Lysistrata's Daughter

When we first meet St. George of Merry England, he is simply called the Red Cross Knight, because he carries a shield with a red cross on it. The shield has been used by many other knights to win great battles, but he himself has never been tried in battle and does not even know his own name.  The Fairy Queen has sent him to kill a dragon that is ravaging the land of Princess Una, his traveling companion. Una’s face is veiled and she wears a black cloak. She had been on a journey to find a champion. She has been on a long journey and has faced many dangers.  Notice that at the beginning of the adventure, the Red Cross Knight knows neither his name nor where he was born. If the journey is also metaphorical, his will be to discover his identity on the way.  Una, on the other hand, does know who she is. Yet she has to some extent renounced her identity as princess, disguised herself with a cloak and veil, and left the safety of home to find a champion. The king and queen can...

Rapunzel , Retold by Barbara Rogasky, Illustrated by Trina Schart Hyman “Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down your hair!” It’s such a familiar sentence, but how does Rapunzel get up in that tower, letting people climb up to her using her hair as a ladder but never able to come down herself? The story begins with a poor yet loving couple who have no children. Finally, after years of waiting and hoping, the wife conceives. But all is not well. The wife looks out her window everyday into the garden of Mother Gothel, a witch. She sees rampion growing there and has such an enormous desire for the herb that she stops eating and grows weak and sick. Her husband, desperate to save the health of his wife and unborn child, sneaks into the witch’s garden at night and steals an armload of rampion. His wife makes a gigantic salad with it and eats it hungrily. Almost as soon as the last bite of salad is gone, she longs for more rampion. She keeps staring into the garden and stops eating again. So the hus...

I wrote awhile ago about how to help an angry child, and at the end, I tossed off a couple of sentences about taking care of yourself and tending your feelings. But I didn't explain. So here's what I meant. The thing about dealing with our own kids is that very often the kid still inside us sort of wakes up and watches what is going on. And then old feelings get raked up. If you were the tantruming child, how were you treated? Did anybody try to understand why you were upset? Or were you treated as a problem? Maybe your feelings themselves were the problem. While you're trying to help your child, your inner child is reacting as well. If you possibly can, try to stay calm with your child and allow your own feelings to come out later. Sometimes you can't. Sometimes you don't have the capacity to stay calm. Apologize if you overreact. Repair. Don't deny but don't get stuck, either. When you have a moment to yourself--and for goodness' sake, put on a vi...

The best way to see what the church thinks about marriage is to look at the marriage service. One thing that interests me is the movement of the service. It’s actually quite similar to baptism. At a baptism, the godparents and child/catachumen stand in the narthex for the first part and don’t enter the church itself until they have been exorcised and recited the creed. After the baptism itself, the newly illumined and godparents hold on to the priest’s stole, then follow him in procession while he holds the cross, around the table with the Gospel book on it. At the marriage service, the couple and their attendants start at the back of the nave. There they exchange the rings, then move into the center of the church. The couple is crowned, share the common cup, then perform the “dance of Isaiah”, which is a similar procession as at baptism. The bride and groom hold hands and the priest’s stole. He holds the cross. They, with the wedding sponsors, process three times around the table wit...

"Sleeping Princess" by Viktor Vasnetsov Sleeping Beauty gets a whole lot of shade. Most of us know the Disney version, which is just a damn mess. BUT the original is amazing, and I think is really directed not at kids but *parents*. Why does Sleeping Beauty fall asleep? Because her parents are trying to save her from the prophecy about the spinning wheel. They don't warn her about spinning wheels. They try to protect her from them by never letting her see even one. Which is impossible. This is the original helicopter parenting! Of course, it doesn't work, so the whole kingdom falls asleep when she pricks her finger. Notice that. It's not just the princess. It's everyone. By over-protecting their daughter, the king and queen actually stop the entire community from continuing and developing. So the prince comes along, sees her great beauty, and wakens her with a kiss. Which I think, in context, is symbolic of sexual awakening. This bit is often considered prob...

Anger is a guardian emotion. It tells you when something is wrong, when your boundaries have been broken. It tells you to take action. Too often we refuse to listen to the message of our own anger and especially the anger of children. Anger doesn’t go away when you ignore it. It goes underground and becomes deformed. Anger that’s faced has delivered its message. It is resolved. This is different from just going away, though. The thing about angry, difficult kids is that their behavior is communication. Something is happening to them or inside them that is too big for them to deal with on their own. They express that overwhelm as anger because they don’t have words to express what is inside them. What happens for a lot of parents is that they themselves might not have a lot of words to deal with their own overwhelm and anger. So they shut kids down. It’s not too hard to do when kids are little. You can put them in time out or banish them some other way. You can tell them to be quiet o...