Marie Hafen: Creating a Family Culture that Nurtures Complex Faith

Sister Hafen is the co-author of Faith Is Not Blind and was on the Young Women General Board. As the mother of seven children, she found ways to create a comfortable environment for her children to develop their own faith in a safe space. She discusses how she tried to nurture and teach her children in a home where they could learn how to deal with complexity and feel free to openly discuss their beliefs and doubts.

Further Reading in Faith Is Not Blind:

“We aren’t attempting here to resolve all of the issues you may be confronting. But we are hoping you find . . . a pattern for how to think about your questions, and how  through grappling with them, to nourish your faith.”

(Faith Is Not Blind, Prologue, “Listen Below the Noise,” p. 2)

FULL TEXT:

Faith Is Not Blind: We’ve got a special interview today because I get the chance to interview my mother. I have a unique perspective on her and because of that, for this particular segment I wanted to focus on the home–partly because I know what it was like to be in Marie Hafen’s home growing up.  I wanted you to start, Mom, with talking about how the classroom that you described in the book and that you’ve described other places–the classroom that Wes Belnap created for the Religious Problems and that classroom experience influenced your home.  I love how you and Dad have always said that it started a conversation that helped your marriage develop. How did you continue that conversation in your home? How deliberate was it and what choices did you make to try and create a home that was like that type of classroom?

Marie Hafen: Maybe it helps to go back a little bit to talk just for a minute about the kind of home that I grew up in. Because I had a mom and a dad who were quite different from each other. My mom was a redhead–she was outgoing, she was friendly, she loved other people. She grew up in the colonies of Mexico–the Mormon colonies with a very tight group of members who had gone there because of polygamy, but also with a group of fMexican people and Saints all around them. So her upbringing was very different from my Dad’s. She had a mom and a dad and her dad was very invested in raising their 13 children. My dad, on the other hand, grew up in Provo with four siblings and when he was younger than 3 his father passed away at age 34– very unexpected. My dad had a younger brother who was only 10 months old when this happened. So he grew up in a very sparing and sparse home. What do they call it when you want to hold on to things because you’re afraid you may not have them?

Faith Is Not Blind: A scarcity mentality?

Marie Hafen: Yes. So he grew up with a scarcity mentality. That was the issue. His mother was a very talented singer. She was going to go to New York to learn and then financial collapse made it not possible. But she wanted to keep her children together. She wanted to raise them so she did things to support them. Because she had no advanced education, but had grown up in an affluent home, she was willing to take in laundry so that she had the basic necessities and later on students from Brigham Young University to help pay the bills. So the children always grew up knowing they needed to work if they were going to have what they needed to have. My Dad was much more introspective as I was growing up. He didn’t talk much. He was a school teacher, so we always figured he had spent his talking time at school and didn’t have much left  to say at home. So we did not talk much about the issues of the day. My mom had a sure testimony. She didn’t ever question anything. She had her own versions of complexities–health complexities later. My dad questioned more but we didn’t hear his questioning, although we knew that there was a space when he was not that active in the church until he was called to be the clerk in the ward. And he did that for four Bishops, and that’s where I think he grew into his testimony. We knew there was always an issue–which I’m glad that we didn’t have to grapple with as you were growing up–and that was he was so frugal. It was hard for him to spend money for anything unless it was to save more money–then he could do that. So I saw him and my mom grapple with issues that caused some challenge between them because they just saw things differently. But again it wasn’t something that was acknowledged or dealt with directly. We just saw some of the emotional output from that. But but my mom was also independent enough that she thought,”Okay, if I see things that my kids need, I’m going to find a way to give them to my children even though my husband Ray doesn’t feel the same way about those things.” So she went to work. She got an education. We began to see how she had grappled with things that were difficult for her.

Faith is Not Blind: When you went to BYU and you had this class where you were not only encouraged to talk about your religious problems, but you needed to do it for a grade, and then you made friends with whom you talked about it, how did that carry forward or help you? What did you think of that at first? Were you uncomfortable with it or you pretty comfortable with that classroom?

Marie Hafen: I’m glad you asked that question because I came to BYU having chosen BYU over the University of Utah because I was thinking I might do chemistry. But that was not my thing. That was not my bliss. But when I came to BYU, I wanted to be even more grounded in the Gospel. I wanted to understand the depths of the Gospel. The Honors Program was just starting, so I had teachers like Chauncey Riddle,  like Truman Madsen, like Dan Ludlow. I wanted to understand–I wanted to know–what it meant to be sanctified. I wanted to know and I wanted to live better. Prior to that class with Wes Belnap, Bob Thomas–who was a mentor to both me and to your Dad–he said, “You’ve got to take this class Wes Belnap is teaching. You will understand some things in this class with the format he’s using.” He said, “Take it,” so I took it. And my issue was How can I live the gospel better through understanding what the Spirit is and through feeling the Spirit more?”

Faith Is Not Blind: So with taking these issues and talking about them, what was appealing about that to you?

Marie Hafen: I was beginning to see that differing views of things could actually give you a richer, more grounded, magnificent view of the world. And then your world view might be bigger in order to share. Your Dad’s issue was, “Should I be a liberal or a conservative?” Asking these questions helped us when we decided, for example, a spiritually based decision just before we got married. We fasted about it. It was when should we have our first child. This was not too long after we had that class because those classes from Truman Madsen and Bob Thomas was my literature teacher as well, but those wonderful broad-gauged, deep professors had given us a foundation that we could work from. Our decision for example–our spiritual decision–was to have our first child as soon as possible even though I was planning to get a Master’s Degree. And the first year I was pregnant taking classes and teaching classes, because I was teaching freshman writing, and they were trying something new. Karen Lynn Davidson was one of my co teachers with Marshall Craig was the Master Teacher. I was getting all this wonderful input developing within me that was different from my Mom and different from my Dad.

As far as our home was concerned we took that first little redhead in and I can remember when he was born I didn’t think any child would ever be born again because it was such a magnificent experience. But the second year I worked on my Master’s Degree while I was pregnant again with David, so I can remember walking across the stage to get my diploma at 8 and-a-half months pregnant. So there was a definite desire within me to be educated and to keep learning. We began to see this in our home. And now that classroom with the things we carried forward from iit was a place of safety. It was a place where we could express, we could brainstorm, and we would feel like it was okay–that there was mutual trust there.

Faith Is Not Blind: So you taught classes on the University level and you understood how to teach. What would you say was filtered into your teaching of your children? I think some parents might feel like they need to be an authoritarian and tell the kids exactly what to do. How did you create a place of safety and peace–which is difficult when you have seven children.

Marie Hafen: I would say that we did not get that focused about that issue until a little later because we had four children in less than 6 years, so home life was not always organized. So that was a little different from the classroom.

Faith Is Not Blind: That makes sense. I think it’s interesting that your project for the class was about finding the Spirit in your life. So as a young mother with all of that busyness, I think that could be a classroom–but maybe not as much for your kids–maybe for you. How did you find learning for yourself personally during those years?

Marie Hafen: Because you’re working with being deliberate at helping your children to grow to a point where they might be able to have that kind of class around the dinner table–the kind of class that we had in Wes Belnap’s class. I was searching during that time. How do we teach these children? Jon was very different from Dave, so you also have to customize what you’re trying to teach them. So as we bring that forward, how do you have a home then that will promote the kinds of things that Wes Belnap promoted?

Faith Is Not Blind: Yes. How did you create a customized curriculum for your children? Your education and your ability to think about things–how did that help you to be open-minded enough not to have a one-size-fits-all model of parenting? Even though it was a gospel-centered home how did you make sure that it was individualized?

Marie Hafen: That kind of came out organically. I mean you couldn’t just work with one child. And then the third child, Tom, was different from the other two And Emily was very different from the three of them.

Faith Is Not Blind: Yes. I can see that. How did your education help?

Marie Hafen: I asked myself, “How can I help these children to grow up to be able to think? There’s a lot of emotion around this house. There’s a lot of noise.” But they need to be able to see how we can help them to have their emotions be good and not out of control. So that their brain is a tool that will help to them control their emotions.

Faith Is Not Blind: Which is a much different question than “How can I get my children to follow the commandments?” or “How can I get them to be obedient or to look like this ideal family? Because you’re making a sacrifice if you’re allowing the kids to develop their own ideas.

Marie Hafen: For me, that seemed to be a kind of a natura,  organic thing that happened as I was trying to help these kids and trying to have a connection with God along the way. You did ask me a question earlier about how my education led to that. I was remembering something that came from Carolyn Pearson who said, “Before becoming somebody’s wife, before becoming somebody’s mother, try to become somebody.” You have your own developed mind and spirit and your own relationship with God. And that is just as valuable as well. And then we began to see if our children were growing up and we were having discussions and we wanted to be intentional about our parenting in  terms of them gaining what we hoped they were gaining, it was very focused and intentional. We would have dinner together. And  later looking back we read something that said this was– I don’t want to say it wrong because I read it before I heard it–Tavola. It was an Italian word that meant having dinner together every day. That was the place where you learned your culture. That’s where you learned how to engage with other people who might think differently from you, but where you could learn and grow together. And that’s why we tried every night to have dinner together.

Faith Is Not Blind: I can say that wasn’t just an ideal. As someone growing up in your home, I knew we were going to have dinner together every night and that it was an expectation. And honestly it was something that I looked forward to. How did you try and promote conversations?  I know you had healthy dinners and you tried to have us help cook the food and clean up–which worked some of the time.

Marie Hafen: It’s tiring to get dinner on the table and to get schedules coordinated and with your dad being very busy and you want to have good nutrition. You know my mother–she was concerned about the nutrition facts. She had whole wheat and raisins for breakfast. So at dinner there was a purpose in that. It’s giving the kids questions to answer and asking questions–your dad was especially good at that. You could ask a good question that any of the kids at the table could contribute to no matter what their level was. Because there were younger kids and older kids and as the kids got into High School Jon was a debater, so he brought all of these points of you and sometimes he would take the opposite point of view just to move the conversation in an interesting level. There was an expectation that everyone would not give a  unified answer because they were different kids. For one thing we knew they were headed in different directions. We wanted to foster whatever was their gift to give the world.

Now I do have to say that I began to learn something because you kids would tease me as I was trying to keep a little order. Yes,  you kids had your work to do, but I wanted to be sure that the kitchen was cleaned up before I went to bed. So sometimes I would leave the table and I would be cleaning up by the sink and the kids would tease me a little bit about that. But I was always turned to the conversation and I would shout something from the sink. But I think if I could go back I would say, “Okay, I’m going to sit down and talk with you right now. And at the end of the meal then we’ll all pick up our dishes.” But you did anyway even if it was your turn to do the dishes.

Faith Is Not Blind: I think maybe it’s okay for it to be messy–and maybe we should be okay with it being messy both literally and figuratively some of the time.

Marie Hafen: Yes,  and that’s where we talked about some of the issues. We talked about work. Let’s take this apart. Let’s see what the parts are. So that’s deconstruction, but we always wanted to be constructive in the way we put it back together.

Faith Is Not Blind: Yeah, so they can have deconstruction constructively.

Marie Hafen: That’s what we were trying to do.

Faith Is Not Blind: And that’s what post-structuralism is all about. That you can deconstruct ideas, but then reconstruct them in order to find Redemption. We share that in common with our degrees in English and I think we both appreciate the ability to find Redemption.

Marie Hafen: That’s right. Even when I was having two babies while I was working on my Master’s Degree, I was still also learning that there is a broader way to look at things. Because when I first came I didn’t realize there was a difference between the New York Times and The Washington Post. So you learn things to broaden your perspective that you can bring forward to your family.

Faith Is Not Blind: Because I had been raised in that home, I don’t think I appreciated it necessarily. I remember a moment when you took time to drive a friend and me to a university to look at the university and to look at the dorm to decide where we would go to college. And it was a several hour drive. And at the end of the drive when we got to the destination my friend looked at me and said, Does your mom always do that?” And I said, “Do what?” because I had no idea what she was talking about. And she said, “Does she always ask you questions and find out what you think? Does she always engage with you like that?” She had not been raised in a home where that happened and I thought about it and I said. Yes, she does.” And I thought to myself, “Doesn’t everybody’s mom do that?” And my friend said, “I love how she does that. I want to do that too.” And I was grateful for that moment because I think when you’re raised in a gospel classroom it’s easy not to appreciate it or to deliberately choose it.

 So now with your grandchildren–how many grandchildren do you have?

Marie Hafen: We have 46 total. There are two of them who are on the other side and we hope they’re cheering for us–we need that.

Faith Is Not Blind: I think it’s interesting, just listening to you talk about your family, how none of this was really static. It was developmental. Deliberately developmental. And through each stage you tried to learn, which demonstrates that it’s more of an attitude rather than a checklist mentality. So what do you do now as a grandmother to try and keep that up?

Marie Hafen: I have to mention one thing. I think that we as grandparents bring more to bear with our grandchildren than perhaps we did even with our children.  I think that brings more richness. I feel like I am more independent than I used to be–not as regimented and I think that’s also good. But there has to be a certain amount of order in which you can bring these things to bear. We’re trying to do the same thing with our grandchildren that we did with our children–we gather them around the table. We’re lucky enough to have many of them come to school either at BYU or UVUU or sometimes they come to work and they bring very different perspectives to the table. And we hope they feel that it’s a safe place they can brainstorm. That they can say what they really think and it will enrich their education and enhance our relationships. Because I think that’s the base–it’s the relationships with each other and with God that helps us bring everything together in a way that helps. Because if your purpose is to have a relationship with each other rather than just do things the way that you think that you should, it’s very different. And if your purpose is to have a relationship with God then when you see each other, it’s nurturing and nourishing. And we hope it’s a good pattern that we hope we can help them develop for their own families.

Faith Is Not Blind: As your daughter I can say that these patterns were valuable enough to me that we try very hard to continue them because it was so nurturing and nourishing. And it helped me develop an individual identity as well as in identity as your daughter and the daughter of God.  I appreciate that and I appreciate you. It’s wonderful to hear your story.