciting topic! It's one of the most beautiful topics in the world. It's inexhaustible, inspiring, enthusiastic, noble and the source of endless energy. It's also a difficult topic to write about. Before I completed this book, I asked my wife Kim many times, "Can I write this book about parental love when I'm not a "perfect" parent? My children aren't even fully grown yet!" Some of my friends asked me that too. (Friends do keep us on our toes, don't they?) My wife told me that there were very few perfect parents in the world today, so I didn't really need to worry too much about that point. (She's a great consolation.) We came to the conclusion that the topic of parental love was so inspiring to us, that perhaps other parents would be equally interested in discussing the issues of parenting. When people talk about parental love, something happens! Energy is created, and people get inspired. My wife and I spent many, many hours sitting on the couch or at the kitchen table, talking about true love, parental love, unselfish love, and what it means to be a better parent. Time flew by, and we often looked at the clock in amazement. Parents need to help each other out. Talking about and discussing the difficulties and joys of being a parent is the most exciting topic imaginable! We all learn from each other. Certainly, only good things can happen if parental love is a prime topic of conversation. Our children will be the beneficiaries. Can you imagine riding a New York subway, and hearing most of the people in the car talking about the merits or methods of true love? Thus, I embarked upon this book. There are many things left unsaid -- but that's fine, for there will be other books. .... I thought for a long time about the "voice" of this book. I have decided to refrain from writing about "I" and "you". Instead, I have written about "us". We are in this together. We're collectively trying to improve as parents and as people. We are tackling a difficult job, and we all need as much support and sympathy as we can get. Maybe someone should start a 24 hour a day hotline for parents! I know mothers who feel like they're ready to crack about 3 o'clock in the morning, when the baby has awakened for the fifth time. With the heart of mutual support, and friendship, let us together reflect about the goal of becoming parents of true love. **** "What gift has Providence bestowed on man that is so dear to him as his children?" Marcus Tullius Cicero "The great use of life is to spend it for something that will outlast it." William James [two] We Want to Love Our Children ----------------------------- Where do we start our discussion about parental love? That's a comment many parents may make as they think of the vast topic of loving children. Many parents feel very inadequate -- especially when all the children are screaming at the top of their lungs. On the other hand, we all want to love our children more. Is there a parent anywhere that would publicly stand up and say, "I want to hate my children"? We feel that it is right to love children. Unfortunately, it has proven to be more difficult than it looks. When we begin to talk about parental love, it would be helpful to reach a consensus about certain basic points. Our world is complex, and it's very hard to get people to agree on anything. Put two parents in a room and start talking about how to raise children, and sparks might start to fly! Let's take an imaginary survey of all our friends, relatives and neighbors. Would they basically agree with the following statements? .... "A primary qualification to be a parent is to be a person who loves children and other people with unselfish love." "One of the highest goals that parents can have for their children is that their children become people who love others unselfishly." .... If parents can agree that unselfish love is central to parenting, then what is the difficulty facing parents? It's similar to the restaurant that serves poor-quality steak. If you asked the manager whether he wanted to serve good food or bad, he would most probably say, "good food". He might even go so far as to say that his steak is already good! .... One of the problems facing us is the problem of perception. We find it difficult to judge whether we are loving others adequately or not. It's not easy to give ourselves a report card about our job of parenting because grading ourselves must be measured against a higher standard than we may currently possess. How have we learned to be good parents? We were born, we grew up, and now we are parents. We went to school to learn academics, but did we learn about parenting in school? Is parental love primarily an academic subject, or an experiential, emotional subject? Mother Teresa is famous all over the world for her heart of love toward people. Her quality of heart certainly isn't automatic or easy to foster. Is it based upon intellectual learning alone? There are many "schools" that we can graduate from, including elementary school, high school, and college. A different type of school, that isn't ordinarily thought of as a school, is the family. Some people have called the family the "school of love", the primary place where a person learns about loving others. .... We went through the school of love ourselves, when we were growing up in our own family. We may have been loved in a beautiful and warm way by our parents - or we may have been neglected. Our education may not have been good enough, through no fault of our own. Having passed through the family experience as children, we are now striving for parental love ourselves -- striving to give parental love to our children. By doing this, we will create a wonderful school of love in our own households. .... In the hustle and bustle of a society that is growing increasingly frantic, we may lose track of what we're trying to do in our parental role. It's valuable to review our goals as parents, and gain a fresh enthusiasm for our responsibility. Late at night, when our children are hopefully sleeping, my wife Kimmy and I talk and talk about what we want to do as parents. We have become convinced that we want to provide our children with education of heart and love so that when they reach maturity, they also can be graduates of the family school of love. The children's math and science will be important, but will it do them any good if they are cold, cruel, calculating machines? Of course not. I think that the inner-most desire of parents is quite simple. Parents want their children to grow up to be the most loving people that they know. Better than themselves if possible. People that care for others and love others. One way of expressing a parent's hope is to say that parents want their children to become sons and daughters of true love. It may seem impossibly idealistic, but isn't this a hope that would thrill our hearts if it was actually fulfilled? If so, why not try? We have nothing to lose, and everything to gain. **** Part 2 What is Parental Love? **** "True love is not a feeling by which we are overwhelmed. It is a committed, thoughtful decision." M. Scott Peck, M.D. [three] Feeling Loved -------------- What is parental love? What a historical topic this one is! For thousands of years humankind has thought, written, and sung about the mysteries of love. It is truly the most popular of topics. We all want it. None of us really feel alive without it. But where is love? You can't see it. You can't touch it. You can't put it into a box and sell it at the street corner. The odd thing about love is that although we may find it very difficult to love others, we are quick to feel loved or unloved ourselves. Love is one of those "you know it when you see it" items that defies easy description. Since saints are not yet as plentiful as the trees, isn't there something that all of us, as normal, everyday folk, can say about true love? Using a large dose of "heart-sense" let's make an attempt to analyze true love. The New Lexicon Webster's Dictionary of the English Language defines love as, "a powerful emotion felt for another person manifesting itself in deep affection...". Heart is defined in the same dictionary as, "the fount of man's emotions and deepest feelings". The dictionary definitions are good, but sparse. Analyzing our own feelings to determine if we are feeling love, or something only vaguely resembling it, is a vital step in our efforts to become better parents. How many friends do you have that spend any significant amount of time talking about their own feelings? Examining our own emotions can be a scary business, a little similar sometimes to a gardener peering under rocks. You never know what you will find. It is when we analyze our own feelings that we have an opportunity to meet love face to face. Love must be sensed and felt to be real and personal. Our own heart is the "home-ground" where the concepts of true love and parental love become clear and well-defined. How can we analyze our own feelings? My wife Kimmy is half Irish. One day we went to a street festival in Richmond which was featuring an Irish band. She was transfixed. Of course we bought our children little three dollar bugles and let them dance to an Irish jig. She has commented to me that it's the Irishhhh... in her that makes her hot-tempered, and she has often wondered how on earth people could analyze their feelings at the moment of their intense emotions. This has been a fascinating discussion for us, because my lineage is Dutch, Swedish and English. The Dutch are famous for certain reflective and meditative qualities -- do you remember the images of a Dutchman slowly smoking his white clay pipe and nodding sagely? As a Dutchman I can tell you that he was nodding to keep the smoke from his eyes! Reflection is a good thing, though, and provides us with an awareness about ourselves that can help our growth. The first step toward becoming aware of our feelings before we express them is to reflect about the way we felt after we expressed them. It is difficult to know what to do at the height of our frustration, but it is surely possible to think about what we did. We can begin our analysis with a very fundamental aspect of love -- the experience of "receiving love", or "feeling" loved by someone. Let's use a hypothetical example as a way to practice analyzing our feelings. .... Imagine that you are walking on the street, on a beautiful sunny day. A man comes striding toward you, and without saying a word, pushes you down, and walks on. Do you feel love from him? No. You might feel outraged, hurt, and injured in your feelings, wondering why he acted so rudely. Can we say that he loved you? Well, he might have, but you certainly didn't feel his love for you. As you look around, you realize that your wallet or purse is gone. In the action of pushing you down, the man stole your belongings. Now your outrage is complete. You KNOW that he didn't love you. Now imagine that the same man had come and pushed you down. You felt outraged, but then, as you picked yourself up, you saw a large truck speeding away. The man has saved your life by pushing you out of the way of an oncoming vehicle. How do you feel? Your outrage turns into gratitude. You feel how much the man cared for you, and took responsibility for your life. You may even feel that the hand of God was there protecting you. It is entirely possible, of course, that someone could be pushed down, and their life saved, but still be ungrateful. They might be consumed by complaint about their muddy coat. We can see from this example that the feeling of being loved and cared for is dependent upon a number of factors. First, certainly, is the big question. Does the other person actually love me? In the example above, the answer could be yes or no. .... Turning our attention to the people that we relate to in our daily lives, we can say that often the answer will be a sad "no". Once in a while, it might be "sometimes", or "a little bit", when a person that we know is in a good mood. Feeling loved by someone who doesn't love you is not the most hopeful proposition. What about the times when the other person does love you, but you still can't feel love from that person? Let's say that an independent bystander asks the person, "Do you love our friend here?" The person says, "yes". There is no doubt. Yet, you don't feel his love. Why not? I can think of three possibilities. The first, and perhaps the most common, is that the other person really doesn't love you all that much. He may think he does, but the quality of his heart is mixed with selfishness, or is deficient in some way. Secondly, although he may really love you with a pure, unselfish heart, he might not be able to express his love very well. Many people find it very difficult to express their feelings, either directly in words, or in actions. A third possibility is that even though the other person loves you, and expresses his love quite well, you yourself are not feeling very receptive to that person. .... I remember a lady who never felt loved by a minister's wife whom we both knew. I asked my friend if the minister's wife, a Mrs. "H." (I will abbreviate for the sake of my friend), had ever done anything special for her. My friend said no. I asked her if Mrs. H. had ever given her a gift of any kind. My friend thought for a moment, and said, "Well, she gave me a necklace once." I then asked her, "Didn't you feel love from her, when she did that?" She wistfully replied, "No, not really." I was very sad to hear her say this, because I felt sure that Mrs. H. had given my friend the necklace as an expression of friendship and affection. Unfortunately, she was unmoved. My own experience with Mrs. H. had taught me that she was a very warm-hearted lady. Mrs. H. saw me working one day and realized that I was a bit tired, and in need of encouragement. She didn't have anything suitable to give me, but she wanted to cheer me up, so she went and got one of her husband's old, worn-out sweaters. It was a muddy brown color, and quite tattered. It was too small, and looked a bit funny on me. All in all, it was an unusual gift. I looked into the face of this older lady, and saw her heart of concern. She cared about me, and wanted to express it, even though her means to express it were so limited. I took the sweater, and immediately put it on, and wore it for many weeks. I loved that sweater, because it was given to me with love. It was an expression of love and of heart. Long after the sweater is gone, I remember the heart behind it. Did Mrs. H. love my friend? I believe that she tried. If she did love my friend, why didn't my friend feel loved? **** "There is dew in one flower and not in another, because one opens its cup and takes it in, while the other closes itself, and the drops run off. God rains His goodness and mercy as widespread as the dew, and if we lack them, it is because we will not open our hearts to receive them." Henry Ward Beecher [four] "Heartistic" Antennae ---------------------- I believe that we have what might be called spiritual or "heartistic" antennae, that allow us to feel the emotions of others. I've used a new word here: "heartistic". This is what is called a "neo-logism" -- a new word. Although some authors don't use neo-logisms, I've used this one because there really is no equivalent adjective to describe something "heart-oriented", or "pertaining to the heart". I didn't personally invent the word, so it isn't entirely new. These heartistic antennae are, of course, not physical protrusions. We have a wonderful intuition or spiritual "sense" that allows us to feel things that are quite invisible. We may enter a room, for example, and sense that the atmosphere is brittle and uncomfortable. Later, we find that the two people in the room were fighting and arguing before we came in. One might think that all of us automatically have the same heartistic antennae, that all of us are profoundly sensitive to every breath of love that is given to us. As we look around though, we can see all kinds of people. One example is the person who is constantly complaining about every conceivable thing. Nothing is ever satisfactory for this person and it is clear that he or she feels very little love. Is the complaining person grateful enough? Complaining and gratitude are two sides of the same coin. As parents, we can see that our children's heartistic antennae are under-developed, especially when we give them a gift they don't want. .... I gave my son a gift once and he immediately started to cry and throw a royal temper tantrum (he was four at the time), screaming, "But, I didn't want that one! I wanted the other one! I looked at him and said, "Tymon, I'm so sad now." He stopped crying for a moment and asked, "Why?" "Because I gave you that gift with my heart and with my true love. When you say that you don't want it, it means that you don't want my true love. That's why I'm so sad now. I want to give you my true love with the gift." He continued to cry and carry on, so I said, "Well, when you want me to give you this gift, with my true love, then come and tell me, okay?" About half an hour later he came to me and said, "Daddy, I think I want the gift and your true love now." I grabbed him and hugged him and kissed his cheek and said, "Now I'm so happy! Thank you, Tymon!" Because he was only four, I spelled it out for him. He learned something. After all, are children born with a deep, innate wisdom about matters of the heart? Tymon was thinking only of his gift. He didn't know that he should think of anything else. His heartistic antennae were still being formed. It was truly inspiring to see that he could learn and respond so quickly. .... It is clear that part of love involves receiving love. In order to receive love then someone must love us. They must express their love sufficiently for us to feel it, and we must be sensitive enough and grateful enough to recognize love when it is given to us. Our heartistic antennae must be working well. A pre-requisite for us to receive love is an attitude of true gratitude for the love that comes to us. There is a saying that if a man has no shoes at least he can be grateful that he has feet. A person of resentment and complaint will have a difficult time receiving love. **** "Kindness gives birth to kindness." Sophocles "Hell is not to love anymore." Georges Bernanos [five] Responding to Love ------------------- Let's assume that we have successfully felt love from someone. What is our natural reaction? We feel joy! We feel an indescribable happiness that another person loves and cares for us. Our loneliness departs for a moment. We turn to that person and begin to feel love for him, or for her. Our feelings are so intense sometimes, that we conclude that we truly love that person. If the person is of the opposite sex, about the same age, our emotions sometimes combine with physical stimuli, and we may say, "I'm in love." This has been the typical, historical pattern of "falling in love" romantically. If there is a great age disparity, or if the other person is of the same gender, our feelings of love may manifest as brotherly or sisterly love, childlike love, or parental love. Receiving love from the other person, however small the expression of it, in whatever form, produces an immediate response in us! We like to receive love! Children like to receive love. Everyone likes it. It is the most wonderful thing in the world. When we feel love in response to the other person's love, when we say that we "love" the other person and "feel love" for the other person, what kind of love are we feeling? The easiest way to answer that question is to imagine how we will feel if the person suddenly stops loving us. What happens to our feeling? Often, our feeling of love will crash down into the depths. We will feel hurt, confused, heart-broken, and possibly, cold. We may not "feel love" for the other person anymore. This is not an easy question, for when someone stops loving us it is difficult to analyze our feelings. We, after all, are the ones who feel wounded and misused. It is "they" who are not loving "us". Let's be honest though. Who initiated the love? Did we? Did the other person? The other person often initiates the love. Sometimes there is only a slight degree of difference between the amount of love we give to them and they give to us. Our immediate response undoubtedly stimulates the relationship, and is a substantial expression of our own quality of heart. The question becomes truly relevant when we clearly do not feel love from the other person. Our feelings of love for the other person are not being stimulated by them. Our heartistic antennae are not picking up anything at all. What do we do in that case? Is it possible to "feel love" for the other person when the other person is not loving us? When we feel love for someone who is loving us first, is that not a response on our part? When that love is withdrawn, and our feeling of being loved declines, our responsive love vanishes because it has nothing to respond to. Responsive love therefore has an inherent limitation. There is a step beyond responsive love, for if there were not, and all people were simply responding to love, then who would initiate love? Initiating and giving love allows us to create relationships of love that are not initially dependent upon the other person. It is absolutely true, of course, that without the other person's eventual response, the relationship of love could never reach fruition. This is particularly important, because our children will not be able to love us first, at least not while they are young. They are not the parents. Our children come into the world having a tremendous potential for love, but initially they know absolutely nothing about love -- except that they want to receive it twenty-four hours a day. **** "If you would be loved, love and be lovable." Benjamin Franklin "I define love thus: The will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth." M. Scott Peck, M.D. "Initiative is doing the right thing without being told." Victor Hugo [six] Initiating Creative and Subjective Love ---------------------------------------- Can we initiate love in a relationship? Let's try to answer that by asking ourselves, "Did I ever initiate love with a new person whom I had never met before?" Most of us will say, "yes". We forget sometimes how we loved someone, and we sometimes never realize what our love meant to that person. Think of the last hotel clerk, or waitress, or business person that you were especially nice to. You thought of them; you considered their situation; you had compassion for them because of their hard work. You felt sympathy, or admiration, or a sense of delight to see them, and you gave them something extra -- whether it was a smile, a kind word, or a bigger tip. You initiated love. You loved them before they loved you. You expressed your feeling of love or heart for them, and gave them your heart through your expression or action. Your love was not responsive love based upon their service or love for you -- it was creative, initiating love. Using the grammatical terms of "subject" and "object", your love was "subjective", giving love, rather than "objective", receiving love. Haven't we all initiated love toward someone? At that moment, we thought of the other person first and considered their feelings before our own. Our heart was genuinely interested in their situation. Our love and heart were squarely in the realm of "unselfish love". How did we feel? Wonderful! How did the other person feel? Also wonderful! How incredible it was that our heart toward the other person was not dependent upon them loving us first. .... I once had an experience that I can never forget. I was sitting on a hill, among some trees, behind a shopping center in West Virginia. For a variety of reasons, I was thoroughly depressed that day, and was slumped forward with my head on my knees. Suddenly, I heard footsteps, and looked up. A checkout girl from the grocery store was walking up the hill toward me. She was carrying a paper-plate in her hand, with a sandwich on it, and a glass of soda in her other hand. She smiled at me, and said, "I thought you might like this." She handed them to me, turned, and walked back down the hill. I never saw her again, and have no idea what her name is. I will never forget the overwhelming sense of love that I felt that day. It re-confirmed my belief in unselfish love, in "true love", and more than anything, it re-confirmed my belief that behind a person's true love is a God of parental love. The checkout girl gave love to me. It was an example of how important it is to receive love, but it was also an example of how precious it is to give love. Her love was not responsive to my love. I didn't give her anything. It came from her first. .... What kind of love do parents express -- receptive love, or giving love? Objective love, or subjective, creative, initiating love? We know the answer, don't we? We try to pull, from the very bottom of our hearts, every last ounce of parental, giving love. We want to "give love" to our children. We feel overjoyed when our children respond to our love, and gurgle and clap (when they're young) and generally act in a way that makes us feel warm inside. Their response helps to complete the relationship of heart between parent and child. Without their response, or with an unloving response, we enter the realm of what I call "sad love". We don't want to love our children simply because they are good. If their goodness is a requirement to receive our love, then they will most certainly reach a point where we will not love them. We want to love them because they are part of us, because they are meant to become loving children, and because our own nature and heart should reflect a parental love that gives first, and receives second. When they act badly, and don't respond, we realize that they are still growing and learning, and give them love that may be tinged with sadness. In other words, their actions are not bringing us joy. But we still love them. On the other hand, when they do respond -- we are filled with joy! We are experiencing what some parents have called the core joy of the universe; the parent--child relationship of love and heart. **** "The great tragedy of life is not that men perish, but that they cease to love." Somerset Maugham "Mother is the name for God in the lips and hearts of children." William M. Thackeray "It is impossible that anything so natural, so necessary, and so universal as death, should ever have been designed by Providence as an evil to mankind." Jonathan Swift [seven] Parental Love is Eternal ------------------------- How long should parental love last? After we have poured out our heart to our children, for ten, twenty, or thirty years, should we grow cool in our feelings toward them? It is simple to answer that by asking ourselves if, at the height of our new love for our children, when they are young, we would like to love them forever. Of course the answer is "yes". It is rather like couples when they enter into marriage. It would be quite odd if two people said to each other, on the way to the altar, "Now, Rudolph, now Matilda, remember -- this is only for a month. After that we won't love each other at all." We don't plan to "fall out of love" with our spouse, and we don't plan to become estranged from our children. Rather, our fervent hope is that our love will become more and more burning, more and more passionate and unselfish. Imagine that we have poured out our hearts to our children; teaching, serving, hugging, loving, for many years. Imagine that we have never subjected the children to even a single moment of ill-temper. Imagine that we have loved our children with a standard of unselfish love that surpassed all the saints and good people of history. We have expressed our love fully and completely. Our heart toward each of the children is totally committed and pure, with no feeling of anger or resentment. Imagine that our children have responded with a beautiful heart of love. They love us profoundly, to the point where we and our children almost think alike. They understand our hearts completely, and we experience a vibration of heart between us that resonates with joy. Would we want our relationship of heart with our children to continue from that point on, forever and ever? We want to be together with our children for eternity! How do we know that this is true? Ask anyone whose child has died. If the parents don't want to stay with their children, then why do the parents grieve? This doesn't mean that the parents and children would necessarily want to live in the same house. (Although, then again, they might.) What it does mean is that the bond of heart and love would be so strong that the parents and children would truly feel joy to see each other. In that sense, they would feel joy to simply "be together". This one fact may be the best evidence that God has created an after-life for us to live in. It is the nature of parents that they want to live for eternity with their children. It is not logical that God would create us to be His children of unselfish love, invest Himself in the creation, care for us throughout our lives, and then simply have us "disappear" at the age of eighty-eight, gone for good. Erased from existence. Instead, it is much more "heartistically logical" that He would create a realm where we could freely relate to each other, our children, and to God. That realm has been called by many names by many different religions. Perhaps the simplest way to describe it would be the "spiritual world". People of all denominations are becoming intensely interested in the topic of life-after-death. Hence movies such as Ghost, with Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore, are very popular. One might ask what place a discussion of the after-life has in a book about parental love. Good question! Public opinion surveys have shown that the majority of Americans believe in life after death -- in some form. I am not in any way attempting to express or discuss denominational beliefs. There are many opinions about the exact attributes of life after death. I am, on the other hand, trying to highlight the logic that love was created to be eternal. Even though life after death is still an unknown realm, isn't it true that our vision about parental love is affected by the knowledge that the spiritual world exists? After a lifetime of loving our children, we have at least the glimmer of a hope that we will see them again, and love them again, after we physically die. This has a tremendous impact on our hearts. Our love for our children becomes focused on an eternal relationship. With that time frame to work with, our perspective about the value of love deepens and broadens. As parents, we become concerned with the eternal well-being of the children. Their long-range welfare is paramount. One of the ways to describe parents is that parents live to bring true eternal joy, based upon love, to their children. When we think about the spiritual world, or life-after-death, our view about what is valuable to us changes. I believe that when we do approach the age of eighty-eight (or some other large number) we will look back upon our life and remember more than anything else the people whom we have loved -- and will love forever. Our parents. Our spouse. Our children. Our friends. The times that our hearts were touched and melted with the joy of giving and receiving love. A great part of our joy will be based upon the relationships of heart and love that we will have established with our children and with other people. Based upon this view that relationships of unselfish love are eternal and are of the highest value, our actions and viewpoint will be influenced. It will become ever more clear to us that parental love is part of an eternal relationship -- a relationship that will bring us far more joy than any material stimuli. This type of value system will create an impact on our own lives, the lives of our children, and the lives of everyone around us. **** Part 3 Where Do We Learn to Be Good Parents? **** "Love is the essence of God." Ralph Waldo Emerson "Love is an image of God, and not a lifeless image, but the living essence of the divine nature which beams full of all goodness." Martin Luther [eight] The Source of Parental Love ---------------------------- It is difficult to strive to become a person of parental love, and continually replenish one's "well-spring" of parental love, without considering the question of source. Are we the source of parental love? Someone might say, "yes", but isn't it true that love existed before we were born? Our parents felt parental love from our grandparents before we saw the light of day. Are our grandparents the source? They had parents too. An atheist might contend that parental love is simply a phenomenon of human existence, and a result of evolutionary development. Marxism ignored parental love altogether, considering it irrelevant. There are many doctrines and philosophies in the world, so asking about the source of parental love is not simple. Isn't it interesting that almost all parents express parental love of some sort, no matter what their ideological belief? Parental love is universally attractive. One way of looking at this question is to state it as a "God or No God" question. If God doesn't exist, then who knows where parental love came from? From the dust of evolution? On the other hand, if God does exist, and if God is a God of parental love, then we know -- even without considering the complexities of theology and doctrine, that God is the source of parental love. I must state here (as you may have realized) that I personally believe that God does exist, and is the source of parental love. If this is not your belief, I hope that portions of this book may still be of benefit to you, especially with the sections that deal with how to love children. I believe that the same motivation of true love drives all of us -- and provides common ground for discussion and harmony. At certain points in this book I will mention the connection between parental love and God without further question about God's existence. For those readers who may feel differently, I beg their patience. At the same time, realizing that almost ninety-five percent of the American people, and a large portion of the world's population, believe that God does indeed exist, we can perhaps state here that we have additional common ground for our discussion. Earlier I mentioned two points of consensus about parenting. I would like to add a third point, and restate them here: .... "God exists. Humankind's lineage of parents and children began with God as the first Parent, and the Creator of unselfish love." "A primary qualification to be a parent is to be a person who loves children and other people with unselfish love." "One of the highest goals that parents can have for their children is that their children become people who love others unselfishly." .... With these three points as the base of our logical discussion about the many aspects of parenting, perhaps we can form opinions together that arrive at the same goal via the same route. Our methods of parenting need to be guided by logic and reason based upon heart and love. I have always believed that the "means to the end are the same as the end". If we are to establish relationships of love with our children, we must treat them with love. It's rather simple logic, but it makes more sense than saying that we will establish relationships of love by hurting our children. With common sense such as this, the argument that the "end justifies the means" is effectively routed. .... As we walk in nature, and breathe the fresh air, and gaze at the beauty of the plants and trees and magnificent sunsets, can we not feel that these things are the result of an intimate concern for our happiness? When I remember that God is the source of parental love, I feel how beautiful it is that the creation around us reflects His intense concern for our well-being. If we are perhaps burdened because we ourselves, as parents, don't receive enough parental love, we may find solace in nature, in reflection, and in prayer. The knowledge that we are cared for by a parental God is, I believe, the foundation for our own growth as a parent. **** "He whom love touches not walks in darkness." Plato [nine] Have Parents Received Enough Love? ----------------------------------- As parents, we want to be filled with an endless supply of parental love for our children. Can we express parental love to others if we have never received it? Can we express it if we know absolutely nothing about it, have never seen it, and have never felt it? Logically, we would have to say no. From this point of view, it seems that receiving parental love is a pre-requisite for giving parental love. Have we received parental love, as individuals? The sad answer is that some of us have, some of us haven't, and some of us are in between. Consider the extreme situation of a teenage mother who is a drug addict, and has an illegitimate child who is born addicted. The mother has probably never received very much parental love herself. Can she give her baby true parental love? Probably not. Our parents are all different. Some of us have parents that not only loved us purely, but expressed their love so beautifully that we never doubted their love for us, and throughout our life felt buoyed by their heart of love. Some of us had one parent who loved us, and one who struggled to love. Some of us had parents who could hardly love us at all. Perhaps all of us have varying degrees of pain in our hearts resulting from broken expectations and hurt feelings. Do we find ourselves reacting to our children the same way that our parents treated us? Many of us would say yes. From this, we can see that the world has been hostage to a vicious cycle of inadequate parental love. Perhaps we, as parents, can break some part of that cycle. **** "The morning of life is like the dawn of day, full of purity, of imagery, and harmony." Francois Chateaubriand "The voice of parents is the voice of gods, for to their children they are heaven's lieutenants." William Shakespeare "As I approve of a youth that has something of the old man in him, so I am no less pleased with an old man that has something of the youth. He that follows this rule may be old in body, but can never be so in mind." Marcus Tullius Cicero [ten] When We Were Children in the School of Love -------------------------------------------- My mother used to ask my father, "Carl, do you remember what it feels like to be a child?" She usually asked this when my father was expressing some degree of frustration about the seeming idiocy of his children (us). I don't believe that my father actually did remember what he felt like when he was a child. If he had, I think that he would have had an easier time relating to my sister and brother and me. We weren't particularly bad kids. (Although I did put salt in the sugar bowl on April Fools' Day, causing my younger brother to howl in dismay when he ate his cereal.) My son, Tymon, went into the bedroom once and took all the clothes out of the dressers, and gleefully threw them on the floor, the bed, and even the hanging ceiling lamp. When my wife viewed the wreckage, she wanted to use him as a broom to clean up the mess. (She was angry.) I looked at him, and thought to myself, "He had such a good time. He must have felt great trying to throw clothes on the lamp." I went up to him, and asked, "Tymon, did you have a good time throwing the clothes all around?" Of course he said "yes". I nodded, and said, "Yes, I understand. It was really fun, wasn't it?" "Uh, huh." I looked at him. "What do you think you should do now?" He squinted up at me, and asked, "Clean it up?" "Yes! Very good! Now clean it up, and make Mom very happy, okay?" It took him about three hours to clean up the room. He kept wanting to come downstairs and play, but I kept sending him back upstairs, repeating the point that he should clean up the mess to make Mom happy. He finally did it, and I congratulated him on cleaning it up. He learned that he needed to clean up any mess he made. He probably also learned that it wasn't really worth making a mess, since he would have to clean it up himself. Most of all, I wanted him to learn that his Daddy understood him. That he could trust me to know how he felt. I wanted him to know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that his parents would continue to love him, even though he had done something wrong. By becoming confident in his parents' love for him, he would gain the realization that he could always come to us, without being afraid. By thinking of how I would have felt in his shoes, as he gleefully threw clothes all over the room, I was able to understand that he didn't mean any harm by it. He was young, and didn't do it because of deliberate selfishness. He was playing. This is not to say that we shouldn't reprimand our children, or discipline them. I simply believe that we need to make a special effort to understand how they think, and how they feel. .... Understanding how our children feel is made easier if we reflect about our own experience, even in a general way. When we were growing up, what was our desire and attitude as we approached our parents? When we were less than a year old, we may have clung to our parents, and especially our mother, without words. We had existed for only a short time, and were just becoming aware of the fact that we were alive. We knew that our mother was warm, and the source of food, comfort, and clean diapers. We felt sad when our mother left the room, and total happiness when she came back. Our mother was our universe, with a smiling Daddy orbiting around as well. During our early childhood we wanted love from our parents, and felt entirely happy to be with them. We didn't analyze our feelings very much. Our hearts were simple and innocent. We were childlike. We trusted our parents. To us, in a sense, they were like God. They were the source of life, of love, and of our lineage. The most natural state of affairs for us was to be close to them, physically and heartistically. We placed our little hand in their's and felt safe. Imagine someone interviewing us, at some point during our first seven years of life. It might go like this: "Hello, children." We respond shyly, twisting one foot over the other. "Hi." "Do you love your Daddy and Mommy?" Our eyes light up, and we nod vigorously. "Oh, yes." The grown-up leans closer, looming over us. "Would you like to stay with your Daddy and Mommy forever and ever?" "Of course!" We cross our eyes slightly, wondering how this person could ask such a ridiculous question. Why wouldn't we want to stay with the center of our life? Why indeed? Is there anything more tragic than to watch a small child lose his or her innocence and trust in parents? As the child grows, he finds that his parents are not like God after all, and in fact, have a very difficult time emulating God's quality of parental love. As we mentioned, there are all kinds of parents. Some are quite loving, some are in between, and some are dreadful. If asked, most parents would probably say that they want to become better (although some might say that they are just fine, thank you.) We ourselves, as parents, want to become more loving toward our children. It's potentially painful to assess ourselves realistically, but it is worth it for the sake of our children. More than any other factors, such as methods of discipline, education, or other external aspects of child-rearing, we may have been hurt the most by our parents' inability to love us continuously. It was a cumulative process consisting of many small expressions of anger, or actions that were less than loving. Think of how we felt each time our parents raised their voices unjustly. If our parents were good, and we honestly can't point to very many instances where we felt hurt by them, then perhaps we can study the situation of parents and children that we know. Have we seen a parent become impatient with a noisy child, and suddenly lean forward, swearing perhaps, and scream, "Shut up!"? Even if his words were not bad, his facial expression may have silently said, "I hate you!" As we grow, there may be more painful experiences. Adolescence comes, and we begin to sprout in all sorts of confusing directions. Our parents may have difficulty helping us. Because we are bigger, hugs may come less often, and our feeling of intense closeness may lessen. Eventually, we become adults, and move out of our parents' house, and manage our own affairs. At this point, as we enter adult society, what is our relationship to our parents? Have our parents loved us enough? Have we learned how to love parentally by watching our parents? Of what quality is our own parental love? Our family is where we first learned about love. We may not have been taught adequately, but for better or for worse, it was our first school -- the "school of love". We were born into the family school of love, and have the potential to each become a parent of true love. It is tragic that the original standard of families has become less than God's ideal. Even though our experience as children may have been painful, it is now our opportunity to create a beautiful school of love for our children. Reflecting about our experience as children will help us understand how much we must love our children. **** "The love of heaven makes one heavenly." William Shakespeare "And though the Lord give you the bread of adversity and the water of affliction, yet your Teacher will not hide himself anymore, but your eyes shall see your Teacher. And your ears shall hear a word behind you, saying, `This is the way, walk in it,' when you turn to the right or when you turn to the left." Isaiah 30:20-21 [eleven] Finding "Teachers" of Parental Love ------------------------------------ It is clear that we must strive to develop ourselves as parents. Are any of us good enough? To become good parents will take time, and be a process of growth and study. The "university of parental love" is a school without walls that all of us need to pass through successfully. The difficulties in graduating from this school are huge. First and foremost is the problem of finding the school and the teachers. We don't learn about true love in normal high schools -- yet many young people become parents shortly after graduation. Our first teachers -- our parents, are often inadequate, and feel shortchanged themselves. An individual's search for parental people who can teach him or her about true love is made even more difficult by our society's lack of focus on the topic of parental love. Although many young parents feel deficient, and want to become better parents, they may also feel that there is really no one that they can turn to for guidance. They may feel unloved, uncared for, and lonely. Modern western society has been compared to a "desert of heart" -- a place where true unselfish love is in very, very short supply. Even though we have parents, a common phenomenon upon reaching adulthood is to leave home and exist as a self-sufficient individual -- without a close relationship with parents. Adults often continue to love their parents, but the intimacy of thought and heart between parents and children sometimes lessens as the children grow older. The adult child will consult with his or her parents less frequently, often separating emotionally as well as physically. Let's pose this question: how many American or European adults in their thirties, forties, or fifties feel so close to their parents that they will consult with them about matters of the heart? How many will seek their parents' advice about how to raise their own children? How many feel that their parents represent good examples of true parental love? Even more to the point, how many adults love their parents so intensely, and respect them so much, that they are happiest when they are together with them? Isn't it significant that in Occidental society parents are often shunted off to nursing homes, instead of remaining with their children? We cannot really blame the children or the parents for this phenomenon. Both are victims of a cultural and historical tradition. We are, on the other hand, at liberty to ask ourselves, "Is it good that parents and children seem to grow apart as the children become adults?" This question strikes at the heart of Western, and especially American, individualism. When a person turns eighteen or twenty-one, they are able to escape from the "dominion" of parents, and can do whatever they want. They are free. This is not normally thought of as a sign of not loving your parents -- it's just the little bird naturally leaving the nest. Adults, after all, need to be self-sufficient and able to take care of themselves (according to this view). The capability to exist in the cold, cruel world, and to get a job, support a family, or be creative, is not the question. Those are all external issues, related to a person's external capabilities. Far more important is the individual's quality of heart and capability to give parental love to others. This aspect of our character and heart is a direct product or result of our relationship with parents and other parental people. In short, our heart of love is influenced by our identity and position as children in relationship to our physical parents or parental elders. The tragedy of history is that so many parents themselves feel like orphans -- with their hearts distant from their physical parents. How can we receive parental love, and grow as a parent, if our own parents are inadequate in their love for us? In spite of our often sad reality, we must somehow become mature parents. We absolutely need to receive parental love in order to become loving parents ourselves. A wonderful aspect of parental love is that it is not limited to a parent's own children. If parents develop hearts of parental and unselfish love, they want to love many people -- not only their own children. It is this fact that has been the saving grace for many people who suffered with inadequate parents. Examples of people with this type of parental heart can be found among the ranks of sacrificial and parental teachers, religious persons or social workers. Think of the good that Spencer Tracy's character did in the movie Boy's Town. Father Edward J. Flanagan was a famous, true-life example of a person who gave parental love to children, even though they were not his own. A Roman Catholic priest, Father Flanagan established Boy's Town in 1917, in Omaha, Nebraska. Today, over 8,500 boys and girls receive care there each year. From a small beginning, Father Flanagan has left an enduring and valuable legacy. Parental love can be expressed by any person, famous or not, and can turn another person's life completely around. One of the questions that I've often asked people is, "Have you ever felt parental love? Not just from your own parents (because many people haven't felt adequate love from their parents) but from any other persons?" The responses have been widely varied. What is most interesting is that sometimes two people will know the same teacher, or minister, or older person. One person will feel that the older person is very loving indeed. The other person will feel nothing. This again highlights the necessity of keeping our heartistic antennae in good repair. As parents, we must know the "taste" of heart and love in the position of a child before we can fully express it to our own children. We can receive it from someone other than our own parents. It should be from our own parents, but if our parents were not loved themselves, what can they do? They are, themselves, either beneficiaries of love, or victims of unloving parents. If our parents were difficult and unloving, we should feel compassion for them. How miserable were their lives, and their childhoods? For our own survival, and for our children's sakes, we must find parental love somewhere. Not so that we can "grab" it, like a parasite, but rather so that we might learn how to give true parental love to our children and to other people. .... What steps can we take to help us find teachers of parental love? Sometimes it may seem that it is a hopeless task, and that there really is no parental love to be found anywhere -- at least not for us. I don't believe that is true, for we can at least say, "God exists, and true love is the most powerful force in the universe." There are things that we can do that will help us in our search for parental love. Do testimonies help? I can only say that yes, love does exist. I found it often enough that I can now conclude that it wasn't because I was special, or that I was "lucky". Parental love is available for everyone. After searching for continual parental guidance myself, for many years, and after talking with many different kinds of people who sometimes had found it, and sometimes had not, I began to realize that finding parental love is made much easier by certain internal attitudes that we can adopt. First and foremost is the clarification of our desire. After reflecting deeply, we may come to the conclusion that, yes, we do need to find parental people who can teach us about true, unselfish love. They will teach us by loving us as if we were their own children. Through that process, our hearts will be able to grow and expand. Through the process of being loved by one, or even many, elder parental people, and by loving them in return, we can learn what we may have missed when we were children. Our hearts will be refreshed and resurrected. Just as children grow through many stages of love to finally understand the heart of parental love, we too can learn and grow in relationship to other parental people. Our desire is the first pre-requisite to receive true love. Our desire will sensitize our heartistic antennae to a tremendous degree. We must know clearly that we want with all the fiber of our being to find true parents. Our desire will become like a burning flame that will drive us forward and allow us to reach our goal. Numerous explanations have been given about the phenomena of gaining results through "goal-setting", focused desire, or prayer. My personal belief is that when we focus the direction of our internal desire, we become very aware of opportunities to fulfill our desire. We ourselves begin to take steps to fulfill our desire -- because we want to fulfill it. If the desire is an unselfish, heartistic desire that moves the heart of God, I believe that we enter a whole new realm of being guided and supported by God, our ancestors in the spirit world, and the environment around us. People also want to help us. If we go forward with the heart that says, "I want to learn how to love others, and give them parental love", I believe that God will Himself want to help us. Why? Because He is very, very interested in giving parental love to people. He wants to love our children even before we do! Remember Rocky in the second Rocky movie? He realized that he needed a trainer in order to become a champion. He was realistic enough to realize that he was still deficient. He was willing to submit to the indignity of chasing chickens around a pen, in order to increase his speed. His desire was very large. We also need training. We need teachers. If our own parents are wonderful, then perhaps they are the ones we should go to first. On the other hand, if our parents fall short of the highest standard, through no real fault of their own, we need to find other trainers in order to become champions of parental and unselfish love. Our desire will point us in the right direction. Perhaps the second most important factor in our search is humility. We must be humble if we are going to learn anything about loving our children and loving others. Doesn't it make sense? If we walk around saying that we are "just fine, thank you", we will never be able to take a good hard look at ourselves so that we can improve. It is truly difficult to be humble. Arrogance is subtle, like a snake. It creeps and slithers into one's life while we are unaware, and coils itself around one's humility and tries to choke it. It is so pernicious that we can even become arrogant about our humility. (Someone might even say, "I have never met anyone as humble as myself.") Uh oh! Samuel Coleridge couched it well when he wrote, "The Devil did grin, for his darling sin is pride that apes humility." I think that one of the biggest difficulties we have in overcoming arrogance is our own feeling that we lack value in relationship to other people. If I say that I am not loving enough, what will people think of me? They might look down on me! It's very hard to weather the real or imagined scorn of other people. To tell the truth, though, most people already know what we are like. People are very observant. If we tell someone that we aren't loving enough, they might even say, "Well, I knew that!" I believe that people who have a high regard for unselfish values themselves will respect us even more if we are realistic with ourselves and with them. Pretense and facades will not really take us anywhere. We are only delaying our own growth. When someone says, "You know, that really wasn't very loving of you to do that", we need to stop dead in our tracks and ask ourselves, "Is she right?" With that attitude of realism, and its subsequent humility, we will be able to hear the voice of parental guidance when it crosses our path. We will recognize our teachers when we meet them. A third factor is quite simple, really. We need to go where parental people exist. Can we expect to find true parental love in a den of thieves? Remember the expression, "birds of a feather flock together"? If we are associating with selfish, materialistic, thoughtless people, we will have a hard time finding a teacher of parental love. This is not meant to be judgmental toward those who are struggling with selfishness. One of the first definitions of parental love is that we should love and genuinely care for people who really need love. But we must be realistic. If we are going to give anything to anyone, we need to find a conduit to the source of love. If we are going to brighten anyone's life, we need to look for the socket that we ourselves can plug into. Where do parental people live? Are they listed in the yellow pages under "Parental People"? I wish they were. They might be, if there were more of them, and if this topic becomes one of paramount importance to our society. At the moment, we need to use other means to find them. Rather than offer something specific, like, "visit your local congressman", or "go to church", I would like to recommend a more general, and perhaps a more wide-ranging method. The core attribute of parental love is unselfishness. Isn't that true? Unselfishness is the thread running through all forms of goodness and virtue. Where can we find people of parental love? The best place to look is where people are being unselfish. That may be a community group. It may be a religious group. It may simply be your next door neighbor. Not everyone who is unselfish has enough parental love. There are many stages of unselfishness. There is even the type of unselfishness which is not really very loving, but simply service done out of duty. Even so, by associating with people that are striving to be unselfish, we will increase our chances of finding truly parental people who can teach us how to love. We will be disappointed. We may expect that someone will respond to our desire to learn from them, and then have our hopes dashed. It is inevitable. (It has happened to me more than once.) For this reason, I think that the fourth factor that will lead us toward our goal is unyielding determination. Aggressive and patient persistence. We must never give up. Period. And then we will meet those who can teach us. Lastly -- even though I'm sure there are other factors that will help us -- I cannot stop myself from recommending faithful prayer. As I mentioned, the source of love is a real, and very major issue for anyone striving to become a better parent. Couched in a "God or No God" context, and concluding that God does indeed exist, turning our attention to the desire of God makes sense. If God exists, will He not listen to a prayer of faith and hope? A prayer that says, "Help me to love others"? A prayer that expresses the desire to give, to love, to serve, and to become a person of true parental love"? I believe that He will not only answer, but is Himself passionately and intensely focused on helping us reach the goal of becoming people of true parental love. **** Part 4 Our Vision and Hope for Our Children **** "When a father gives to his son, both laugh; when a son gives to his father, both cry." Jewish Proverb "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it." Proverbs 22:6 [twelve] Children of Filial Piety ------------------------- What kind of people do we want our children to become? Our vision and hope for our children will affect the way that we treat them, and will influence the direction of their training. We most certainly want our children to become educated, materially successful adults. We want them to get married, be happy, and raise a good family. We may have a vision for them that they become doctors or lawyers. The questions about vision and hope for our children revolve around our sense of value -- our opinion about what is important in life. In simple terms -- but nonetheless very real terms, what is important to us as parents and as people? Some of the classic choices are money, knowledge, power, and love. What is most important to us? Let us assume here that we can all answer, after searching the innermost depths of our hearts, that love is the culmination of our desire. With this as a base to examine our vision for our children, let's look at the possibilities ahead of us. Perhaps the first attribute of a "good" child would be that of "filial piety". Western society seldom talks about "filial piety" -- the heart of love and devotion that a child has for his parents. It is a very common concept in Asian cultures. In a nutshell, filial piety is the heart of a child where the child would say, "I love my parents. I respect them. I trust them. I know that they love me. Because I love them, there is really nothing I would rather do than be with them and make them happy." One day when Kim and I were going through a bit of financial difficulty, Tymon overheard us talking about our bills. He had just received fifty cents from the tooth fairy and was very excited about the millions of toys that he was planning to buy with the money. He came up to us, with the two quarters in his hand, and said, "I've got some money, Daddy and Mommy. You can use this to pay your bills." My wife cried, and handed the money back to him. I was so proud of Tymon for his generosity. The heart of filial piety is beautiful beyond words. It's deep and thoughtful, giving and responsible, and truly humble. A child of filial piety never loses the sense that his parents are teachers and guides. Ideally, they know best what is good for the child -- even when the child is 40 years old, married, and has children. The identity of the child is closely bound to the parents. Instead of saying, "I am Bill Smith, a person who came into being with no past, no lineage, and no history", a child of filial piety would say, "I am Bill Smith, son of my father and mother who love me -- I will always be the child of my parents." The "identity-crisis" that so many teenagers are experiencing may partially be resolved by gaining a stronger sense of "belonging" to their family or their clan. Without family roots, teenagers can feel that they are truly alone in the world. For this reason, the bond of heart that is created through an attitude of filial piety provides a strong foundation for individual stability. Unfortunately, to many Westerners, filial piety is not only an unusual idea, but an inconvenient or oppressive notion. Many people look upon adulthood as a time of freedom from parents -- finally. The last thing they want is to have to continue to be "under the thumb" of Mom and Dad. We may not be able to relate to the idea of being a child of filial piety toward our own parents, because many of us do not have parents that embody true parental love. True filial piety can only be fulfilled when the parents are living in an unselfish way. If a child totally unites with a parent that is very selfish, the child will not be raised to become an unselfish child. For this reason, many children have found it difficult to follow their parents completely. Ultimately, the question that a child will ask a parent is, "Why should I follow you?" Imagine how we would have felt, as we grew up, if our father and mother had been absolutely perfect in their love for us. Imagine that they never scolded us with a selfish motivation, they never failed to love us, even when they were exhausted. Imagine that they were endlessly wise, and always taught us to be loving, unselfish children. They never misused us, but instead continuously served us, and showed us how to serve other people. Whenever we were in trouble they knew exactly what to do, and dealt with us so fairly that we weren't afraid that they would stop loving us if we did something wrong. As we grew, we understood their heart of love for us even more, and experienced their love so often, and so consistently, that our love for them became unbreakable. We were truly in love with our parents, and could consider them our best friends. At a certain point, we would understand that our parents had set the example for us, and that we should become as parental as they were to us. Depending upon our religious belief, perhaps we could finally understand that their parental love was simply a reflection of God's parental heart. In a very deep way, our parents would have shown us the heart of God. We would have discovered God through our parents. If our parents had been like that, and our love for them grew and grew during our childhood and adolescence, would we suddenly reach the age of eighteen and say, "Oh, great, now I can be free. I don't have to listen to my parents any more." Wouldn't it be more normal to continue in our desire to love our parents, and to bring them joy? If our parents were truly Godly, and unselfish, wouldn't we be inspired to receive their continued guidance? We would continue to say to ourselves, "I am the child of my father and mother who love me -- and whom I love so deeply." Our identity would be more than that of an individual. We would be part of our parents' love, part of their life, and part of their lineage. We would have become children of "filial piety". We should have that status now. Unfortunately, our parents' love, and the love of their parents before them, may have been inadequate. Ultimately, if we trace our lineage all the way back to the beginning of history, can we say that our lineage is the result of true, unselfish parental love? Can we say that we are the result of a lineage of love and life that flowed from our ancestor's hearts in complete oneness with God's quality of love and heart? Whatever our philosophical or religious belief, it is evident that the various lineages of humankind have not been expressions of true unselfish love. Rather, parents have raised children who participated in a history full of tragedy. It has been a tragedy revolving around the inability of one person to love another from a parental and unselfish point of view. For this reason, many people are beginning to focus on the family as the beginning point of action in order to solve social problems. Crime, drug abuse, and poverty, (to mention but a few symptoms) all have at their root the problems of individual people who once were children. To paraphrase the little girl in the movie Hook, who commented on the bad nature of Captain Hook, we might say that people who commit selfish and harmful acts are "just mean old men who need a Mommy." How can our children become children of filial piety? First and foremost, we ourselves, as parents, must become parents of unselfish love. By doing so, we will have the true authority to say to our children, "Be unselfish. Do as I do, not just as I say." Secondly, we need to teach our children about filial piety. How will they learn unless we teach them? When they are small, they don't know the right way to act, or speak, or feel. Their hearts, and their traditions of relating to others are apt to go in the wrong direction. I very much believe that spelling things out to our children is extremely helpful. For example, when a child doesn't act respectfully, it is important to explain why, centered on true love, it is important to act in a more humble manner. In this way, they will have an intellectual as well as heartistic understanding about filial piety. By providing an example to our children, and by teaching them well, we will be more successful in our efforts to raise our children to become children of filial piety. **** "In love the paradox occurs that two things become one and yet remain two." Erich Fromm "What is a friend? A single soul dwelling in two bodies." Aristotle [thirteen] The "Heart Thread" in Our Life ------------------------------- We've already talked about the beauty and incredible joy that we feel when we are loved by someone else, and then love in return. The flow of heart between people, when their love is altruistic and unselfish, is inexpressible in content. The "thread" that connects us all, and solves virtually any problem, is unselfish love. It has been described as a "heart thread", reverberating with the feelings flowing between God and each person, and then between people. We may experience this with our children. One day I was taking a nap on the couch, when Tymon and Gracie decided that they were going to take care of me. Without any prompting, they went to the bedroom and dragged a quilt and a pillow over to the couch and tucked me in! They were so sweet as they did it, patting me on the cheek, saying, "We'll cover you, Daddy, so you can sleep." They were quite enthusiastic, so much so that they proceeded to drag all the quilts down to the couch. They had me covered from head to toe, in a big mound of bedding. I was very, very touched by their heart of love. (I was also very hot.) A religious leader once spoke of the sensation of "our hearts brushing against God's heart". With our hearts trembling with anticipation of the joy that comes from love, we try to love God, our husband or wife, our children, our friends, and anyone that we may meet. When we experience relationships of love that are true and unselfish, we are happier than at other times, aren't we? A life of love in itself brings us joy. **** "A happy family is but an earlier heaven." Sir John Bowring "The happiest moments of my life have been the few which I have passed at home in the bosom of my family." Thomas Jefferson [fourteen] Living Together in True Love ----------------------------- With a heart of love as the common ground between each one of us, and between parents and children, is there anything more delightful than parents and children, brothers and sisters, and friends and neighbors living together, expressing true love and care for each other? This is not meant to sound like sugar, honey, milk and roses! This is simply normal! We need to defend the concept of true love. The world is a terribly cynical and suspicious place. Many people have lost hope, and sometimes no longer believe in the sincerity of others. It is often perceived as normal to think of oneself first -- in order to "survive". It is more correct from an unselfish point of view to say that selfishness is abnormal -- an aberration that must be overcome. Although there aren't enough examples of an unselfish way of life in our society, we may want to consider adopting the ideal of "living together in true love" as our own personal goal. We may want to work toward it, so that at the very least we can personally foster this standard between the people that we know and ourselves. When we look at our children, and they look at us, is it not true that we would like to continue to love them forever and ever? And, because we love them, wouldn't we want to be with them all the time? Because we love them, and like them, we like to be with them! In this very simple way, we can say that one of the purposes of having children is simply to live together with true love as the "atmosphere of heart" between us and our children. .... One day I went into the family room where Tymon was sitting on the couch. He patted the cushion, and said, "Hi Daddy! Can you sit here with me for a while?" His heart was simple. He just wanted to be with his daddy. The desire to gain joy by giving and receiving love is the deepest aspect of our very simple hearts. Our problem is that our simple hearts may have been covered with complex layers of "mud", manufactured during many painful and difficult experiences in our lives. Our task now is to remove the mud and try our best to allow our hearts to reveal themselves and breathe the atmosphere of true love once again. **** "That best portion of a good man's life, His little nameless, unremembered acts Of kindness and of love." William Wordsworth "Our acts make or mar us, we are the children of our own deeds." Victor Hugo "... the growing good of the world is partly dependent on un-historic acts, and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life and rest in unvisited tombs." George Eliot [fifteen] Children of Parental Love -------------------------- When I look at my children, I often reflect about their future. What should they become? What do I want for them? When they're twenty, thirty, forty, and older, how will I know that I have succeeded in raising them properly? I know that they have their own responsibility. I can only point them in a certain direction. I can only show them the way that I think they should go. Nowadays, there is a great deal of talk about "children's rights". The theory is that children must make up their own mind about everything, especially in matters of "right" and "wrong". Some professionals are even advising children to "decide for themselves" if their parents' advice is correct. I believe that any analysis or theorizing about child care or guidance counseling should revolve around two core principles. Our logical conclusions will be shaped by our base of belief or hypothesis about life itself. First, God exists and is the creator of unselfish love. Second, unselfish love for others is the core value that is common to all people. Unselfish love is of the highest value, and is the base of a true definition of good and evil. Based upon these two principles, it becomes much clearer that living for others is better than being selfish. If unselfishness toward others is a real, guiding principle in the world around us, it doesn't make sense that we would tell our children that "anything goes -- you can make up your own mind". We can agree about certain truths. Gravity exists. If our children jump off the roof they might break a leg. Fire is hot, and burns. If the children hold a match to the bedroom curtains, the house may burn down. Should our children be told that they will have to "decide for themselves" about lighting matches? And if they decide that their parents are wrong in this matter, is it okay to light the matches? Obviously, children need guidance. They really don't know that much when they're born. This doesn't mean that we should treat them like our pets, or our prisoners. Since God created them, they are God's children before they are our own. They have value as children, as future adults, and as people. But we do want them to survive and grow, don't we? For that purpose, God created parents. Can we really say that we will be thrilled to the core if our children grow up and become the most selfish people in history? Think about the most selfish people in history. They were infamous because they hurt others. They tortured people. They killed people. They became criminals and serial killers. Selfishness is a direction that leads to more and more pain, in an ever-widening circle that affects more and more people. Ultimately, people are put on trial and sentenced to prison for their particular brand of selfishness. Realizing the miserable consequences of being a selfish person, we can, as parents, unequivocally tell our children that they should absolutely not become selfish. If they should not become selfish, what should they become? Unselfish! Of course we knew this already, but logic is a wonderful tool to cut through the confusion of the overly-complicated intellectual fog that sometimes afflicts our modern world. Again, logic is influenced in its outcome by its base, or starting point. In this discussion, we are using the "logic of love", based upon the two principles that I mentioned before. When I think this way about my children, I reach the inevitable conclusion that the highest form of unselfishness is true parental love. I want my children to grow up and become completely unselfish. I want them to become "children of parental love". Isn't this a contradiction in terms? How can one be a child, and a person of parental love, at the same time? To me, this question reveals the unfortunate gap that often exists between parents and children after the children grow up. Parents and children should always love each other, even when the children are eighty years old. The relationship should become closer and deeper, not farther apart. As our children grow and mature, parental love is the primary attribute that they should embody. Should we be content with less? Should we be content if our children grow up partly selfish, and partly unselfish? This certainly has been the historical reality until now, but at least we can strive to be as unselfish as possible, don't you think? Examining the question of goals and vision for our children has a profound impact on our attitude toward our children. If we decide that we want our children to grow up and become people of parental love, then we are immediately faced with the task of teaching them how to become that way. Of course, we ourselves are burdened by the realization that we must then become examples of parental love. Our children will learn by receiving love from us, and by watching how we relate to other people. If we love other people with a parental heart, or if we at least try, our children will notice, and will be affected by our example. .... Training our children to become unselfish and parental can begin when they are very young. When our children have friends over to play, I often emphasize to them that they are the hosts -- and should therefore make extra effort to give something to their guests. Gracie learned this, and expressed it once in a simple but beautiful way. Kim and I had given her some stuffed animals that she especially loved. When Gracie was going to visit one of her friends, she took a stuffed animal to each of them. My wife and I questioned her, reminding her that she just received the toys as birthday presents -- and did she really want to give them away? She replied that she did, and proceeded to carry the gifts to her friends. We were very happy that she did that, because even though we had purchased the toys a few weeks previously, we felt that her heart to give was far more valuable than her toys. We didn't feel offended that she gave away our gifts to her, because we knew how much she valued them. She gave away some of her precious things to make others happy. In a very real sense, she multiplied our gifts to her. .... Living unselfishly, and becoming a person of true parental love are high goals. Who among us has reached them? I know that I haven't. I also know that we will never reach our goals, and our children will have a much harder time of reaching the goal of becoming children of parental love, unless we actively adopt these goals and believe in them. It's one thing to strive for parental love, and have a hard time reaching the goal, and quite another to forget the goal entirely. Goals such as these take time. They are a process of growth. We are trying to become better parents. We are also trying to help our children become parental in their own right. With faith, with vision, with effort, and with time, we will become far more than we have been. Growth is a process of movement. We are either going to grow old, weary, and selfish, or old, vibrant, and loving. Being old is not the problem. God is old. Our problem, and our opportunity, is that we must always grow up, not down. As we do, we will be able to lead our children forward so that they also can say, "Yes, parental love is the most wonderful thing in the world. That's what I learned from my father and mother." Can we ask for anything more? **** Part 5 Becoming a Parent of True Love **** "Love is patient and kind; love is not jealous or boastful; it is not arrogant or rude. Love does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrong, but rejoices in the right. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things." St. Paul [1 Corinthians 13:4-7] [sixteen] Their Idols Have Feet of Clay... --------------------------------- Since our children expect us to be perfect in our quality of love for them, wouldn't it be helpful for us to clarify to ourselves what they expect? Do they want us to be daddies and mommies that never spill milk on the floor? Should we be superheroes? What is important to them? Although they may not be able to articulate their feelings, isn't it true that they want us to always love them, twenty-four hours a day? As we strive to become better parents, with the goal of becoming "true" or "mature" parents always before us, it is vital that we have a reference point of what a "true" parent should be like. One definition of a mature parent is that of a parent who never separates his feeling from the feeling that God has toward other people, or toward children. That person would think, feel, love, speak, and act in the same way that God would act in each situation. This would mean that on one level the person's heart of love would remain in constant unity with God, and on another level, the person's body would always do what his heart told him to do. Examples of this type of person are few and far between, and are best found among the rosters of the saints or holy persons. We know all too well that our own hearts are filled with selfish emotions and often become cold and unfeeling. Our actions are sometimes in direct conflict with our heart of love and are influenced by a variety of immediate needs. A mother who is extremely tired may find herself shouting at her children in a way that doesn't reflect her true heart -- but she can't help herself. This is our unfortunate reality -- we know that we shouldn't mistreat our children, but we often do what we know we shouldn't. We know that we can fall short of their expectations. Parents have often said, "Do as I say, not as I do." After clarifying what it means to be a "good" or "true" parent, how will we know that we have met the goal? One gauge is our own children. We have to win the approval of perhaps the most difficult critics in the world -- our very own sons and daughters. In order to do that, we must embody and demonstrate a standard of parental love that quite frankly we haven't reached yet. Our children may experience disappointment in their relationship to us. That's a miserable fact, isn't it? We want to love our children, but we aren't yet really good enough. Our children expect us to be like God in our quality of parental love, and at the same time, God expects us to be parental. God and our children expect a great deal from us! Our reality, though, is that we are rather like a group of orphans that are living on the streets by their wits. We are struggling to digest our suffering and difficult circumstances. We may find ourselves fumbling through each day in a morass of confusion, not knowing where to turn. All the while, our children are gazing at us with eyes of hope and trust. We are truly in a difficult position! Our consolation is that it is never too late to begin loving our children. True love has a cleansing power that eventually removes the pain that comes from lack of love. It is almost inevitable that we will hurt our children. We must instead make it inevitable that we will dry their tears and cause them to smile a deep and profound smile of joy because of our love for them. Until we do that, our role as parents will be unfulfilled. **** "A torn jacket is soon mended; but hard words bruise the heart of a child." Henry W. Longfellow "Anger is a wind which blows out the lamp of the mind." Robert G. Ingersoll "How much more grievous are the consequences of anger than the causes of it." Marcus Aurelius [seventeen] Scolding with Hatred will Hurt Our Children -------------------------------------------- A young boy who had just watched the Disney movie "101 Dalmatians" told his mother, "Mommy, when you shout at me you look like Cruella De Vil." (Cruella De Vil was the sinister woman in the movie who wanted to turn innocent puppies into fur coats.) The boy's mother was shocked. I asked her, "Isn't it true that at the moment you shouted at your son you wanted to hurt him?" She admitted that it was true. It is common for parents to lose their heart of love for a few moments when they are angry. It is common for parents to sometimes feel so much rage and frustration that quite honestly, at that moment, they want to really hurt their child. It is dreadful that it is common. What could be worse for a child than a parent who looks at her with eyes filled with hatred and ugliness? The eyes are the window to the soul, and children are as perceptive as anyone else. They may look at their parents and say, "Mommy and Daddy, do you love me?" They may not understand what they see, but they see it. Even without understanding why their mommy or daddy could seem to hate them so, they feel the impact of their parent's violent heart. How do our children feel when they see that message of anger on our face, or hear it in our voice? In a word, they begin to lose confidence that we love them. They begin to doubt the quality of their parents' love. They begin to lose confidence in love itself. They may grow confused, and think that love always involves anger and hurt -- because that's how Daddy and Mommy always act. They are hurt, incrementally, over a long period of time. Finally, if the sum of all the incidents of pain is too great, their hearts may grow cold, and they may separate completely from their parents. Then, one day, when the child is eighteen or twenty-one, the parent may say, "What did I do wrong? Why is my child cold toward me? Why does he hate me so? Doesn't he know that I love him?" I have already hurt my children. They are not yet eighteen or twenty-one. My most heartfelt prayer is that I can change myself so that I hurt them as little as possible, and love them as much as possible. When they grow up, I want them to feel confident about my love for them. An ugly heart can be manifested by anyone. We are all culprits. Can anyone really say that they never felt ugly toward anyone? Can we say that we never felt so impatient and frustrated, that at a certain point our feeling of love virtually disappeared? When does our "ugly" heart appear? For parents, it often happens when the child is coming into direct conflict with the desires of the parent. The parent may want to watch TV in peace and quiet after a long day, and the child is busy pulling all the cords out of the TV. It may be dinner time, and all the children are screaming at once, at the top of their lungs. It may happen as the child pulls all the clothes out of the dresser again, wrecking the bedroom one too many times. The ugly feeling may occur as the over-active son gleefully writes all over Dad's special report to the Boss that has to be delivered the next morning. It may happen as the night wears into morning, and the child with the ear infection is still screaming, still moaning, and Dad and Mom (or more likely Mom) are still awake, and are feeling like they want to scream very loudly themselves. In other words, our hearts become ugly when our perfectly valid interests are violated or damaged. The child is usually doing something that is wrong or inconvenient. We may feel that we have a legitimate complaint against our children because of the way that they are acting. Our complaint may seem to be "justified". Except for one thing. We didn't love the child at that moment of ugliness. "Yes, but....", we say. But ... we can't really escape from the truth, can we? (Sometimes we wish that we could!) The child's problem is his problem. Our problem is that we didn't love the child at that moment. To be parents of true and unselfish love, reflecting God's quality of love, we must love, we want to love our children all the time. Isn't this what we want? Is this true? Is it too difficult? The answer lies in our own heart and conscience. Looking back at the moment when we didn't love our child -- even though it was a short moment, can we say that we were right? Wouldn't it have been better, and more loving, if we had gazed at our child with a pure heart, and continued to love them even when they were doing something wrong? Disciplining our children is a serious issue for every parent -- we've all heard the phrase, "spare the rod, and spoil the child." Beyond discipline, though, is the knowledge that the ultimate "control" over our children's actions is not discipline, or law, or the fear of being caught. The ultimate and long-range motive that will give our children the power to resist selfish and irresponsible actions is their own desire to love others, and make others happy. There is a saying that a person of love and heart is someone who can "live without law". He refrains from hurting others not because it is illegal, but because he cares about them. Our children can learn about this type of heart with our help -- based upon our ability to consistently demonstrate a peaceful and loving heart toward our children, and toward other people. As our children observe us, they will see our attitude of heart, and will be inspired to emulate our standard. We have an incredible goal and burden in front of us. We can take comfort in the realization that any forward movement on our part will be helpful to our children. Our sincerity of heart toward our children, and toward the goal of parental love, will help our children feel our love. **** "Humility is the solid foundation of all virtues." Confucius [eighteen] "The Buck Stops with Me" ------------------------- In today's sophisticated world, the word "repentance" has fallen out of use. It is often equated with religious fervor that in some unfortunate cases may not be sensitive to others, or intelligently expressed. In reality, repentance is both sophisticated and intelligent. It is not a denominational or sectarian concept at all, and can be practiced in the most irreligious setting imaginable -- the criminal justice system. Criminals pay for their "sins" and are then released -- hopefully as a changed individual. In both the secular and the religious world, repentance is thought of as an act of contrition by a person who has done something wrong and admits his wrong to himself and to others. To truly repent, he then must take responsibility to repair the damage done, and to act differently. The key word is responsibility. Taking responsibility for one's actions is the beginning point of change. Sometimes a parent will say, "Now look what you made me do!" The reality is that a child doesn't make a parent do anything. The parent is not forced to feel anger or hatred. When we are wronged we are apt to feel justified about our violent heart toward the person who wronged us, describing in great detail the crimes of the other person. It is important to be very honest with ourselves. When we feel bad toward others, are we not in control of our own hearts? Do we have the option of not feeling bad? Are we responsible for our own feelings? Unless we are robots, with no capacity to give unselfish love to others, we would have to conclude that we do have the option to love others at any given moment. If true unselfish love is the core value in life, around which other standards of goodness revolve, then we can look at our actions, and say, "The other person may be wrong. He may be truly bad. Even so, if I don't love him, I am wrong. I should love the other person. Knowing that, I can feel sorry that I am not loving him more." With our children, our standard of responsibility must be the same, if we are to grow in our ability to love them parentally. The buck stops with us. Knowing that it is our job to love our children, no matter what, we stop making excuses about our lack of parental love. We can instead say, "I didn't love my child yesterday. The first thing to do is admit to myself that I was wrong. The next thing to do is say I'm sorry." Whether we apologize to God or not is very personal, and a matter of religious belief. Apologizing to our children is something that we can immediately address. Our children have good memories. After teaching our children that it is better to love other people, they may remind us of our words when we don't express love to them. At that time, it is entirely appropriate to tell them, "I'm sorry, I shouldn't have scolded you like that. I lost my temper." I have had this pointed out to me already by my older children. It's tough to get a passing grade as a parent! By taking responsibility for our own quality of love, we will experience a dramatic change in our attitude toward our children, and toward other people. Although responsibility for love seems to be a harsh and difficult stance to take, it provides us with tremendous freedom and power. Ultimately, we can say, "No one can stop me from loving others. I will love, no matter what!" We will gain a sense of confidence that even though we may be dreadfully inadequate at the moment, we will change -- because we know that we will never give up. We will feel confident in front of others, and humble at the same time. Our shortcomings will be placed in perspective. "The buck stops with me" are fighting words. It may seem unusual to refer to parental love in the same breath as "fighting spirit" -- but when our aggravation mounts, and our children are taxing our spirits and hearts, our fighting spirit to take ultimate responsibility for love will carry us through the dark moments. Our children may never know that we struggled to love them -- but their gratitude for our love will wash away the pain that we may have felt as we battled with our own selfish natures. Their smiles are worth everything. **** "The happiness of your life depends upon the quality of your thoughts: therefore, guard accordingly, and take care that you entertain no notions unsuitable to virtue and reasonable nature." Marcus Aurelius "The life that is unexamined is not worth living." Plato "Every evil in the bud is easily crushed: as it grows older, it becomes stronger." Marcus Tullius Cicero [nineteen] Transforming and Growing Our Hearts ------------------------------------ Loving our children involves both the internal aspect of becoming parents of true love, and the external traditions or methods that we employ as we relate to our children. Our primary problem is ourselves. We haven't yet become "true" parents. Our goal of becoming a better and more loving parent may be quite far ahead of us, and sometimes may seem hopelessly beyond our reach. Yet, we cannot give up, both for our own sake, and for the sake of our children. They need us to become better. On a daily basis, as we strive to love our children more, we are faced with our own limitations of heart. We are faced with our own ugliness of feelings, including hatred, resentment, complaint, bitterness, and a feeling of coldness toward others. Facing these problems, we are presented with three choices. We can bury our bad feelings, knowing that they are wrong. We can express our bad feelings as we experience them, in the hope that they will go away as we express them. A third choice is to transform our heart and feelings. Transform our emotions until we no longer have bad feelings at all. Why shouldn't we just deny or bury our feelings, and "shove them under the rug", so to speak? Many, many people do this, bottling up their emotions and trying to act in a decent way. They often do this with the best of intentions, for most people know right from wrong. We know how we should be. We just don't know how to change. So we put our bad feelings away, grit our teeth, and try our best. The problem with this method is that our bad feelings don't really go away. They just lie dormant, waiting to explode when there's the slightest crack in our self-control. It's rather like a pressure cooker. When our emotions reach a certain point of buildup, they come out with a loud and violent explosion. When they do explode, our children may be hurt emotionally or physically. The second method, of expressing our feelings whenever we feel them, has been thought of as cathartic. This theory may have stemmed from a reaction to the problems caused by bottling emotions inside oneself. This second method has been recommended as an approach that is more honest and straightforward. It certainly is more honest -- and honesty has a lot to recommend it. Expressing our bad feelings to our children is seen as a way to "get our feelings out and get rid of them". I have spoken with people who thought that it was good to express negative feelings directly to the person who "caused" them. I believe wholeheartedly in honesty and communication between parents and children. My thoughts on the second method of "expressing negativity" revolve around two main points. First, when we express negative feelings to a child directly, we are automatically expanding the range of our heartistic problem from ourselves alone to the heart of the child. Our child might not have felt the same bad feelings that we did -- but rest assured that our frank expression of resentment or complaint will cause turbulence in their heart. Some would say that they deserve any pain that they feel -- because it was they, after all, who "caused" us to feel bad in the first place. Our solution needs to be guided by our goal or purpose. If our goal is to simply "get even", or to stop our children from hurting us, then expressing our feelings to them might be the most effective means to the goal. On the other hand, if our goal is to express true love to them, and serve them, inspire them, comfort them, and give parental love to them, we need to ask ourselves if expressing our temporary resentment or complaint to them will help us fulfill our goal of parental love. At the same time, repressing our bad feelings because we don't want to hurt the other person will not necessarily remove our bad feelings -- we still must deal with that issue. A second reason why we shouldn't express negativity freely is because it is not at all clear that the expression of negativity will remove it from our heart. As we express it, we may find ourselves savoring it in a rather perverse sort of way, and because we are focusing on how bad we feel, we may find our bad feelings expanding and growing rather than disappearing. A far more effective and non-destructive method is to transform our bad feelings. After our bad feelings have been transformed into good feelings, we will automatically be freed from the ugly sensations that were causing us so much unhappiness. How is it possible to transform our hearts? Is it magic? Absolutely not! Is it easy? Unfortunately it is not. Is it inspiring to do? 100%! The steps are simple, and can be applied in our relationship with our own children, other children, or people of any age. The first step in transforming our hearts is to think and reflect. How many times do we find ourselves becoming extremely angry at someone without really giving any thought to the process? Feeling anger or ugly emotion is by its very nature not an intellectual pursuit. We don't think about getting mad -- we just get mad! Thinking deeply, and reflecting about our emotions and feelings, will allow us to realize anew that we don't want to feel bad toward our children -- or anyone else. Thinking, as an isolated activity, will not necessarily produce a good result. Thinking is rather like going on a hike through the woods. Without a map or walking staff, we may find ourselves deep in a swamp, lost for a long time. It was a thinker, after all, who said, "Life is just a dream. Perhaps I am just dreaming that I am talking to you -- therefore nothing matters." What is our map for our journey of thinking? In my own experience, when I got confused, something very simple brought me back down to earth. I remembered a series of core truths, or principles, or realities, or whatever you want to call them. These core truths have always allowed me to refresh my heart. I'd like to list some of the ones that have helped me overcome struggles in my heart. They can be phrased in any way. In this case, they are couched in the first person, with the viewpoint that an individual can say, "I feel a certain way about life." Each person may have their own list of values. These are just a few examples of a "method" of thought. They are not meant to be complete or definitive in any way. .... "God exists, and is a God of parental love." "The most wonderful and powerful force in the universe is unselfish love." "The depth of people's hearts is simple, but strong like a spine -- people want to find joy by giving and receiving love. I also want to love people and be loved in return. I want to live in harmony with other people, with relationships of true heart and love -- in what could be called a `world of heart'." "I never want to cause anyone any suffering." "If I don't feel love for someone it is my problem, not their problem. I am responsible for my own shortcomings." "If I try to serve, and give love to others, at the very least God will be happy, even if the other person doesn't appreciate my efforts." .... Everyone has their own way of expressing their innermost heart. My wife, Kim, told me that a phrase that helped her when she was suffering a great deal during a stint at a difficult sales job was simply, "People need love." That one thought helped get her through the day, and helped her smile at her customers. The point that I am trying to illustrate here is that thinking about loving our children, and transforming our bad feelings into good, needs to be guided by truth -- in this case what could be called "heartistic truth". Based upon truth, or what has been called the "logic of love", or "heartistic logic", we can arrive at powerful conclusions about our internal life. One of the internal conclusions that I always arrive at when I struggle to love other people, or my own children, is very simple. If I don't love them, it's my problem, not their problem. Period. If I don't love them, I am wrong, and I must reflect, study, strive, repent, serve, communicate, or do whatever is necessary to change myself and love them more. There is something incredibly powerful contained within the statement, "I must love more." It clarifies responsibility. It clarifies that my lack of love is not the other person's fault, but my own. With responsibility comes the ability to repent, and say, "I'm sorry that I didn't love more." Repentance goes hand in hand with humility and realism. Repentance, as we mentioned before, is not an easy subject to broach. Let's step back for a moment, though, and analyze repentance. There are two essential elements contained within repentance. The first element is the core aspect of feeling sorry for doing something that I shouldn't have done. The second element of repentance is the direction of repentance. To whom am I repenting? Our repentance should be directed toward those whom we have wronged. If we hurt our child with harsh words or an ugly scowl, our feelings, and the child's, will be transformed when we go to the child and say, "I'm sorry." If we feel that we have made God sad by our selfish feelings, then we can repent to Him as well. The key point is that repentance thoroughly removes our self-justification or arrogance about our selfish feelings and actions. Our final step in transforming our feelings is that of action. We have thought and reflected deeply. We have arrived at the conclusion that we ourselves must love more. We have possibly begun to feel quite sorry that we haven't loved more. To complete our own transformation, and to repair any damaged feelings that we may have created in our children (or others), we must now act. We must act in the opposite direction of our feelings. If we felt angry with our child, and expressed ourselves in a way that was unjust, we can repair the relationship by going to the child and expressing love to him or her. One day I shouted very loudly at my daughter Gracie. She crumpled into a mass of tears and was quite inconsolable. I realized that I was unjustly venting my frustrations about problems that had nothing to do with her, and that I needed to repair her heartistic feeling. Our relationship was damaged at that moment. If I had ignored the situation, Gracie might have kept her bruised feelings for a long time. I went to her, and told her that I was sorry. She wouldn't look at me for quite awhile. I hugged her, and kissed her, and tickled her, and told her how much I loved her, again and again. Finally she started to smile. I kept talking with her, and finally asked her if she was okay. She smiled, and said, "Yes, Daddy. I'm okay." Her heart was transformed. So was mine. Our heartistic environment was restored. Our hearts could breathe again. To summarize then, transforming our hearts is a step by step process of: .... * "Heartistic" reflection based upon the "logic of love" * Repentance anchored in the realization that we are personally responsible for our own selfish feelings and actions * The expression of unselfish love (and sometimes repentance) toward the person with whom we are struggling, through words and / or actions .... With these "steps" as our "medicine", we will be able to fix ourselves, and maintain a healthy and fresh heart of love toward our children and toward other people. The key is to keep the garden of our heart weeded. When a selfish or resentful feeling sprouts in our heart, we must eliminate it when it is still a seed, or at the very least a sprout. After it becomes a wild, hairy, creeping kudzu vine (a nasty weed that grows in the South, and smothers entire trees in its rapacious grasp) we may find ourselves overwhelmed by a feeling that is out of control. A friend of mine once told me, "Get rid of complaint and bad feelings within three hours, or three days, or you will have a dark spot on your soul." Our children will be able to live in a home that really is like a garden of heart if we, as their parents, keep the heartistic atmosphere warm and beautiful by cleansing our own feelings. With this atmosphere in our home, every day will be a delight. We will struggle quite often, but after struggling, and repairing relationships and feelings, our home will once again become a "resting place" of love for our children, for others, and for ourselves. **** "Loving kindness is greater than laws; and the charities of life are more than all ceremonies." The Talmud "Among the attributes of God, although they are all equal, mercy shines with even more brilliancy than justice." Miguel de Cervantes "`I can forgive, but I cannot forget,' is only another way of saying, `I will not forgive.' Forgiveness ought to be like a canceled note -- torn in two, and burned up, so that it can never be shown against one." Henry Ward Beecher [twenty] Resurrecting and Uplifting Our Children's Hearts ------------------------------------------------- When Kim or I reprimand our children, the most important task we have afterwards is to resurrect their heart and feeling. Tymon, Gracie, Ranin and Tadin (who is still just a baby, at the time of this writing) have sensitive little hearts that can get entirely crushed by a harsh word or a scowl. When we scold them, their feelings become miserable. Their faces droop. Tears well up in their little eyes, and they feel like their world has collapsed around them. Perhaps they have been quite bad, and need to be chastised. After we lead them through the arduous process of telling them what they did wrong, helping them to understand that it was wrong, and guiding them to apologize for their misdeeds, we are then faced with the fact that they still feel miserable. Sometimes parents will ignore the last step. They will scold. The children will weep, and clean up their mess. The children will say, "Sorry." And the parents will forget to forgive their children. Instead, they may mention the children's misdeeds again and again, for the rest of the day, the week, or longer. The children are paying over and over again for the same mistake. Gradually the children's feeling of repentance will change to resentment. Haven't we felt the same way? We will offend someone, and then apologize. The person we offended will keep bringing it up again and again, until finally we say, "I said I was sorry, didn't I?" We will get angry in return, and wonder why the other person can't accept our apology. Our relationship of heart with that person will be damaged. I believe that we must try to be rigorously fair with our children. At the same time, if we can't forgive them, aren't we in need of repair ourselves? If my son, Ranin, does something wrong, I scold him. Sometimes the scolding is hardly a scolding, but rather an educational process of informing him that, "by the way, you shouldn't take off your diaper by yourself because you're a little bit too young to do that -- but thanks for trying." He doesn't need a scolding in this case. He needs to be educated. After educating him about a certain point, he then may do the same thing again. Scolding may be more in order the second time. Or the third time. Or the fifty-ninth time. But not necessarily the first time. Each time he makes a mistake, he may be reprimanded, or made to go to his room, or whatever is appropriate. Each time he is scolded, he is sorry. Each time, he has apologized for that particular transgression. If a child has apologized, why should his parent hold anything against him? If more punishment needs to be levied, then let it be levied. If he needs to say "sorry" again, let him say it. But when his heart is sincerely repentful, shouldn't the parent let go of his or her frustration or anger about the transgression? Shouldn't the parent forgive the child? When I thought about this, I realized that each time my children did something wrong it was a new and different incident. I needed to allow my children to make a fresh start each time. We ourselves want people to have faith in us. We want people to believe that we will always try to do the right thing. If we apologize to someone, we want them to accept it, forgive us, and believe in us from that point forward. Our children are the same. They need our forgiveness, our faith, and our belief in them. When my son Ranin apologizes, I go to him and hug him and kiss his cheek, and say, "That's all right, Ranin. Thank you so much for saying sorry." I then follow up by expressing warmth to him for the next few moments, and reestablishing the conviction in his mind that his Daddy loves him and thinks that he is the most wonderful Ranin in the whole world. In my mind, the transgression is forgotten. He has apologized. It's over and done with. It's no longer an issue. I have forgiven him completely. Now it's important to resurrect his heart, and reestablish the warmth of a relationship of heart. I can do that by admiring some other facet of his personality or behavior that has nothing to do with his previous mistake. In that way, his mistake is forgotten. I don't need to mention his mistake again. His heart has been resurrected. My heart has been soothed by his apology. Our hearts are fresh and clean. Together, we are reestablishing a normal heartistic relationship. When Ranin has the opportunity next time to commit the same mistake, he will be more moved by the memory of love from his parents than the memory of his scolding. Love will give him the power to avoid the mistake. In this way, we can teach our children to "live without law". I believe that if we imbue our children with the desire to create relationships of heart with every person that they meet, they will have little trouble avoiding crime. They will have a strong desire to bring joy to the other person, and will feel pain if they cause anyone suffering. From this point of view, the way that parents raise their children is a major factor in the reduction of crime in our society. **** "A family is a place where minds come in contact with one another. If these minds love one another the home will be as beautiful as a flower garden. But if these minds get out of harmony with one another it is like a storm that plays havoc with the garden." Gautama Buddha [twenty-one] Building a Family of True Love ------------------------------- Having the highest of goals in front of us, with our beautiful children gazing at us with eyes filled with innocence, is there anything that we can do to try to build a family of true love? Are there practical methods that we can employ to teach our children about "true love"? If we examine the course of a day, what happens to our children? What interaction do we have with them? Is there anything we can do to improve and deepen the relationship or expression of heart between our children and ourselves? Perhaps the first place to start is in the way that we speak to our children. The feelings between people, including parents and children, is enhanced and multiplied (in either a negative or positive direction) based largely upon the interaction that happens between them. For example, if you know of a person living across the street, but you never talk with him, will the relationship get better? Probably not. On the other hand, if you exchange bitter words with him each time you speak with him, the relationship will quickly deteriorate. It is the same with our children, or with our spouse. If we continually express negative feelings and opinions to our family members or children, their feelings will be hurt or impacted. Gradually, a bad feeling may develop and multiply, until the time comes when the other person explodes in anger or resentment. An antidote to that problem is to continuously act and speak in a way that is positive and loving. .... When I wake up each morning, I go to my wife and children, and greet each one with a smile. When I greet my children, I ask them to exchange a "morning hug" and a "morning kiss" and a "morning bow". I then ask them to say, "Good morning, Daddy!", and I say good morning to them. In this way, they are being trained to pay attention to the process of greeting each other with love, the first moment of the day. It feels good to do that, and is in sharp contrast to simply starting the day with grunts and nods (or worse). Why do I teach my children about bowing? Part of it stems from a long association with family friends from Korea and Japan. There is something very beautiful about bowing to another person. It is respectful, humble, and yet dignified. Entertainers, of course, bow at the end of each show, so it is not entirely foreign in America. I like the attitude of heart that it fosters, and I heartily recommend that children be taught how to bow at the appropriate times. Our children are being trained that when one of the family comes home, or leaves, they should go to the door and properly say "welcome home", or "good-bye", as the case may be. Sometimes the TV monster exerts its sly influence, and I'll come into the room after arriving home and find my children mesmerized in front of a video. They'll hardly look up. It takes effort to even say hello to someone! .... Saying sorry is a tradition that will have a profound influence on our children. When Ranin (our third child) hits Gracie with a stick, I ask him to go to her and say, "I'm sorry, Gracie." At first, he had a very difficult time with that. He didn't want to apologize. But because I started this aspect of his training when he was very young, he has developed the habit of apologizing. Now, he says sorry more easily. Beyond apologizing, though, is the concept of repairing the relationship. I tell each one of our children to go up to the person that they hurt and say sorry. Sometimes they are flippant, and obviously don't mean it. Sometimes they won't say sorry at all, at which time they go to their room. But after standing in front of the person and sincerely saying sorry, I then ask the child who is apologizing to give the other one a big hug and a kiss. Usually this elicits a smile from the one that they hurt. I might say to Ranin, "See Ranin, Gracie is smiling now because you hugged her and kissed her! Isn't that wonderful?" He will nod and smile, too. Sometimes Gracie won't smile, even though Ranin hugged her. At that time, I ask Ranin to keep kissing her, keep hugging her -- until she smiles. I explain to him that because he hurt her, and made her sad, he should erase her bad feeling through apologizing -- until she feels good again. If she still doesn't feel good, he should continue to repair the bad feeling between them. This process is teaching Ranin, and the other children, that it takes effort to maintain a feeling of love between each person. If they cause their brother or sister to suffer, then they must work to remove the suffering that they caused. A tremendous benefit from this type of training is that repentance, or the capability to accept responsibility and apologize for mistakes of heart, is a powerful antidote to arrogance. One of the most miserable problems of humankind is that we have been corrupted by the disease of arrogance. A person with an arrogant heart can receive very little love, and in turn is apt to bring suffering to others. By training our children so that they develop the capability to easily and sincerely apologize and repent, we will have helped them on their way toward becoming a truly humble person. We will have given them the weapons to fight against arrogance when they find it in themselves. .... What happens when a child spills milk on the floor by accident? Sometimes parents will yell and scream, and punish or reprimand the child very heavily. I feel that the mistakes a child makes should be divided between "external mistakes" and "heartistic mistakes". An external mistake is anything that they do without really meaning to do it -- such as spilling milk. This would apply to mistakes made out of ignorance. Their motive of heart was not to make a mistake -- and in some cases quite the opposite. It is very painful to a child to be scolded for something that they did with the motive to love their parents. A "heartistic mistake", on the other hand, is a "mistake of heart". It is a mistake of motivation. For example, when someone does something out of selfishness or arrogance, it is wrong. Their heart is wrong. Which type of mistake warrants a scolding? In my opinion the heartistic mistake is more of a problem. It is a reflection of an internal problem in the other person, and needs to be corrected. External mistakes are not good, but when the other person's heart is good it is not really necessary to rake them over the coals. Rather than a heavy-duty scolding, a soft word will suffice. In some cases, they simply have to be educated about their mistake, and the problem will be solved. Scolding in any case should only be done because of love -- and conversely, scolding can be skipped because of love. The heartistic growth of the child is the paramount factor in making a decision to scold or not to scold. I was taught about heartistic mistakes -- and forgiveness and love -- in a very vivid way when I was working in New York City. I had a job as an office assistant / general affairs type person in an office on Fifth Avenue. One of my responsibilities was to help produce graphic posters, buttons and other advertising items. One item proved to be especially difficult. I had given an order to a button company to produce a large quantity of buttons with our client's photograph on them. I was inexperienced in judging the honesty of others, and tended to trust people completely. One afternoon, I merrily wended my way down to the button company's shop to pick up the buttons. The owner smiled at me, I smiled back, and handed him a nice fat check. With a cheery wave I returned to our office. Imagine my dismay (horror, actually) when I opened the large box of buttons and found that the photograph of our client was about ten shades too dark -- so dark, in fact, that his face was virtually unrecognizable. I was working with a Japanese woman named M. (I'll abbreviate here), who in turn reported to her boss, a very gracious Japanese executive named Mr. K. M. felt obligated to inform Mr. K., who came into the office looking rather surprised. We called the button company and talked to the owner. He was obdurate and completely unrepentant. He had done his job, he said, and that was that. He had our money, we had his buttons; end of story. As the afternoon faded into grim twilight, Mr. K., M., some staffers and myself sat on the floor of the office sorting through thousands of buttons, searching for photographs that bore even a faint resemblance to normalcy. It was completely dark when Mr. K. stood up, brushing off his trousers. He looked at me, and then looked at M. He murmured something to her in Japanese, turned, and walked out of the room. M. looked at me, and said, "Mr. K. said that we should all go to a nice Japanese restaurant for dinner." On the way to the restaurant, as I walked down the street in a mild state of shock, M. turned to me and gave me a very warm and very wide smile. (She liked to tease me.) "You know, if this was a communist country, you would have been sent to Siberia. But Mr. K. loves you like a son. Isn't it wonderful?" It was wonderful. I had lost a substantial sum of money, and a great deal of time, but Mr. K. knew that my heart was in the right place. His kindness to me on that day did more than any scolding could have done to teach me and inspire me to take more responsibility and to be more careful. I will never forget that lesson -- and the method he used to teach me. .... Can we provide true parental love to our children by ourselves, or do we need our spouse? This can best be answered by thinking of what our children need and feel. How would they answer us if we asked them whether or not they wanted a father and a mother? The most natural thing for them is to look up and see both their daddy and mommy standing in front of them. How do children feel when they see their parents fighting? Or getting divorced? It is beyond their comprehension. I realize that some husbands or wives may find their spouses so intolerable that they may feel divorce is better for the children than staying together and enduring such things as domestic violence or child abuse. Rather than discuss the details of any one marriage or situation, let me suggest here that ultimately, the best option, which may not always work out, is that the husband and wife both grow to the point where they love each other sacrificially -- and then love their children together. Kim and I are determined that this is one clear reason to love each other. Our children need us both. We never want them to see us fight. It's difficult, but we're trying. It is hard work to build a family of true love. True love itself is hard work! It is very easy to be selfish, and to treat our children or our spouse in a sloppy, casual kind of way. Without constantly thinking about how we are affecting the feelings of other family members, and then taking action accordingly, we may find the atmosphere of love in our family deteriorating. It is rather like caring for a garden. Beautiful flowers will bloom and grow if we love each plant individually. Our family is our very own "garden of heart". I believe that a parent should try to be a large shade tree of parental love in the "family garden of heart" so that others might come and rest on the soft moss growing beneath. I think shade trees are very happy! **** "But when you give alms, do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your alms may be in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will reward you." Jesus [Matthew 6:3-4] "Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children. And walk in love, as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us, a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God." St. Paul [Ephesians 5:1-2] "If you always give, you will always have." Chinese Proverb [twenty-two] Giving, Serving and Loving --------------------------- I can never escape from the conclusion that I should love others more. When I think about true love, I find that my heart begins to change. I begin to feel genuinely sorry that I didn't love as I should have. I look toward the heavens and feel very small indeed. When I think about the high standard of true unselfish love as manifested by God, I gain a feeling that I really must become more humble. Compared to how I should be, and compared to God's standard as a Parent, I am painfully inadequate. But I have hope! We have hope because true love is the most powerful force in the whole universe -- because it is the core of God's being. The more we give true love away, the more we have. The more we think about it, the more we love true love! It is very much like honey bees around honey. It is the most attractive thing in the world to us because we were created that way. As we reflect or pray about the standard of loving others, and loving our children, we find that our hearts are being transformed. A clear, beautiful, peaceful feeling gains predominance. Where a moment before we might have wanted to shout at our children because they misbehaved for the hundredth time that day, we now feel compassionate toward them. We might say, "I have to scold them, but I love them, even as I'm doing it. After I scold them, I will hug them, and restore their feeling of love." In our daily efforts to love our children, our ugly feelings are not shoved under the rug, nor are they violently expressed. Instead, we remember and reflect about the intense beauty and joy that comes from giving love to others. We repent that we haven't loved enough, and begin to feel transformed. Very much like a city that has had its smog blown away by a clean wind, we can breathe again. Someone once remarked that God has no conflict in His heart toward mankind because His heart is entirely parental. All He wants to do is give, and serve and love. Nothing could be simpler, or stronger or more beautiful. With the heart to give, to serve, and to love, let us strive for parental love. **** ****