Category Archives: Family

Sunday evening theology for kids

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Creative Commons License photo credit: Samuraijohnny

Kevin’s spent the last couple of hours watching The Passion of the Christ with the boys.

Lucas sat on the sofa the whole time, engrossed. (Yes, it’s violent, but its impact is definitely worth the gore, unlike most of the superhero movies we usually watch around here in boy-central.) Asking question after question of Kevin, Lucas clearly took in the big picture.

Atticus ran around the house with his 3-D “bird-man” glasses on (“This is my red eye, and this is my blue eye”), but spent enough time in the living room to be able to share his commentary with me (“Jesus has blood on his face”…”There’s a hole in Jesus’ hand”).

And Kevin? He ran commentary the whole time, rendering himself a bit hoarse afterward, even.

One sliver of conversation:

Lucas: How did Jesus turn the water into wine?
Kevin: He’s God. He can do anything. He could turn you into wine if He wanted to.
Lucas: Then I would be spilled all over the couch.

I was grading papers and planning the whole time, so I didn’t get to watch and listen to all the conversation like I would have liked. But I started thinking afterward about how I may view it differently if I saw it through their eyes.

Kevin said he was trying to see things the way the kids (mostly Lucas) would, so he could explain what they may not understand. A couple of his observations:

  1. When the Jewish priests were spitting on Jesus, Lucas said, “I thought they were holy people.”
  2. Lucas wanted to know when the Devil and the demons were coming back all the time. Kevin told him to focus on Jesus instead, but it reminds me of watching The Wizard of Oz and watching for the Wicked Witch the whole time.

By the end of the movie, the kids both agreed that Jesus is the best superhero ever. Not only is he powerful, but he also heals the people who would hurt him (like the guard whose ear Peter cut off when Jesus was first seized).

The Atticus Song

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NOTE: I’m still working on getting this uploaded from my new phone. I think I may have to resort to using a cord (of all things :P), since I can’t get the phone hooked into my WiFi (the PW that works with my laptop & iPod is wrong?), and the video is too large to send over the 3G network (according to the phone). Done! I used the cord. ๐Ÿ™

When Atticus wanted to know how to spell his name last year, I came up with his little song to help him remember it. I’ve tried many times to get a recording of it, but finally one day this week, he was in a mood to sing and to see himself on video. ๐Ÿ™‚

From the Vault: Songs by Lukie and Attie

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I was going through my image/audio/video folders the other day, trying to find a picture of my classroom last year for a Donor’s Choose project and stumbled onto these old recordings.

The quality’s not great, since I recorded them on my cell phone and had to convert them twice to get them in a file type I could use. But they make me smile!!

I can hardly believe that Lucas will be starting first grade on Monday! And Atticus will be going to kindergarten next fall. . . No more babies in the Hawke house. ๐Ÿ™

This one is Atticus singing Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star when he was two years old.

And this one is Lucas singing Iron Man. He was almost four.

I posted these a long time ago at my teaching site.

Lucasโ€™ impromptu Jesus song :)

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Lucas with the worm he didn\’t really want to leave ~ Natural Bridge, June 2010

The week before Father’s Day, the boys and I were working on cards for Kevin. Colored paper, scissors, markers and crayons littered the table. Three-year-old Atticus quickly lost interest, but not Lucas, who will turn six at the end of this month. When he’s creating something, he’s got a focus that belies his years.

When he was done, he crinkled his nose at his creation. He’d written it in yellow crayon on white paper, and the low contrast made it difficult to read. He was ready to ball the whole thing up and turn a little pouty, but thankfully I had an idea: I showed him how he could take a darker color and draw around his words to create the contrast he needed.

You should have seen him when I demonstrated it for him on my paper! His eyes grew big and it was like the giggles just erupted out of him like bubbling lava from a long-dormant volcano. He was so excited about this new thing that he couldn’t even sit still in his seat. He had the proverbial ants in his pants. ๐Ÿ˜€

I tell this story because I think it’s symbolic of Lucas’ energy.

He loves life and learning new things. And he loves people, especially little babies. He loves animals and all kinds of creatures, bugs and worms included. You can just see it all over him. It’s intoxicating and viral, and it will serve him well in life if he can keep it without getting jaded like so many of us do. (I pray about this every day. ๐Ÿ˜‰

The other day before we recorded Lucas’ song, I asked him what he’d practiced to sing. He said in a sing-song voice, “Just push the button, and you’ll see…”

It was clear, though, that he hadn’t practiced anything (hence the “impromptu.”) And that’s great! I only told him to practice in the hopes that he’d mentally prepare himself to record something instead of claiming to be shy and refusing to say or sing anything once we were recording, like he usually does. It seems to have worked. ๐Ÿ™‚

Lucas’ song:

Nursing Home โ€˜Concertโ€™ with My Mom

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Me and my mom ๐Ÿ™‚

When I was in high school, I was really active in my church youth group, mainly for the fun activities like beach trips and hay rides. But in order to do the fun stuff, we had to do the service projects like visiting a local nursing home.

I remember feeling good about caroling up the corridors and talking with the residents because, as we were told, many of them had few, if any, visitors. That made up for the odd smells and uneasiness of speaking to the people who didn’t seem to notice. And many of them even seemed to enjoy our being there.

Well, I recently had the opportunity to go back to the very same nursing home after all these years. My mom asked me to sing with her on Friday, June 11, at one of her monthly visits. She and my dad, Danny and Nancye Ricketts, are founding ministers at Victory Family Church, and as part of their outreach, they visit the nursing home regularly to speak, sing, and pray with the residents who are able to join them in the activity area.

It was a good experience for the most part. My dad opened the meeting and introduced me. (“She’s an English teacher,” he said, my mom backing him up: “Yes, she’s an English teacher, but we love her anyway!” :P) Many of the people who were there were singing along with us and saying “Amen” when my mom was reading scriptures and talking.

But it was sad, too. The same odd smells . . . and seeing a lot of them looking asleep or otherwise engaged. One lady made strange noises the whole time. And another woke up after we finished, yelling what sounded like, “Hey! Hey! What in the world are you doing?”

Like my mom reminded me, though, we don’t really know how much they hear by the way they respond. We just have to do the best we can to help and hope that they get something positive from it.

Okay, on to the “concert.”

I set up the H2 recorder over to the side (where I could find an available, albeit dusty and hidden, outlet) and didn’t realize until then that there wasn’t enough space left on it to record the whole thing, so I decided to just record the music.

My mom played her keyboard and we sang through microphones plugged into a amplified lectern. The songs were mostly old gospel hymns that we ran through quickly the night before at their church. You may just recognize a few of them. ๐Ÿ˜‰

Victory in Jesus: [audio:pineyforesthealthcare-2010-06-11/01-victory-in-jesus.mp3|loop=no]
Amazing Grace: [audio:pineyforesthealthcare-2010-06-11/02-amazing-grace.mp3|loop=no]
Love Lifted Me: [audio:pineyforesthealthcare-2010-06-11/03-love-lifted-me.mp3|loop=no]
I’ve Got a River of Life: [audio:pineyforesthealthcare-2010-06-11/04-ive-got-a-river-of-life.mp3|loop=no]
‘Tis So Sweet to Trust in Jesus: [audio:pineyforesthealthcare-2010-06-11/05-tis-so-sweet-to-trust-in-jesus.mp3|loop=no]
In the Name of the Lord: [audio:pineyforesthealthcare-2010-06-11/06-in-the-name-of-the-lord.mp3|loop=no]
I Must Tell Jesus: [audio:pineyforesthealthcare-2010-06-11/07-i-must-tell-jesus.mp3|loop=no]
Just a Closer Walk with Thee: [audio:pineyforesthealthcare-2010-06-11/08-just-a-closer-walk-with-thee.mp3|loop=no]
Something About That Name: [audio:pineyforesthealthcare-2010-06-11/09-something-about-that-name.mp3|loop=no]

Atticus sings ‘Hail, Mary’

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SIMONE MARTINI Maestร  (1315, Palazzo Pubblico, Siena)

Months and months ago, a tune for the Catholic prayer called “Hail, Mary” came to me, so I’ve been singing it a lot around the house (and in the car and everywhere else ;). It didn’t take long for the kids to pick it up, especially 3-year-old Atticus, who seems to prefer singing it to saying it. (If you listen to his version above, you can definitely tell he LOVES to sing it. ๐Ÿ™‚

When we started down the path toward Confirmation almost two years ago, I was confused by what I saw as the Church’s preoccupation with Mary (among other things that are posts for other days). Our kids, however, haven’t been confused at all about Mary. In fact, 5-year-old Lucas told Kevin the other day that he has two mothers, not one as he answered, because Mary is his mother, too. What a deep kid that Lukie is. ๐Ÿ™‚

After a lot of study and prayer, I too came to realize that it all makes perfect sense. In the beginning of the gospel of Luke, Mary says her soul magnifies the Lord. And what does a magnifying glass do but enable us to see more clearly what was a blur through our eyes alone. Through Mary, we can know her Son, Jesus, so much better because we can see Him so much clearer. Likewise, all honor, love and respect we give to Mary is funneled right through to her Son, Jesus.

So, here’s Attie:
[audio-clammr mp3=”hail-mary-atticus-june2010.mp3″]

And now, for those of you who aren’t Catholic, here are the words to the “Hail, Mary”:

Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary, Mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death.
Amen.

Maybe one day I’ll post my version of this song. I’ve recorded it several times, my mouse always on the delete button. . . Here’s my version of this song. ๐Ÿ™‚

Atticus’ first song

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Lucas and Atticus

Atticus, right, with his big brother, Lucas.

Off and on through the day Sunday, Attie would pull out the plastic push-button guitar and pretend to strum it, singing something I couldn’t place and claiming it was “Daddy’s song.” Once Kevin got home from work and pulled out the acoustic, Attie brought his to the table, singing that same little tune.

His first songwriting experience!! Of course, Mom had to record it. ๐Ÿ˜‰ I’m not exactly sure what he’s singing, but it sounds like, “You gotta think about where you gonna lay.” We don’t know where he came up with it or why he says it’s Kevin’s song. Maybe something Kevin does sounds like that to him?

Anyway, Kevin’s reaction to it? “Not bad for a 3-year-old.” And a big old smile! ๐Ÿ™‚

[audio:think-about-where-you-gonna-lay-atticus-june2010.mp3|loop=yes]