Childhood’s Wilderness
Reading and sermon preached by Reverend Carolyn Patierno
November 1, 2009

Childhood’s Lost Wilderness by Michael Chabon

"The Wilderness of Childhood, as any kid could attest who grew up, like my father, on the streets of Flatbush, Brooklyn, ... had nothing to do with trees or nature. I could lose myself on vacant lots and playgrounds, in the alleyway behind the Wawa, in the neighbors’ yards, on the sidewalks. Anywhere, in short, I could reach on my bicycle.... On it I covered the neighborhood in a regular route for half a mile in every direction. I knew the locations of all my classmates’ houses, the number of pets and siblings they had, the brand of ice pop they served, the potential dangerousness of their fathers.
The thing that strikes me now when I think about the Wilderness of Childhood is the incredible degree of freedom my parents gave me to adventure there. A very grave, very significant shift in our idea of childhood has occurred since then. The Wilderness of Childhood is gone; the days of adventure are past. The land ruled by children, to which a kid might exile himself for at least some portion of every day from the neighboring kingdom of adulthood, has in large part been taken over, co-opted, colonized, and finally absorbed by the neighbors.
What impact of the closing down of the Wilderness on the development of children’s imaginations? This is what I worry about the most. I grew up with a freedom, a liberty that now seems breathtaking and almost impossible. Recently, my younger daughter, after the usual struggle and exhilaration, learned to ride her bicycle. Her joy at her achievement was rapidly followed by a creeping sense of puzzlement and disappointment as it became clear to both of us that there was nowhere for her to ride it – nowhere that I was willing to let her go.
Art is a form of exploration, of sailing off into the unknown alone, heading for those unmarked places on the map. If children are not permitted – not taught – to be adventurers and explorers as children, what will become of the world of adventure, of stories, of literature itself?"

My family moved to Berkeley, California when our daughter was four years old. She attended elementary school there through the second grade. Her school bus stop was up the street from our apartment building. When she was in second grade and seven years old, she called a family meeting and very seriously told us that she thought it was time that she walked home from the bus stop alone. (In retrospect, I’m not sure why the morning walk didn’t figure into her plan but she was only concerned about the return home.) With our hearts in our throats, we agreed. The next afternoon, I sat on the front steps of our building praying for her safe return, imagining the headlines should something bad happen. I tormented myself. Were we being irresponsible? I was sure that my mother would think so. But there she came that afternoon and indeed, day after day, walking up the hill, her little smiling face emerging to my great relief. Eventually, I even left my post at the steps. She’d ring the bell and I’d buzz her in.

It wasn’t until later that we learned that, at least once, Lily Jun took a detour. Her route home brought her through the seminary campus, a wide, beautiful quad with stately buildings on its edges. She knew many of the people who worked in the administration building, including the president’s assistant. Eileen kept a bowl of candy on her desk and apparently Lily Jun would swing by for a little treat and then continue on her way. Hers was an adventure in Childhood’s Wilderness.

Michael Chabon lives in Berkeley, too. I can clearly imagine the neighborhood where his daughter learned how to ride her bicycle. I can also understand his confusion when comparing his own childhood adventures riding his bike and the restrictive life that will preclude his daughter from experiencing the same. If you were fortunate enough to have grown up in a neighborhood that your parents considered safe – whether it was in the city, the country or the emerging suburbs – you were free to roam in the wilderness to create the stories inspired by the adventures in the books you read. You identified with those characters, and somehow believed that your own life held the promise of similar accomplishment and adventure. But your children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews and the neighborhood kids are experiencing a very different childhood.

Exhibit A: How many trick or treaters came to your door last night?

There are many answers that lie at the root of the question that is the foundation of this sermon. Fear is one of them. Fear of the razor blade plunged into the center of the apple. (Did people ever give out apples for Halloween?) And some of our fear is rooted in reality. Some of it is fanned by our knowing more than we ever knew before the advent of 24-hour access to news. In his essay, Chabon cites statistics of child abductions. In 1999 115 children were abducted. Apparently, this number of abductions is typical – it has neither increased nor decreased dramatically over the years. Chabon points out what we well know. What has increased, of course, is “our anxiety because the horror of the abductions is so much better known now.” But years ago, before we knew, we weren’t as careful. We didn’t think that we needed to be and so children ran free. Furthermore, they had the time to run free. Remember?

When we see movies that depict generations past, we are aghast watching pregnant women smoking and drinking without care. We are incredulous seeing children rattling about in the back seats of cars. Today, in addition to ample warnings on the harm that smoking and drinking cause infants, we now place those infants in car seats and children in seat belts. We also armor them to play. Helmets, knee pads, wrist pads and all the rest are required apparel for venturing out. Of course, many of these safety features are born of good sense and sound public health. But what a lovely feeling to have the wind in your hair as you rode your bike through the neighborhood.

But really – and you all know this – there isn’t a lot we can do to protect children and youth from all the pitfalls and dangers both physical and emotional that are part and parcel of life. But we seem to try harder and harder to do just that. What’s that about?

Recently I happened across two essays that explored the question. The first one was written by Nora Ephron and it was hilarious. The second was the essay that is at the center of this sermon. Ephron & Chabon are not the first people to write about this phenomenon, of course. They are both parents who also happen to be artists. Because they are successful artists, they have platforms available to them to share their ideas. Which is to say, their ideas may not be the most sociologically, psychologically or anthropologically sophisticated but they each certainly strike at the heart of this matter: the ways that we attempt to protect children and youth and our determination to ensure their perfect well being.

Michael Chabon wends his way through a stream of reasoning to conclude that our children have become cult objects to us, “too precious to be risked.” At the same time, he posits, children have been fetish-ized, the objects of unhealthy fixation.

Ephron suggests that that unhealthy fixation on children may have been caused by the women’s movement. However, she also suggests that it may have been caused by the backlash to the women’s movement and both arguments make sense. On the other hand, Chabon wonders if our fixation springs from our guilt over having messed up the world so badly. But these writers concur on the outcome. Children & youth are more isolated from each other, have less freedom to create their own adventures apart from the world of adults, and Chabon worries, less engaged in imaginative play. He writes,

People read stories of adventure – and write them – because they have themselves been adventurers. Childhood is, or has been, or ought to be, the great original adventure, a tale of privation, courage, constant vigilance, danger, and sometimes calamity.

Might describing childhood as something that entails “constant vigilance” and that encompasses “danger, and sometimes calamity” make us nervous? But isn’t this description precisely the way many of our own childhoods went? In part because we didn’t know any better and in part because children had not yet become the cult objects that Chabon describes. It’s certainly worth contemplating. It’s interesting but a sermon – this sermon, this morning - will not change the place we find ourselves. Parents today are as worried as I had been as I sat on those steps waiting for my daughter nine years ago. As well, children today are as busy as any adult. But their many commitments rarely deliver them to Childhood’s Wilderness, as Chabon describes it.

What a sad fact of life to contemplate. Bright-sider that I am, I asked myself what places and circumstances allow for children to have the kind of freedom I knew as a child. The first place that sprung to mind was Ferry Beach, one of our Unitarian Universalist camp & conference centers, where I’ve twice served as the minister of the week. Both weeks have been family weeks, meaning that there is programming for adults and children and youth. But just until noon. And then the long days roll out. Long days spent by the ocean and in the woods where the children and youth run and swim free. For the most part, parents see their children only in passing until the evening when everyone is safely tucked in bed. I would guess that Childhood’s Wilderness reigns there because the site has (at best) vague boundaries and there is an implicit understanding that all the adults are looking out for all of the kids. If this sounds loosey goosey, it’s because it is. But weren’t the geographic and relational parameters of your childhood the same? You had a vague sense of where was too far to venture and you also knew that there were neighbors looking out for you. And somehow it worked as it continues to work at Ferry Beach. It worked to the benefit of all.

And clearly in a different way, I also thought of All Souls. We have the highest concentration of children and youth present on Sunday morning, of course. On average, there are at least fifty children participating in religious education classes each Sunday. When they are dismissed from class, some of them return to Unity Hall with their families and they are rarin’ to go. Now, we worship in the same space where we enjoy each other’s company for coffee hour. And this won’t surprise you, sometimes these children, these spirited children get to running around the place. Frequently, there are hot beverages held aloft. And there are grown ups that are less steady on their feet. And another service follows and Unity Hall must be fit for worship so that those arriving for the 11:00 service will feel as cared for as the folks who attended the 9AM service.

Sometimes I spy grown-ups getting nervous as a child whizzes by. Or when they see a child losing track of something crunchy and that something crunchy landing in the rug. We may take a quick look around and wonder, “Who is watching this child?” And a good answer to that question would be, “I am. I am part of this congregation and because I am this child is my responsibility, too.” Maybe coming to church is one of the very few places where parents don’t worry about their children so much. Where they can rest a bit easier knowing that there are others helping to take care. I remember when Clara Franklin was born. She was passed around the Community Room so much that a couple that was new to All Souls told me that it took them months to figure out who Clara’s parents were! I hope that All Souls is a vestige of times past, one that resembles the Wilderness of Childhood where everyone helped raise up the children.

It would be great if there were more opportunities for intergenerational connection. Sandy Geaman, our Director of Religious Education Emerita, created our special friends program that has been going for a generation of children. Every group of Coming of Agers remembers their experiences with their special friends as one of the high points of growing up at All Souls. I remember the dance we had two years ago to kick off our stewardship campaign. The children and were running around and then sometimes dancing, even. It was so much fun. More dancing with children! That’s what I say.

And I also say that we’re on the right track in our classrooms. Spirit Play is a curriculum that encourages imaginative and engaged learning. Art is one of the methods of engagement as is community building through a shared “feast.” Our teachers are trained in this method and the outcomes have been just wonderful. Through this manner of learning we are making, as the Unitarian Universalist religious education pioneer Sophia Lyon Fahs once said, “self-understanding an important and continuous goal in religious development to the end that the child’s emotional autonomy may be developed.” Pretty lofty right? To set as a goal a child’s healthy emotional development. Why not? If not here, then where?

John Tolley is a professor at Meadville Lombard, our seminary in Chicago. He contributed one of the essays that make up the Essex Conversations: Visions for Lifespan Religious Education. The title of his essay is Child’s Play and in it he contemplates the roles of imagination and art in a child’s religious formation. He wrote:

"Education ... must embrace the idea of process, a lifelong honing of experience into meaning. The frightening aspect of such an approach is that ... we must make sense of this day-to-day journey called life for ourselves. No one else can do it for us. .... To give each child the opportunity to contemplate the mystery through intuition, action, and creation will be swimming against the currents of measurable achievement, intelligence quotients, and the summation of the human’s worth on the attainment of high test scores and model personality profiles."

We are swimming against the currents, but we do so knowing that there must be places where children and youth are invited to be adventurers and explorers on their own as Chabon and Tolley both describe. He says that art is a form of exploration and I would agree. I would add that Unitarian Universalist spiritual and religious education also offers that same opportunity to head for those unmarked places.

Today we dedicated four young Souls into the circle of this congregation and faith tradition. We have covenanted to support and nurture their religious growth and that of their families. We may not be able to restore Childhood’s Wilderness and the freedom that it once provided. But we can offer – through religious education and through fellowship – a different kind of freedom - one that supports their healthy spiritual and emotional development. Together we can certainly create and sustain for our children a place where the spirit of love surrounds them. Everywhere. Everywhere they may go.

May it be so.

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