Kids and the occult: what’s your policy?

In my post for the Register about the Black Mass that will be reenacted at Harvard, I included this paragraph:

Satan is real, and he is not fussy. He doesn’t care if you are kidding or not when you call him by name. This is why I tell my kids to stay far, far away from participating in anything occult — ouija boards, tarot cards, etc. — even if it’s just a game.  An invitation is an invitation, and Satan doesn’t stand on manners. You may not see Exorcist-style special effects when the Father of Lies creeps into your life. You may not realize anything has happened to you at all, as the rift between you and God slowly gets deeper and wider.

Predictably, someone responded with this comment:

Seriously? Ouija boards? Tarot cards? What other things made by Parker Bros. are we supposed to be a afraid of? Are the kids not allowed to dress up for Halloween? How worried should we be about that Harry Potter fellow?

A fair question.

As with so many other things, we try to find that middle way when dealing with occult-ish things in our family. We don’t want to be screaming meemies who hide under the rug every time someone says the m-word (magic); but we want to make sure our kids don’t innocently slide into something truly dangerous.

There are three categories of things that raise questions:

Things expressly designed to make contact with spirits other than God or the saints or angels. This includes tarot cards and ouija boards – and just because Parker Brothers is dumb enough to put out a kiddie version of these things doesn’t mean they’re harmless. They are explicitly occult, and, as I said in the Register post, the devil doesn’t care if you are just kidding, or don’t understand what you are doing. An invitation is an invitation; and Catholics are, in fact,expressly forbidden to get involved with this kind of thing, so there’s not much to decide. Listen to your mother!

Things which once had or may have had occult or pagan origins, but have changed or been “baptized,” and now signify something else. The gleeful celebration of Halloween, complete with skulls and bats and gore, falls into this category. My husband and I make decisions about these things on a case-by-case basis, and sometimes decide to pull away from creepy stuff for a while if it seems like it’s having a bad effect on the kids, or if it crosses the line into true perversity. But “spooky” is not the same as “occult,” and the Church has a long history of facing death and fear head-on; so it’s entirely possible to be a good Catholic and still enjoy scary stuff. I talk about this in a few posts: Twofer Costumes for the Conflicted Catholic Family;  Do Brains Break the Communion Fast?    and Twelve Movies to Terrify Your Kids.

Yoga also falls into this category. If it’s just exercise, it’s just exercise, and if it calms you down, super — and I think 99% of Catholics who do yoga are doing fine. If you’re trying to find spiritual enlightenment through yoga, though, I’d be wary. The Church has that covered already. Mind/body stuff is weird. It’s not for nothing that the sacraments use materials we can taste, touch, and smell. What you do with your body means something, so make sure you know what you mean!

Things which deal with or discuss magic or the occult, such as the Harry Potter books. Our kids have read and enjoyed the books. My husband and I read them first, to see what all the fuss was about. We decided that, since none of our kids show any particular attraction to dark or occult things, there was no danger in letting them read about magic — especially since it was a story about goodness and love and such conquering evil and darkness and such. If I had a kid who was easily swayed, and showed an unhealthy interest in magic or new age stuff, we’d probably make a wider berth around Harry Potter (and this would be no tragedy, because the books are not exactly irreplaceable in the canon of western literature).

My son recently wanted to look up Harry Potter curses to beef up a game they were playing. So I said yes, but first we discussed how Harry Potter is clearly fiction, but some people take it more seriously than that, and that they can get drawn into dangerous waters, so we don’t want to get sucked in with them. He volunteered that, if he saw anything that looked at all weird or fishy, he’d shut the window immediately (which he actually does).

Dungeons and Dragons (etc.) is in this category, too. Some of our kids play it with other kids who are decent and grounded, and just want to have fun imagining crazy and exciting stuff. I would not let my kids play it with a group of kids who were fascinated by the occult in general.  You get out of it what you put into it.

People who argue that the Narnia or Lord of the Rings books are dangerous are simply not serious people, and when they want to talk about this stuff, I have to go clean out the lint trap of my dryer, because it’s more edifying.  I have, however, noticed a lot of books aimed at middle school girls which tell the stories of wise girls who understand the ways of the earth and herbs, etc. etc., and harsh, suspicious men, especially clergy, want to quash and oppress them. These are ideas which can seep into young imaginations and wreak all kinds of havoc (and they tend to be stupid books anyway), so I’ve asked my kids to stay away from these. Scorn is a powerful teaching aid.

*****

Overall, we keep a sharp eye out, and reevaluate often what we will and won’t allow in the house. And we talk, talk, talk about it, and try to keep a sense of humor. If parents freak out when kids do something that might be wrong, kids will not go to parents for help when there is something wrong. There is a lot of weird stuff floating around, and kids need to be taught a healthy sense of caution, without making them afraid of the dark.

How about you? How do you handle this in your house? Has your thinking or approach changed over the years?

Fisherland

Oh, it feels good to be on the cutting edge.

The other day, I read about a new sort of free-form playground in Wales, where kids apparently play with garbage and light fires, with adult approval. It’s meant to correct modern parents’ tendencies to shelter their children from every possible bump, bruise, and tumble, and to teach them to assess risk on their own.  It’s called “The Land.” According to an article in The Atlantic:

The ground is muddy in spots and, at one end, slopes down steeply to a creek where a big, faded plastic boat that most people would have thrown away is wedged into the bank. The center of the playground is dominated by a high pile of tires that is growing ever smaller as a redheaded girl and her friend roll them down the hill and into the creek …

It’s still morning, but someone has already started a fire in the tin drum in the corner, perhaps because it’s late fall and wet-cold, or more likely because the kids here love to start fires. Three boys lounge in the only unbroken chairs around it; they are the oldest ones here, so no one complains … Nearby, a couple of boys are doing mad flips on a stack of filthy mattresses, which makes a fine trampoline. At the other end of the playground, a dozen or so of the younger kids dart in and out of large structures made up of wooden pallets stacked on top of one another.

Here’s a picture of The Land:

 

PIC The Land

Despite not being in Europe, we’ve been experimenting with something similar on our property. At the risk of appearing pretentious, we refer to it as “The Yard.” Here’s a recent photo, featuring one of my courageous and confident children:

I don’t tend to hover over her, suppressing her natural inquisitiveness, because I’m afraid she will stab me.

Speaking of cutting edge: seriously, give that kid some space. She will cut you.

The Yard isn’t the only area place where we allow children to naturally innoculate themselves against adult phobias. Most modern bathrooms. monitored by paranoid, over-anxious helicopter parents, are unnaturally sterile and barren places, where cleaning happens daily and natural playthings such as toilet paper, wet toilet paper, and turds, are discarded, rather than cherished as the instruments of adventure. But our bathroom — “The Crapper,” we’ve dubbed it — was shaped by the children who attend it. Which is why I hold it in all day and use the gas station bathroom whenever I can.

One popular feature in The Crapper is a set of three broad planes (some refer to them as “walls,” but we think of them as “canvases”) where children can express their creativity in tactile and olfactory ways. The commercial colors of the toy aisle are banished in favor of the time-honored palate of yellow and brown.  In The Crapper, our children also learn about physics:  will the toilet flush when there is a copy of This Rock in the bowl? How about all the copies of This Rock? How about your little sister? Yes, here is a place of learning.

We also have an area called The Boys’ Room. I don’t want to talk about that, though.

 

The only drawback is that we are having a hard time keeping the professionally trained playworkers around. They show up all bright-eyed with their gum boots and their sweaters with wooden toggles on them, ready to let children be children; but within hours, they’re nowhere to be found, leaving only a small pool of blood behind them. I ask the kids what happened, and they say they didn’t know. One kid did hear a hoarse cry that sounded like “such a thing as bad kids after all,” but other than that, it’s a mystery.

Overall, we are pleased with the results. Our children show no sign of being hobbled by phobias about hygiene or safety. On nights when Daddy works late, they are hardly even appear human.  And we have our philosophy of unstructured play and child-led inquisitiveness to thank. I can only hope that other American parents will follow our lead. Or at very least, drop some of those lawsuits.

At the Register: Yarr, Novenas

I don’t know why the crestfallen pirate voice always seems appropriate to me, but it always does.

#Patheos5Yrs (In which I use both hands to celebrate Patheos’ fifth anniversary)

Wellity wellity wellity, look who is five years old! No, not that Puerto Rican tire fire. No, not sixty gazillion Isabellas and Sophies, Aidens, Jaydens, and Bradens. No, not even that weird protuberance on the side of my foot that doesn’t hurt or anything, so I’m just going to officially not know about it anymore.

NO, CRAZY, IT’S PATHEOS!

Like the gracious host it be, Patheos central is inviting us bloggers to share our favorite posts.

I’ve  been blogging for about seven years — my first blog being a Blogspot joint, which I set to “private,” and now I can’t remember how to invite myself back in.  This seems like some kind of metaphor for blogging. Something about not being able to find your own blog with both hands and a flashlight. Anyway, I’ve only been with Patheos since June of 2013, so I’m going to share posts from that month on. (If you have a hankering to browse through other posts, remember I have archives dating back to 2010. You can find them in my sidebar without even a flashlight.)

Without further butt jokes, here are a few of my favorite posts from the past yearish:

 what do we know about human beings? They sin. They sin, and they sin, and they sin. Sometimes they enter into a valid marriage and then they cheat. Sometimes they understand fully what they are supposed to do, and they just don’t feel like doing it. Sometimes calamity strikes, and they crumple under the blow.  Sometimes they let their own sorrows and weaknesses and selfishness overcome the love that is offered to them. Sometimes — no, my friends, always — they are a tangled ball of good intentions and bad habits, unhealed wounds and unfounded desires.
You know what’s scandalous? It’s scandalous to tell suffering people, “Don’t you speak.” It’s scandalous to tell them that their sorrows are making other people sad.  Good heavens. There are worse things than being sad. One of them is being happy and telling other people that, if only they were stronger, they’d be happy too.

PIC bearded stoner

  • On an entirely different note:  the day they took me where I did not want to go:  A long holy Saturday

Those are the worst nightmares:  the wave comes, the darkness falls, the crowd sweeps by, and your child is gone.  Where did he go?  Why didn’t I hold on tighter?  My husband would have gone and dug up the frozen ground to bury the body, but there is nothing to bury.  He has been washed away, and I don’t even know when.  Maybe he died weeks ago, when he was too little to be seen.  Maybe I was happily patting someone who was already gone.

It wouldn’t change anything if I could have buried him. But I wish I could have done it.

I encourage my kids to listen mostly to the [Beatles’] earlier stuff, where their technical brilliance can be enjoyed unimpeded with the navel gazing muzziness that came later.  We have discussed how people in Hell are probably holding hands and singing “Imagine” right now; and I have taught them to identify the sitar, when played by a white man, as the sound of bullshit.

But . . . oh, I don’t even know what to say.  I’ve said it so many times, and I don’t know if there’s any way to persuade people who don’t already see it so clearly.  We’re Catholic. Our main job isn’t to apply “censor” bar across everything that doesn’t come straight from the Baltimore Catechism.  We take what is good. We’re supposed to beexperts at identifying what is good.  We’re not supposed to be screaming meemies who bite our lips and blush every time someone dips into a minor key.  We’re supposed to use sifters, not dump trucks, when sorting through culture.

[Abortionists] liked it when the gory pictures were out there.  It made their job easier.  Women literally ran toward abortion.
  • A finally, few reasons being fat might be the right choice for you . . . today!!!: Seven Fat Takes

 #4. You get to discover that your husband is really, really in love with you, or else he’s a fantastic and indefatigable actor.  Just think, if I were still the proportions I was when he met me (36-24-38, just two inches away from being zoned as a brick house!), I would always wonder if he was sticking around all these years because of me, or my measurements.  Now that I’ve added the equivalent of a six-year-old child to my frame, I know it must be true love.

AND, I figured out how to use the video camera on my thing, except I held it sideways. I realize now that I achieved that “won’t you rescue this poor puppydog who fell into a well” camera angle, but that’s only because I didn’t want you to see how many chins I have. But seriously, this was my favorite Patheos moment, and I mean it:

Well, happy birthday Patheos! And thank you, my dear, dear readers, for sticking with me. Patheos will be hosting and featuring videos from bloggers on all channels, as well as “best of” posts, so keep your eyes peeled, as my mother used to horribly say. So much talent on Patheos, you definitely don’t need a flashlight to find it.

Have you been in a “crisis pregnancy”?

I’m working on a project, and would love to hear from you  – women or men. I’d like to know a few things, and you’re welcome to share anonymously if you’d rather.

  • What was the most helpful to you, either materially, emotionally, or spiritually?  This could include something that someone did or said, or something that you realized on your own.
  • What response did you get that was unhelpful?
  • If you could speak to someone in your situation, what would you say?

Please don’t put your answer in the comment box; please email me at simchafisher@gmail.com with “CRISIS PREGNANCY” in the subject heading. Thanks in advance for your help!

We Should Be Afraid

“Be not afraid,” says the angel. Be not afraid, and entrust your life to Christ, who wants only good for you.

All right, but what about when someone else’s life is entrusted to us? What about when we have the power over someone else’s life — the power to alter it forever, even the power to end it?  Remember what happened to Uzzah, who saw the Ark of the Covenant wobbling, and without even thinking, he stepped forward and grabbed hold of the thing. “And The Lord’s anger burned against Uzzah because of his irreverent act; and he died there beside the ark of God.”

Fear of the Lord means that at very least we should hesitate. Sometimes we should not be comfortable and confident. I wrote the post below for Crisis magazine in December of 2008. It’s relevant again, and over and over again, when we bluster and grandstand about executing criminals, waterboarding terrorists, or any time we hold power over the life of another human being. Human life is where God resides in this world. When we stretch out our hands to take hold of it, we should be afraid.

_____

A New Hampshire jury must decide whether to sentence Michael Addison, a convicted cop killer, to execution.
He is a terrible man who bragged about his plans to shoot a cop, if he needed to, while committing his many crimes. His defense team is concentrating on his unhappy childhood. The picture that emerges is of a self-serving jerk who grew up to be cold and evil, and he isn’t sorry now.
My husband argues that the Church’s teaching on the death penalty — that it must be reserved for cases in which it is necessary to protect the community — can apply in cases like this: If people who shoot policemen are not executed, then we are tolerating the murder of policemen, an intolerable crime. The safety of the community depends on criminals’ knowing that they will not get away with killing a cop.
I don’t know if he’s right or not. It may be so. Either way, the problem terrifies me.
Many years ago — when I was a new mother, the world was black and white, and the subtleties of Dr. Laura Schlessinger guided my thinking more than any other intellect — we had an upstairs neighbor who was a drug addict.
She was a mess. She was clearly high most of the time. Her hair was chopped and frazzled, her skin and mouth were a wasteland, and she could hardly string two sentences together. She stumbled up and down the stairs past my door, not knowing if it were day, night, or the end of the world.
The only thing she could communicate clearly was that she had just had a baby girl, and she was always looking for a ride to go visit her tiny little one at the hospital. The baby was, of course, sick. She was very premature, probably suffering from withdrawal from the moment of birth.
Miraculously, the child survived, and her terrible mother became almost radiant as she reported the baby’s progress to me. Soon the baby would be able to leave the hospital, she told me — but I didn’t believe her.
Then the day came. The baby was strong enough to be discharged. My neighbor fell into my apartment, half-undressed, sobbing with a terrible sound. “They’re going to take my baby away from me!” she cried. “They’re taking her away!”
Well, of course they were. I couldn’t believe that she didn’t know it would happen. This woman didn’t even know whether she was wearing clothes or not, and she expected the nurses to release a fragile, sick preemie into her care.
It was terrifying. It was absolutely necessary that this thing be done — that the baby be taken away from her mother. The mother clearly deserved it, and the poor baby deserved it, too. But it was the worst thing in the world. You should have heard that mother cry.
Here is another short story: My grandmother died last month. She was 89 years old, and she had been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease 19 years ago. It was like watching a sand house torn away by the tide. She just dissolved.
She had been a rock-hard, funny, sarcastic, boundlessly generous visiting nurse, and now she was a quivering collection of wasted limbs and a ghastly vacancy where her mind used to be. Everyone suffered. She did; her husband did, before he died; and my mother, who cared for her for years, suffered very much in many different ways, and it went on and on and on.
When my grandmother died, it was a relief for everyone. We were so glad for her release from the dark and fearful cell her mind had become. My sister said that she felt that Nana had been out of touch with us for so many years, but now that she was dead, she had been given back to us. We could talk to her again.
At the funeral Mass, it wasn’t hard to stand there and remember these things — her baptism, the Last Rites, the tender mercy of God. The Resurrection.
It was only at the end, when the undertakers braced their hands against the smudgy shroud that covered her coffin and began to heave this burden down the aisle of the church, that it became a terrible thing. She was leaving.
As a Catholic, I know what happens after death. And yet I do not know. They began to sing that drippy hymn “Be Not Afraid,” and suddenly I was afraid. It was right that I should be.
All we really know is separation. We try and hope, but what do we know? We do the best we can to deal with the enormous, shattering burdens of life. But we should be afraid. There is much to hope for, and we trust God. But in the moment, unless we are already dead ourselves, there is much to fear.
So now the jury must decide if this terrible man, this unrepentant murderer Michael Addison, should be killed. Maybe it’s the right thing to do. Maybe no one will even miss him. He deserves it. It’s the way life goes, and sometimes these terrible things need to be done.
But I hope that, when we do it, we are afraid.

At the Register: True Suffering Isn’t Photogenic

Don’t add pain to pain by expecting it to “hurt so good.”

PIC emo tears and mascara

I feel so invalidated!!!

I whined, you listened.

Jessica Carney started things off nicely with the plainly stated Simcha Is the Worst. A good effort, but I couldn’t help but notice she spelled my last name “F-i-s-h-e-r,” which is how it is spelled. People who truly hate me never spell my name right. My current theories on this are that (a) they are so blinded by my outrageous claims that, for instance, Francis hasn’t definitively identified himself as the Demon Pazuzu, that they can’t see they keyboard properly, or (b) they have some vague awareness that I am one of them furriners, so all my names must have some extra letters in there somewhere.

Then Katrina Fernandez obligingly waded into to murkey waters of Change.org and launched a petition: Simcha Fisher Stop Wearing and Promoting Ugly Footwear.

It’s like she hates beautiful things. You know who likes beautiful things?

Baby Jesus, that’s who!

Persuasive! That is some rock solid crazy person reasoning, but I would have found it more compelling if, instead of “sincerely” as a valediction, the letter that demands an end to my wicknesness had ended with “in His name” or “currently being washed in the Precious Blood of the Most Holy Lamb; hope you are same” or something like that.  And now I have to go find out what the hell “kitten heel pumps” are.

So I was feeling pretty good about the levels of outrage my existence is generating.

But then this new planet swam into my ken: Your Wrong Simcha Fisher. There is actually nothing I can say that will prepare you for this . . . whatever it is. If you read one thing today, make it be this. And then go lie down for a while.

Was it something I said?

You guys know I love you. You know how much I appreciate it when you read and share my stuff, follow my links, enter my stupid contests, and leave your stupid comments in my stupid comment box. And I hope you know that I try, I really try hard, to provide content that will titillate your senses and set your brain pans vibrating.

So is it too much to expect my own hate site? Matt Walsh has one. Mark Shea gets a support group for people he’s banned on Facebook and a petition for his removal. Even that nutty lady from Florida who knows how to get around IP blockers has a hate site. The nutty lady from Florida! And yet here I am, tapping away, and I can’t even remember the last time someone complained to my editor.

Oh, except for last week, but that was just one guy, and all he did was write two stinking emails titled “your wrong.”  This is penny ante stuff.  Folks, I can’t do this on my own. As much as I loathe everything about my personality, my character, my history, my likely future, my grooming habits, my political views, real and implied, and my stupid stupid face, I simply cannot supply my own anti Simcha Fisher website. My plate is too full. I know you guys are generous. Look into your heart, can you not? And if you find some hatred there, even just the smallest, lukewarm hatred . . . won’t you give?

PIC angry heart

32 authors and one banana

. . . read excerpts from Jen Fulwiler’s new book. I fought through my horrible Skype connection and provided a few seconds (no, I am not the banana one):

You have to watch this, if only to see Dwija mostly unruffled by a wandering lion. And of course Bonnie just had to let it go.  I’m delighted to be in such august company, delighted to see that Hallie Lord’s husband Dan is secure enough in his masculinity to wear what is surely a vest conceived in Hell. Never mind a hate site, I have a new goal: I want to someday write something that will cause Patrick Madrid to rear back in his seat and feign disgust. Jen has arrived!