I guess I'm not doomed after all

I learned a good lesson last week from my son's fifth-grade teacher. Like many good lessons, it had three points.

• The person who teaches my son religion in school is simply a distant runner-up in the derby of who will teach him the most about his faith. No one can even come close to the influence that his father and I will have over him in this department. We will teach best by doing two things that Jesus also did:
• Tell stories.
• Give witness to our faith. This means, among other things, how we treat each other, our children, and other people, particularly on a bad day or during hard times. Stunning in her simplicity, this teacher breathed life into the church's insistence that we parents are the "primary religious educators" of our children. While I applaud the thought behind this phrase, it often conjures up images of me rehearsing my kids on the names of the seven deadly sins and four cardinal virtues, or the proper order of the Ten Commandments. Since I'm somewhat hazy on these items myself, of course I feel doomed from the start. What a relief to hear two suggestions that I can actually do and do well.

Tell stories, for one. The teacher looked around at our gathering of parents, many of whom are recent immigrants from the Philippines or Central America. "Have you told your children the story of how you came to America? Have you told them how hard it is for you to live in this country?" she thundered. Here are a few questions I would add: Have you told them the story of how they got their name? What happened on the day or night they were born? How their parents or grandparents met? Have you told them (more than once) the classic stories of your family, of the people who are your heroes?

Kids happily help us along toward storytelling. "Why did you name me Mary Kathleen?" asked my 3-year-old the other day. And I don't know a child alive who doesn't love to hear about the day he or she was born or about the highs and lows of their parents' childhood. Even scary or disturbing stories have their place, to help us make sense of scary or disturbing events - fathers lost in the war, brothers who die too young. "The thing that's scarier than the scariest story is that there's no story," said author Lawrence Weschler recently. "Generally we live in a chaotic world and the only thing that gets you through the day is the tendency to impose order on it - to turn it into a story. Then you can light a fire and tell stories to each other."

This is how the gospels began, when you think about it.

As for the second strategy of witness, here's what the teacher told us the other night: "When you have a bad day on the job, what do you tell your kids about it when you come home? Do you talk with them about the moral challenges you face at work? And when you're angry with them, how do you treat them?" And a few more: Do we encourage our children to follow what they're called to do or to be, even if it doesn't line up with what we might prefer? (That "little ballerina" might prefer ice hockey; that "future doctor" might be a better carpenter.) If we say we value helping others, do we ever actually do that as a family?

Thank God the church realizes that nobody can educate our kids in the faith the way we can. And when we realize we already are doing it, it becomes a much less daunting task.