The God who hides

I really appreciated this image of God playing hide-and-seek that Winner describes in her book, Wearing God:

“We might of think of God as one who plays hide-and-seek. When playing the game, the children who are hiding almost always give themselves away by laughing or giggling. Our job, as friends and disciples and reverencers and lovers of the Lord, says Land, is to listen for God’s laughter. . . kids who play hide-and-seek usually hide in the same places over and over again, and so the parent or friend tasked with looking might reasonably know, even without the sound of laughter, where she is likely to find the one hiding. This is true of God, too. . . God hides in bread and wine, in silence, in gardens, in cities, in prisons, in huger and privation and poverty, in song.” Winner, Wearing God, 236-7.

I believe God is actively working in the world - but sometimes I act like I don't. I act like God is lost, instead of seeing it more like hide-and-seek, where I will see where God is and has been, if only I look and listen properly.

A child brings a whole new set of social interactions

Bringing the child to a home day care for the last few months has made me realize that I've entered into a whole new world of social interactions, and I once again have limited idea of what to do. 

• Do I talk to the other parents? If so, how much and what do we talk about? Perhaps how cute their child is, what milestones they might have hit, what their weekend plans are? 
• How much do I talk to my day care providers? I'd like to know how much the little slept and ate each day, whether she had a bowel movement or her diaper leaked, and whether she was generally content. Or if there's anything I could do to make life better for her or the day care providers. But should I ask about their weekend plans? About what it's like to run a day care? About their children? About living in Lansing?

I already feel a bit socially awkward in many situations, so I'm not particularly excited to recognize that this new situation has given me more social interactions to negotiate. This is on top of figuring out how to respond to people's interest in my child (how do I thank them appropriately for their compliments, should I offer to let others hold her or let them tell me first, when is my distraction with the little okay and when is it insulting to someone else, etc.). 

On the other hand, all these new social interactions help me remember what it's like to feel socially awkward again, which is a helpful thing to remember when working with people negotiating the weird social interactions of the academic world. It also provides me with a learning opportunity about how to treat people with dignity and learn to appreciate who they are as individual persons (and not simply as the parent of that child or the person who looks after my child). And lastly, it reminds me that I can probably never thank my day care providers enough - or even know how to adequately express to them my thankfulness to God about how they keep my child safe and show her how much she is cared for.