Your screaming kids (M. Hunter-Kilmer)

   Summer vacation is over, school is back in session, and lots of families are back at church.  We may be hearing a lot more young voices all around us during the celebration of the Mass, loud voices, piercing voices, screaming voices, sometimes crying, sometimes yelling in frustration.  And what effect does all that have on our faith life?  Selections from Meg Hunter-Kilmer’s perceptive article, Your Screaming Kids Are Distracting Me, offer food for thought:

   More often than not, [parents] don't notice the smiles.  You notice the rolled eyes and raised eyebrows and dirty looks and you think that at best you're not making anyone angry.  But that's not true -- at best, you're making the people around you saints.  You're pulling them out of their self-obsession and reminding them that being at Church is about emptying ourselves for God and for each other.

   Prayer is so often just a veil for narcissism.  We talk and talk and talk about ourselves and then slap an Amen on the end and consider ourselves holy.  When your kids start screaming, it distracts us from ourselves.  We start praying for you.  Or for them.  We pray for single parents.  We pray in thanksgiving for our grown children or we beg for screaming children of our own.

   Yes, your kids are distracting me.  They’re distracting me from my narcissism. They’re distracting me from the idol I’ve made of worship, making me encounter God as he really is, not as I want him to be.  They’re distracting me from the endless series of irrelevant thoughts that occupy my 'praying' mind.

   Your screaming kids are distracting me.  Thank you for that.

To read more of Ms. Hunter-Kilmer’s thoughtful article, click here.

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