Public radio host Krista Tippett on kids and the meaning of life
Krista Tippett, the public radio voice on faith, talks about parent responsibility to engage the inevitable questions kids have about the meaning of life.
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What are examples of that discomfort?
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Senior editor
Clara Germani is a senior editor for the Monitor, based in Boston. She handles in-depth projects, or cover stories, for the weekly print magazine and is the editor of the Monitor's parenting blog, "Modern Parenthood."
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When we think about how we nurture our children’s spiritual lives or impart them with virtues, we want guidance on what to teach them. And it’s really important that we actually have to cultivate these things in ourselves even as we are teaching them and cultivating them. It’s good to remember that.
It’s also kind of a relief, because when you think about how do I grow my children’s inner life, their spiritual life, it feels daunting. But if you realize that part of the work is growing your own – and that part of what you can take time and energy to do for the sake of your child is to be cultivating that in yourself – then it’s helpful.
Big virtues are very daunting. Compassion is huge. Forgiveness is huge. So one thing I’m really attentive to in my conversations with people are ways into those superstar virtues. Some ways are cultivating atmospheres; some are creating silence. In our 21st century lives and families, you actually have to make an effort to create silent spaces where there are no electronics on. In all of our spiritual traditions, silence is a very important element of self-awareness and of virtue and of deepening.
I was talking to Rabbi Sandy Sasso [an expert on spirituality and parenting], who points out that reading is an exercise that takes us out of our own imagination and introduces us to the lives and minds of different others.
So we can see some of these ordinary things that we want our children to do as also spiritually enriching; it’s not necessarily an extra set of activities.
It’s pausing – this is where it gets hard – in the morning when we’re all late and I’m yelling at everybody to get out the door and I’m in a panic. It’s knowing it really is possible to stop and take a breath and just be present – and say, “Here we are at the beginning of the day....” It’s knowing that that can create a whole different atmosphere.
Another thing I think a lot about is beauty, as in attention to beauty. Beauty almost is a moral value and something that is necessary for human beings that makes us more alive and is a way into virtue that I hear a lot. That’s something that we can show our children in all kinds of ways, both in our homes and outside our homes.
So that’s how I think we break these things down and see them as possibilities that are woven into the fabric of the everyday.
Is it important for parents to raise their children in a specific faith?
I think the depths of faith and religion are in the particularities. Our traditions have specific emphases. They have vocabularies; they have texts; they have rituals; they have communities. And children are very drawn to all of those.
So I don’t think you have to feel like by giving your children a particular experience you’re narrowing their field. You’re giving them tools to work with. They are going to ask their questions, they are going to challenge it, they – in this world, in this age – are going to be exposed to a whole bunch of other things, and you have no control over that. So to give children something substantive to work with is valuable – and it’s not to narrow them, it’s to give them some depth and some roots, and they can grow as they grow and go where they’ll go.
What tools – books or movies or methods – do you suggest to convey meaning-making to children?
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