Baby Song

Allow me to brag a little bit.

My daughter sings. She sang to me this afternoon before her nap.

She sang to me while I was watching her, like a hawk. You she, she has a scrape on her face that my wife rubs ointment on and covers with a band-aid - doctor's instructions to pulverize the bacteria and ward off a potential infection. I had to watch my daughter while she was in her swing to make sure she didn't rip the band-aid off her face and devour it, the ointment and the bacteria. Not an easy task, believe me.

She lifted her heavenly-brown eyes to her captor/protector and sang. No words of course, she's just learning her consonants. But her little voice rose and fell, freely skipping along notes she herself picked out for a song that she wrote. The tune fell lightly, like a Rocky Mountain brook, flowing with freedom and logic between rock and stone. It was unmistakably a song.

My mother-in-law observed she loves music, however she perceives it in her little developing mind. I have sang to her since we were first aware of her existence, gently singing hymns through my wife's belly and then, how happy, directly to her face. In the first couple of months, the best way to get her to calm down was to hold her and sing, "Come Thou Found of Every Blessings," tapping her back in rhythm as I walked through our little apartment.

Now, she returns the favor. She looked right at me and sang her song. Unmistakably a song, but unmistakably praise as well. Whether she was aware of it or not, she praised God, joining the trees visible out the window right behind her, and the thunder I hear as I write this. The heavens declare the glory of the Lord, and in her own, little baby way, on this Sunday, she joined in.

I could not help but sing back. I sang a lullaby called "Oh How He Loves You and Me." It goes like this:

Oh how he loves you and me

Oh how he loves you and me

He gave his life, what more could he give?

Oh how he loves you

Oh how he loves me

Oh how he loves you and me

My mother would rock me in a big, leather office chair and sing that song to me. It's among my earliest memories. My mother once told me that my most-requested song during those times was "Away in a Manger." But "Oh How He Loves You and Me" is the one that stuck with me. It took root in the fertile soil of a child's heart and remained. I suspect it was the song God wanted me to remember. I pray that my daughter remembers it too.

Technology and Humanity

I'm a huge technology fan (duh - the blog), and I count myself happy to live in the age of the internet. It's wonderful, and the opportunities of daily exploration are nothing short of miraculous. So I wonder if it's ironic that I resinate so much with Bob Herbert's beautiful column in today's New York Times.

"Tweet Less, Kiss More" caught my attention the day after I opened my first Twitter account, mostly to actually experience how it works. Mr. Herbert reminds us that:

We need to reduce the speed limits of our lives. We need to savor the trip. Leave the cellphone at home every once in awhile. Try kissing more and tweeting less. And stop talking so much.

Listen.

Other people have something to say, too. And when they don’t, that glorious silence that you hear will have more to say to you than you ever imagined. That is when you will begin to hear your song. That’s when your best thoughts take hold, and you become really you.

Of course, Mr. Herbert is not the first to to point out the dehumanizing effects of technology. Wendell Berry is my favorite critic of blind technological advancement (famous for his essay, "Why I Am Not Going to Buy a Computer," yes, more irony, read it on your computer. This link includes the letters to Harpers, I believe, where it was first published, and Mr. Berry's witty response). Bob Herbert's column calls to mind a passage from Jayber Crow, which I read last fall, in which Jayber buys a an automobile (I wanted to quote directly, but I forgot that I had lent my book to a friend). Mr. Berry describes Jayber's growing impatience with anything moving slower than he was, particularly on the road, as he drives the car in post-war rural Kentucky, and this attitude eats away at his moral character. Knowing he does not truly need the car, he eventually gets rid of it. I believe somewhere in Surprised by Joy, C.S. Lewis is less moralistic, but nonetheless on the same train of thought, where he notes that, being born before the invention of the automobile he could better appreciate the nature in his own limited space.

Of course, this question of technological advancement and morals was around well-before the modern era. The Economist describes this story:

IN 1492, the same year that Christopher Columbus crossed the Atlantic, a Benedictine abbot named Trithemius, living in western Germany, wrote a spirited defence of scribes who tried to impress God’s word most firmly on their minds by copying out texts by hand. To disseminate his own books, though, Trithemius used the revolutionary technology of the day, the printing press.

I can imagine that the scribes of old had a sort of patient, devotional and spiritual experience lost on many of us today by daily copying scripture. But, as we all know, the printing press put eventually put them out of business and brought God's word to everyone else.

The Economist article I linked to reviews a book about troubles with modern technology (social media), and suggests that the answer to troubles with technology is moderation, or "old-fashioned self-restraint." Bob Herbert suggests the same.

One of the essential problems of our society is that we have a tendency, amid all the craziness that surrounds us, to lose sight of what is truly human in ourselves, and that includes our own individual needs — those very special, mostly nonmaterial things that would fulfill us, give meaning to our lives, enlarge us, and enable us to more easily embrace those around us.

One caveat with this sentence. Whenever we talk about "what is truly human in ourselves," we can forget that the opposite of whatever we're talking about may be just as human. Technology enables and is enabled by our drive to achieve, our joy in production, our escapism, our fear that we are missing something, our anxiety that we are not keeping up, our need for connection, our appetite for information. Whatever is positive or negative about these traits, they are fully human, keeping phones and computers within arms reach, wherever we go.

Old-fashioned self-restraint means restraining a very human part of us. If it means closing the laptop to pay attention to my wife or my daughter (more irony: as I write this, they are sitting behind me), it means suffocating a very human part me to allow them (or my friends, or my job, or my church, or a piece of art, or ultimately God Himself) to shape me, and make me a better human.

Understand

Yesterday, I noticed two things about my daughter. First, she was in a fowl mood, which was understandable - our friendly neighborhood doctor had just given her three shots, which means sore legs and antibiotics storming through her young digestive system. Second, she just learned that she can use her lips as annunciation tools, and she's practicing. (As I write this, she's sitting her her swing, chanting, "ma-ma-ma-ba-ba-a-da-ba)"

As I placed her on her changing table to do what was necessary before bedtime, instead of her normal smiles, giggles and goos (which makes changing her diaper one of the surprising pleasures of new fatherhood), her eyes filled with adorably tragic tears, her expressive eyebrows wrinkled up into that same expression utter sadness she inherited from her mother, and she began to cry. She did not want to be put down. She cried while practicing her consonants.

I wanted her to stop. I wanted her to stop so she does not get riled up before bedtime, but I knew she was in a tired, painful, fresh-from-the-doctor-and-I-don't-want-to-talk-so-hold-me place. Tickling and singing, normally two tickets to a sure smile, did not work. So, I began imitating her "ba-ba-ma-ba-ma" crying. She laughed. She calmed down. She was ready for bed.

I am no expert on child psychology, so I cannot be sure what she was thinking. Maybe she simply thought I looked funny. But maybe, just maybe, in her own little baby way, she felt understood.

Terry Gross, the host of NPR's Fresh Air has a great quote on her Website. When talking about giving interviews, she says, "what puts people on guard isn't necessarily the fear of being 'found out.' It sometimes is just the fear of being misunderstood." It's true. Understand me, and there's very little I won't tell you.

When I know I am understood, I can better accept encouragement, criticism and honesty of all types. For better or worse, I can be found out, because my viewer knows how and why I got there.

Of course, in this "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" environment that our Lord asks us to spread, the onus is on me to understand - my friends, my colleagues, my family, even my enemies. Understanding paves the way for love, even when understanding, in this city of spin and goals, takes up valuable time to achieve. But, if I take the time to understand, I can do my part to see friction between myself and others polished and smoothed to the point of real relationship. I can even, at times, stem the flow of tears. And consonants.