Monday night, the LSU Tigers play in the National Championship Game. Those who know me know that I am an avid LSU fan. Those who do not know me, trust me when I tell you, “I bleed purple and gold.” There was no doubt that when Chris and I became parents that we would pass our love for the LSU Tigers onto our children. As infants, they were given gifts by our family and friends, also strong members of the LSU community, such as LSU sippy cups, pacifiers, blankets, and clothes. Chris and I have taught them our cheers, our pre-game rituals, and our traditions. Our children understand what purple and gold stands for. They see a tiger, and they say, “Geaux Tigers,” before even thinking of saying “roar.” They have experienced the community of Louisiana State University fans that occurs instantly when two LSU fans see each other. In essence, my children have been fully immersed in this way of being.

As parents, it is our responsibility to be the primary educators of our children’s faith also. This means that Chris and I are charged, as parents, to share our faith with our kids with the same passion that we share our love for LSU. Why does it feel easier sometimes to share our love of a team rather than to share our love of our faith? We, too, as Catholics have rituals and traditions. We, too, have a Catholic community that extends far beyond where we live and creates camaraderie between people instantly.

I think it feels easier sometimes because sharing my love of a team does not require sharing deep matters of my heart. With passing on the understanding of God to my children, I am asked to attempt to put words to something that matters deeply to me, an understanding that has evolved and deepened over time. It is hard for me to describe what I know within.

Thankfully, our Church captures the depth of our hearts in outward expressions of love and of grace. I realize I do not have to lean only on my words, but on the rituals, sacraments, and traditions that also express God, who ultimately transcends all words.

So while we will continue to expose our kids to all things LSU, we will remain focused on fully immersing our children in our faith, to expose them to our sacraments, to our rituals, and our traditions, and to introduce them to men and women living authentic, sacred lives. Our hope is that one day they will be as passionate about their faith as they are about their favorite team!

Over the past two weeks I’ve had the remarkable experience of being a nearly full-time Dad.  My wife has started a new job and has undergone an orientation process that’s taken her away from home for some time, so we’ve found ourselves switching roles.

It’s been a profound process of discovery for me.  This is by no means my first time as primary caregiver–we’ve shared that role over the years as time and demands permit.  Early after our first adoption, for example, I took two days home every work week to be with an infant who needed constant physical contact.  Parenting has stretched me unlike any other life experience.

But these past two weeks have still been a period of growth.  Primarily, this has been an experience of slowing down and really paying attention to my girls as I have not done often enough.  I am certainly guilty of a tendency toward workaholism, even though I have in theory been trying to maintain a healthy work-life balance.  The truth is that I often leave the emotional work of parenting to Sue, in large part because she is just plain better at it.

But with Sue away so much, I’ve stepped more deeply into the world my girls inhabit.  And what I am realizing is that our worlds move at different speeds, with different imaginative objects that help structure our respective worlds.  I live in an academic world and move freely between millenia; what captures my imagination are eternal truths I seek to understand and live by.  It sounds grand, but in extremes it’s an unreal world.  My girls live much more in the here and now; they live in imaginative worlds populated by figures from stories and TV and music.  What’s important, though, is that I have set aside my imaginative world for a while in order to move more freely about in theirs.  And I have discovered dimensions of who they are in the process, and I fall in love.

I am convinced that we become who we imagine ourselves to be.  Too often I imagine myself in ways related to my work.  The experience of the past two weeks has reminded me of my fundamental vocation in the world.  It’s not about my work, though that does express an important dimension of how God has gifted me.  It’s about my marriage and my fathering, that sacramental context which, by definition, is oriented toward eternity.  I have been reminded to slow down, to be part of the world of my children, to walk with them and discover who they are and who they are becoming.  It is a wonder.

It is possible to bring an Ignatian perspective to parenting. My wife Sue and I don’t claim to be the best at this all the time, but the basic thrust of it goes like this.

Taking the First Principle and Foundation (FPF) seriously means seeking to discover what kind of person God has created our daughters to be. I paraphrase the FPF this way: God creates us to render praise, reverence, and serve God our Lord, and everything on earth ought to help us achieve this primary end.

Parenting—especially the adoptive variety, which we’re in the midst of—is about helping our daughters in the process of self-discovery. (In a way, adoption makes this discovery easy; we have no preconceptions about our girls having the same interests as we have.) It’s about cultivating time and places for reflection, always asking God for insight into how to render praise.

Another way of thinking about parenting in an Ignatian vein is by seeing the formation of character as a process similar to Ignatian discernment. We want to encourage practices that help form them—practices like prayer and liturgy, reading and exercising, friendship-making and so on. Ignatius’ spirituality borrowed heavily from Thomas Aquinas, who borrowed heavily from Aristotle—who said that all actions aim at some fundamental good. For Ignatius, that good was expressed in the FPF. As parents, then, our job is about helping our daughters to both praise God in the everydayness of their lives, but also keep an eye open for the larger question of who God is inviting them to become through their gifts.

We can’t impose that vision upon them; too many parents, it seems to me, drive their kids to some vision of excellence they’ve decided is necessary in a market-driven world. They must be outstanding students; they must excel at some sport; they must have all sorts of activities which help build their applications to the best colleges, and so on.

For us, the different challenge is to find the ways that their personalities unfold, but not to drive them always to succeed. Rather, we provide them opportunities for self-discovery, and rejoice or lament with them at respective successes or failures. And through the whole process we (hopefully) take time to simply marvel at their beauty, which is (as for all of us) a reflection of the God who has created us in his image.