Jedi Parenting

“One of us ought to go and train to be a Jedi,” my husband told me as he scanned the newspaper headlines one Saturday. nnHis contemplation of the spiritual life is deep, and it relies mostly on Star Wars imagery. He said he’d been working on the Jedi thing for some time now, and so, I suppose, have I. nnIn our own way and using our own metaphors, we must all find a spiritual sense of purpose; some sort of point to it all. nnLike many others in my generation, I have experienced those dark nights of the soul. I have been seized in the middle of the night with a gulping uncertainly, a woeful conclusion that I am not sure whether anything I do has a point. And I have been struck with the icy feeling that it is not fair in any way that I am here, in this world and on this earth, expected to scratch about without any clear reason as to why I do all of the very many things that I do. nnAnd yet, in those same dark nights, when I check on my three children and I watch them sleeping, I am filled with a sense of fullness unlike anything I had ever known before my children came into my life.nnIt is times like these when I feel I have come face to face with something beyond myself that I'm not sure how to explain Something divine and otherworldly. It is the Force, as my husband would say. nnAs a mother, I have encountered it often: a fleeting sense of connectedness to all the parents who have gone before me: all mothers and fathers have known a secret to life's happiness because they have experienced the sense of fullness that comes only from getting out of their own way and out of their own minds and caring for something from way down deep. nnThrough this day-to-day life, in the must mundane routines of helping my kids, it is obvious: Each time I am able to reach out in kindness to someone, I heal myself and maybe even my world, just a little bit. Each time I can remember to love someone. Each time I decide against spreading a rumor. Each time I can manage to keep my mouth shut when I don't feel like being nice. Each time I can manage to do those things, I feel a little better. I feel a little more connected to the Force. nnThat's when I feel as though there is a point after all and that we are all in this together. Maybe this conscious emoting, this conscious sending out of love into the world, is the way we both strengthen the Force and use the Force. I have no idea. All I know is that when I am having a dark night of the soul or I am not sure what to do next, if I can reach out to the things that I love, then I will feel better. If I can nurture some feeling of warmth in some tiny, right-this-very-moment kind of way, if I can find a bit of comfort and share it with someone near, I will feel better. nnMost days that's as close to a Jedi as this mom can be. For today, it is enough.