Creativity and Health   |   Stress and Illness


Do unto Others... Parenting with Love


Alice Walker, author of The Color Purple, has the most human approach to parenting, seeing, as she does, every child as deserving of care and compassion.

The same heart-warming generosity is seen in the Reverend Mother in the film Sound of Music (1965).

The Reverend Mother is the head of all the abbey, and a mother figure for the nuns. Meanwhile, Maria is a novice nun who is constantly being criticised by some of the other abbey seniors. For Sister Berthe, Maria is a little too free-spirited and lax with the rules, and deserves to be declared a “headache”, a “clown” and even a “demon”.

Sister Berthe has become estranged from the heart and tangled up in knots, the product of stress’s divisive hopscotch. Her austere judging and over-identification with the law (in letter only, its spirit ignored and the heart unheard) is a kind of stress disorder.

By contrast, the Reverend Mother, just like Maria, sticks to being true. With her wealth of humility, she refuses to pin down “a word that means Maria”. She’ll not be seduced by stress, nor use its punishing pigeonholes as an excuse to lasso or accuse. The Reverend Mother would sooner “keep faith in my doubts”. For her, doing otherwise would be to “keep a wave upon the sand” or “hold a moonbeam in your hand” - futile, in other words. All in all, she’s concluded that Maria is, very simply, a “girl”. And for the Reverend Mother, that’s good enough.

This film gives it to us straight: look after joy, and virtue will look after itself. Into those hills that are “alive with the sound of music”, Maria leaps and twirls, her light hidden under no bushel, a novice nun for whom scripture is written into all creation. And the Reverend Mother belongs to the same spirit.

Sister Sophia is alarmed at Maria “waltzing on her way to mass” and “whistling on the stair”. Yet the heart-connected Reverend Mother is no keeper of scorecards. She’d rather let Maria come into her own, so her true potential can show. Meanwhile, also on her mind is the widower Captain von Trapp, along with his seven children who have long mourned the mother they’ve lost.

Seeing the abbey as better suited to more sober temperaments, perhaps, the Reverend Mother thinks outside the box, and releases Maria from the cloisters. With the von Trapps, she senses, is where Maria can really shine - as someone they can truly love and trust. Maria turns out to be perfect for this new opportunity, which only goes to show that the Reverend Mother’s faith is very well placed.

Love is what should always guide us as parents - whether as literal parents, or when offering anyone our greatest goodwill. And whereas the likes of anger and pride can see us looking down on others, and being overcritical towards them, love gives us the wider angle view by which we can see past a person's faults - and appreciate the unique person that they are.