Confirmation hearing
Jan. 10th, 2005 09:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
captainsblogFor the most part, my daughter's religious instruction is a "her" thing. I neither encouraged nor discouraged her participation, although I tried to make clear that there was no direct correlation between the effort she made and the size of the party she would receive at the end of the rainbow.
The past two days have brought it more into focus for me, though, rather coincidentally. Yesterday, during the regular Sunday service, the ministers introduced the congregation to 8 of the 9-or-10-we're-not-sure-about-one-kid members of this year's confirmation class. My only role in this was to get her butt there on time; the introductions are not by the rents but by their volunteer mentors (none of them parents of any of these kids but all, I think, parents at one time or another themselves) who work with them one-on-one, during and outside the formal class sessions throughout the year.
Emily was one of the last to be introduced- the order was random, I think, but it reinforced that which really teared me up. All 8 of the kids presented yesterday are bright, ambitious, good students with mostly activity-filled lives. You heard much about sports and hobbies as the mentors worked from left to right. Emily's mentor was the only one to mention how important her confirmand's family was to her. For coming from an immediate family as small as ours (and face it, as nutty), this came as quite a mush-making revelation.
Tonight, after a fairly full workday (my first of 2005 actually in my main office), I hurried back to town and saw the other part of the process for the first time. The kids meet with the ministers and their mentors an average of two Mondays a month. The first half hour or so is a shared dinner, the responsibility for which rotates among them, and tonight was our round. Danny Wegman did the cooking, I did the picking up, and Eleanor brought the kid.
I stayed to help serve the food and clean up, and since I'd be picking her up after the class anyway, I stayed to watch how the class goes. My own confirmation class was back in a medieval time, where rote memorization and dogmatic spewing of doctrine were the order of the day. "Don't touch the brass" is about the only thing I remember learning in the class itself (a command eventually reinforced by none less than God and/or Jimmy Lindberg Himself).
These kids experience something far different. I watched for close to 90 minutes as they, and their kinda-my-age mentors, actually learned. From each other. There were laughs and at least a few muttered quasi-blasphemes that were all in good fun. I even joined in with Emily and Sue's session a couple of times with things I remembered myself about either my own or Em's own past religious experiences. I came away knowing that these people were truly not indoctrinating but offering a clear and conscious path of faith to these kids. I expect she will carry hers to the end of the path, but I do not expect it of her- and neither do they.
I carry one sentimental vestige of that time of my life. For whatever reason, my late sister considered my own confirmation to be an important step, and she made a special effort to take me shopping for a gift to commemorate it. I went with her to Fortunoff's jewelry counter and picked out a gold signet ring which got boxed and presented when my confirmation occurred in the spring of 1974. Over the years, that ring took its share of hard use, later lost its place of honor on my finger to my high school class ring, and eventually even broke in the back, retired to a jewel box for many years. Yet years later, after Eleanor and I got engaged, we chose to combine pieces of our existing gold jewelry into the pot forming our wedding bands. A friend melted down Sandy's gift to me, and a mishmash of Eleanor's pieces, into the bands we still wear. Our service mentions this somewhat obliquely, but I made a point to make sure that Sandy knew. It's over 17 years later, and I still hold a piece of my sister close to my heart (okay, usually closer to my steering wheel) every day of my life.
The past two days have brought it more into focus for me, though, rather coincidentally. Yesterday, during the regular Sunday service, the ministers introduced the congregation to 8 of the 9-or-10-we're-not-sure-about-one-kid members of this year's confirmation class. My only role in this was to get her butt there on time; the introductions are not by the rents but by their volunteer mentors (none of them parents of any of these kids but all, I think, parents at one time or another themselves) who work with them one-on-one, during and outside the formal class sessions throughout the year.
Emily was one of the last to be introduced- the order was random, I think, but it reinforced that which really teared me up. All 8 of the kids presented yesterday are bright, ambitious, good students with mostly activity-filled lives. You heard much about sports and hobbies as the mentors worked from left to right. Emily's mentor was the only one to mention how important her confirmand's family was to her. For coming from an immediate family as small as ours (and face it, as nutty), this came as quite a mush-making revelation.
Tonight, after a fairly full workday (my first of 2005 actually in my main office), I hurried back to town and saw the other part of the process for the first time. The kids meet with the ministers and their mentors an average of two Mondays a month. The first half hour or so is a shared dinner, the responsibility for which rotates among them, and tonight was our round. Danny Wegman did the cooking, I did the picking up, and Eleanor brought the kid.
I stayed to help serve the food and clean up, and since I'd be picking her up after the class anyway, I stayed to watch how the class goes. My own confirmation class was back in a medieval time, where rote memorization and dogmatic spewing of doctrine were the order of the day. "Don't touch the brass" is about the only thing I remember learning in the class itself (a command eventually reinforced by none less than God and/or Jimmy Lindberg Himself).
These kids experience something far different. I watched for close to 90 minutes as they, and their kinda-my-age mentors, actually learned. From each other. There were laughs and at least a few muttered quasi-blasphemes that were all in good fun. I even joined in with Emily and Sue's session a couple of times with things I remembered myself about either my own or Em's own past religious experiences. I came away knowing that these people were truly not indoctrinating but offering a clear and conscious path of faith to these kids. I expect she will carry hers to the end of the path, but I do not expect it of her- and neither do they.
I carry one sentimental vestige of that time of my life. For whatever reason, my late sister considered my own confirmation to be an important step, and she made a special effort to take me shopping for a gift to commemorate it. I went with her to Fortunoff's jewelry counter and picked out a gold signet ring which got boxed and presented when my confirmation occurred in the spring of 1974. Over the years, that ring took its share of hard use, later lost its place of honor on my finger to my high school class ring, and eventually even broke in the back, retired to a jewel box for many years. Yet years later, after Eleanor and I got engaged, we chose to combine pieces of our existing gold jewelry into the pot forming our wedding bands. A friend melted down Sandy's gift to me, and a mishmash of Eleanor's pieces, into the bands we still wear. Our service mentions this somewhat obliquely, but I made a point to make sure that Sandy knew. It's over 17 years later, and I still hold a piece of my sister close to my heart (okay, usually closer to my steering wheel) every day of my life.
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Date: 2005-01-11 05:49 pm (UTC)And so, I shall tell you about her. Hah!
I was 14 or so when I chose my mentor. We were instructed to write down two names of people we'd like to have as a mentor, and then our pastors would talk to those people - our first choice first, of course - and we'd end up with a mentor. My reason for choosing Rose still makes us both laugh.
There was a guy in our congregation named Rolf. He was a junior high science teacher, totally dreamy and nice, and he'd just married this woman named Rose. I'd never really talked to her, but she'd always seemed really nice, she was pretty, and hey - Rolf married her, and he was cool, so therefore she had to be cool.
I'm still amazed by the whole situation. Rose and I clicked immediately, and she quickly became the (other) most important adult woman in my life - and since she was closer to my age than my mom was, she was more like a big sister figure. We had so much in common, and as I've gotten older, I'm discovering even more things we have in common. All through high school, she was a major part of my life - when my mom had cancer, both times my aunt was sick, and then when she died when I was in college - and she still is, ten years later.
She and Rolf have three kids now, all of whom are phenomenal. We talk on the phone at least once a month, and we email all the time. She still gives me advice that I treasure over just about anyone's. If you'd told me when I was in confirmation that the seemingly not-too-meaningful decision I'd just made would result in a relationship like this one, I wouldn't have believed you for a second. But this woman is absolutely phenomenal, and our friendship is one of the things that means the most to me in the world.