Teach Your Children Well.

Things you learned as a child that you are trying to unlearn as an adult.

I learned that Jesus wore a beard, so therefore it was OK for anyone to. However, I do not recall a single man that I knew growing up that had facial hairs.

I am not so sure about unlearning all of these but…

Never come to the dinner table without a shirt.

Always take a hat off when you come inside.

Say Sir and Ma'am when addressing or answering adults .

Help women when they are caring heavy loads, having difficulty negotiating doors etc. or generally look like they need a hand.

If you touch a piece of food the chances are that your siblings will not eat it.

Debt is a bad thing

Working is a good thing.

The one who screams loudest always wins the argument.

Learned that just about everything in life worked itself out in one hour and 49 minutes if you exclude commercials.

Being sick is a sign of weakness. So never admit you're sick and just keep going.

Having personal problems are for other people to have and talk about. Hide your own.

"nuthin' says lovin' like somethin' from the oven".

I learned that all foods are best when fried (with the possible exception of black eyed peas and such, which are best when boiled to death with fatback for seasoning).

I learned you don't play cards, no dancing, no going to movies on Sunday, and believe it or not when I was about 12 I remember pizza places being explained as bars where everyone got drunk. I remember at 16 telling my mother I would never go to a "pizza hall".

I always believed that people could be judged based on dress and appearance. It was a shocker in my first job (at a bank) to discover that the slob I had been trying to discourage was the branch's wealthiest client.

I never liked the expressions:

"if you don't stop crying I'll give you something to cry about." or

"just wait until your father gets home"

There were also expressions I picked up from the kids I played with that I dropped after I understood what they really meant. Things like:

- "I Jewed him down to a better price"

-"The only good Indian is a dead Indian"

I learned that "church visitation" was for inviting all the families that lived near the church to come on Sundays, except for the black families, that is (we never went visiting at their houses).

-I learned that white folks are hard workers, but black folks take handouts from anywhere they can get them. White folks are also smart, and black folks not very clever.

I work constantly to "unlearn" attitudes that were part of growing up in a very segregated

small southern town where there were separate schools, movies, drinking fountains, bus stations, etc. Intellectually I have put all this behind me but there are still remnants---maybe not of real prejudice but of a feeling of "differentness".

Godly women do not get angry.

If you are in love with your spouse, you won't get attracted to anyone else.

Good mothers ALWAYS want to be with their children.

That conflict was bad and to be avoided at all cost.

I learned that males were God's preferred choice because Jesus was a male .

I learned as a child that parents were perfect. Maybe it was the way my father seemed so bold and strong that I developed a sense that anything he said or did was godlike. I worshipped him, he was my hero. As I grew older I realized my dad had some flaws. I spent too many years trying to deal with the reality that my father wasn't perfect at all, even spent energy trying to defy and prove him wrong. While I'm thankful that we did reach a time in our lives that we related to each other as adult friends, if I had to do over again, I would spent a lot more time just being friends with my Dad and lot less time worrying about the perceptions of unrealistic expectations of perfection. Hopefully my sons and I will have years of just being "buds"

….once we get through these teen years.

Mine were unspoken lessons.

My Dad worked 3 jobs until I was about 10 years old. Most of our communication came on a sports field. I vowed to myself that I wanted to be in a position that work did not dominate my life, that my time will be spent with my family and working hard at being a dad. I knew I wanted my relationship to not be just through sports but all the things I did.

I learned that strong emotions (anger, sadness, joy) are not nice, and keeping the peace at any cost is the paramount value. I learned you can get away with murder as long as you are nice about it. I learned that what I think and feel, need or long for is less important than what

everyone else thinks, feels, needs, longs for. I learned that love is given only if you earn it, and that I was incapable of earning it.

I was about 14 and at the age the where you would occasionally spend the night at a friend's house. This girl had moved to my southern town a few years earlier from somewhere up north.

It was late at night and we were already in bed talking like 14 year olds do about everything. Somehow, and I can't remember how it came up, we were talking about the Bible and God, and she told me that the Bible was just a story made up by people. I can still remember exactly what her room looked like at that moment... I had a sense of the "earth moving" and thought a lightening bolt was going to strike us in that room at any second! I was terrified! Well,

of course there was no lightening bolt and the next day came as always. God did not "get" me or her for such a sacrilegious comment. Whatever image I had absorbed of God must have been one of wrath and punishment. I think I have spent a lot of my adult years trying to let that sense of God go, and let it be replaced with a God of loving acceptance and care.

As a child growing up in the Catholic faith, I learned that God was male-- a very critical, judgmental, unloving male figure (as were many of the priests that I came into contact with). I was never "good enough" for this kind of a God...this has had bad consequences for my self-concept, of course. This model of God has caused many heartbreaks for me in my relationship with God, in my relationships with male companions, and in my relationships with male authority figures at work. I am still trying to unlearn this negative, patriarchal view of God, but it is very, very difficult. I don't find much support in the Bible for a wise and feminine God...other than in Proverbs (Sophia-wisdom), in some of the Catholic books (not in Protestant bibles), and in non-Christian faiths. This makes me very sad and I often wonder if I will ever be able to truly rest in God's arms. In mid-life I am striving harder to find out the truth about

God because I wish to die in peace and feel comfortable being in God's presence. I've gotten so overly sensitive to the patriarchal God image that I find myself unable to pray the way most Christians pray...and uncomfortable about praying out loud the kinds of prayers I would like to

say from the heart. ….

De-programming is a very hard and very scary thing to do. I think that's why I enjoy working with the children in our church...trying to give them experiences with a God who is loving and playful...this is helpful and healing for me.