Children Are Not Clay: On Seeing Before Shaping

CTS Talks presents:

Children Are Not Clay: On Seeing Before Shaping

REV. DR. Irie L. SESSION

This talk explores Proverbs 22:6, "Train children in the way they should go; when they grow old, they won't depart from it," and asks what the text actually requires of those who care for children. Too often, this verse has been read as a mandate to mold children into a shape their caretakers have already decided on. Thus, discounting the reality that each child arrives in their own context and culture and has unique creative capacities. This sermon talk offers another reading. Seeing precedes shaping.

The Zulu greeting Sawubona, "We see you…we see your humanity,” names the kind of deliberate seeing required for children’s spiritual flourishing. It is a recognition of each child as a whole person whose spirit, soul, and body are to be nurtured, cherished, loved, and seen uniquely for who they are.

Particular attention will be given to the care of Black children's souls. Drawing on Janet E. Helms' work on racial identity development and W.E.B. Du Bois' concept of double consciousness, the talk considers what it means to tend the interior life of a child learning early that the world sees them through more than one set of eyes.

The CTS Talks presentation will be followed by a reception for attendees.

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