I have been spending a good portion of my time lately updating the children's section of our library. There are all sorts of books to help you make faith come alive at home with your children, storybooks to share at reading time, books to help you help your child deal with grief and loss, and books of prayers and blessings to use as a family. Many of these books are listed in the box next to this post, but some others you might want to have a look at are:
When Good-bye is Forever by Lois Rock
Guiding Children Through Life's Losses by Phyllis Vos Wezemen, Jude Denis Fournier, and R. Wezemen.
Bless Us All by Cynthia Rylant
The Faith of Parents by Maria Harris
The Usborne Book of World Religions by Susan Meredith
I also keep my eye out for websites that might be helpful to you in nurturing faith at home. Some of my favorite ones are in the side box, but I did come across a few especially for the Lenten season. Take a look at www.domesticchurch.com/CONTENT.DCC/pages.dir/fridge.html#LENT for kid's lenten activities. They are a site to bookmark as they have projects and activities that change throughout the liturgical seasons. As we move toward Holy Week and begin thinking about Good Friday, check out www.cptryon.org/prayer/child/stations/indes.html for a children's experience of the Stations of the Cross.
There are lots of good resources out there. Let me know what you think of these resources and be sure to share what you might find!
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Thursday, February 21, 2008
"Thanks! Wow! Gimme! and Oops!"
In their book How Do You Spell God? Answers to the Big Questions from Around the World, Marc Gellman and Thomas Hartman have a wonderful chapter on praying. The book is a child-appropriate exploration of the different beliefs present in many kinds of religious faith, but they observe that all faiths teach us to listen to and for God - which is the beginning of wisdom for all of us, no matter our age.
But human beings also need to talk with God - and there are four major ways they discuss in this chapter that are easy ways to introduce your children to a life of learning how to talk with and listen to God.
Thanks! is one of the easiest ways we talk to God. When something wonderful happens to us, it is time to remember that all good things are gifts from God and we need to take a breath and take the time to thank God for blessing us. Thanksgivings are an easy way to begin praying with your children. Grace before meals is an example of a thanksgiving prayer - and they are good models for other "thank you" prayers. The words aren't anywhere near as important as the feeling of gratitude we express.
Wow! is another easy and obvious way to pray with your children. When you see a beautiful sunset, hold a new brother or sister for the first time, or play in the first snow of the winter it is easy to be amazed by the world God has created so lovingly. Sometimes the feeling of awe we have is beyond words, but, again, the words aren't what is important. Simply to stand in the presence of God's work and acknowledge that it leaves you breathless is enough. Awe inspires wonder and children are wonderful at wondering. Invite them into the experience with you!
Gimme! These prayers require a bit more negotiation with your children to help them understand. It is always tempting to pray for things we want but don't need. We may want to hit the ball out of the park, but is that really the sort of thing we should ask God for? When your child wants to offer a prayer like this one, we need to gently guide them into the proper way of understanding what God wants for us. There is nothing wrong with asking God to help you use your abilities to their fullest or to be a graceful winner, but to ask to win games, get prizes or to be popular doesn't help us to learn to trust God and to rely on the good things God gives us. Gimme! is a normal desire of human nature, but it is one that needs to be tempered. The Lord's Prayer is a good model (granted, it's wordy!) for what a Gimme prayer might look like - what we ask for reveals our dependency on God and our desire to help make the world the way God wants it to be.
Oops! Just as we teach our children to apologize to others, we need to teach them to aplogize to God. One of the biggest reasons to talk to God is to learn how to be sorry for the things we do that hurt other people, hurt ourselves, hurt the world and hurt God. As we pray Oops prayers we begin to understand what we did wrong, our hearts soften and we learn not only how to ask for forgiveness from others, but we learn what it feels like to be forgiven. God ALWAYS forgives us and can help us to forgive ourselves and others. This one is a life long lesson for all of us and we are never to young to start!
Elizabeth Caldwell adds one more kind of prayer to the list. She calls them Don't Forget! or Please Remember! prayers - you most likely know them as intercessions. These kinds of prayers are when we pray for others - asking God to bless them, to heal them or to help them with some kind of difficulty in their lives. Again, this is an important lesson in being a grace-filled human being that can never be started too early in life. At bedtime we can invite our children to bless those they love by remembering them to God and asking God's blessing upon them. We can help our children pray for the playground bully or the friend who is too sick to come over and play. Life offers many opportunities to pray for others.
Lent is a wonderful time to begin to re-focus our lives of prayer as individuals and as families. Begin with one of the above - I bet the practice of one form of prayer with your children will lead you into the others! Praying with our children is one of the greatest privileges of parenthood. To see into and share the joys, hurts and worries of their hearts is one of those experiences that always leads me to both Thanks! and Wow! prayers. I'll bet you will find it the same!
Faithfully,
Elizabeth
But human beings also need to talk with God - and there are four major ways they discuss in this chapter that are easy ways to introduce your children to a life of learning how to talk with and listen to God.
Thanks! is one of the easiest ways we talk to God. When something wonderful happens to us, it is time to remember that all good things are gifts from God and we need to take a breath and take the time to thank God for blessing us. Thanksgivings are an easy way to begin praying with your children. Grace before meals is an example of a thanksgiving prayer - and they are good models for other "thank you" prayers. The words aren't anywhere near as important as the feeling of gratitude we express.
Wow! is another easy and obvious way to pray with your children. When you see a beautiful sunset, hold a new brother or sister for the first time, or play in the first snow of the winter it is easy to be amazed by the world God has created so lovingly. Sometimes the feeling of awe we have is beyond words, but, again, the words aren't what is important. Simply to stand in the presence of God's work and acknowledge that it leaves you breathless is enough. Awe inspires wonder and children are wonderful at wondering. Invite them into the experience with you!
Gimme! These prayers require a bit more negotiation with your children to help them understand. It is always tempting to pray for things we want but don't need. We may want to hit the ball out of the park, but is that really the sort of thing we should ask God for? When your child wants to offer a prayer like this one, we need to gently guide them into the proper way of understanding what God wants for us. There is nothing wrong with asking God to help you use your abilities to their fullest or to be a graceful winner, but to ask to win games, get prizes or to be popular doesn't help us to learn to trust God and to rely on the good things God gives us. Gimme! is a normal desire of human nature, but it is one that needs to be tempered. The Lord's Prayer is a good model (granted, it's wordy!) for what a Gimme prayer might look like - what we ask for reveals our dependency on God and our desire to help make the world the way God wants it to be.
Oops! Just as we teach our children to apologize to others, we need to teach them to aplogize to God. One of the biggest reasons to talk to God is to learn how to be sorry for the things we do that hurt other people, hurt ourselves, hurt the world and hurt God. As we pray Oops prayers we begin to understand what we did wrong, our hearts soften and we learn not only how to ask for forgiveness from others, but we learn what it feels like to be forgiven. God ALWAYS forgives us and can help us to forgive ourselves and others. This one is a life long lesson for all of us and we are never to young to start!
Elizabeth Caldwell adds one more kind of prayer to the list. She calls them Don't Forget! or Please Remember! prayers - you most likely know them as intercessions. These kinds of prayers are when we pray for others - asking God to bless them, to heal them or to help them with some kind of difficulty in their lives. Again, this is an important lesson in being a grace-filled human being that can never be started too early in life. At bedtime we can invite our children to bless those they love by remembering them to God and asking God's blessing upon them. We can help our children pray for the playground bully or the friend who is too sick to come over and play. Life offers many opportunities to pray for others.
Lent is a wonderful time to begin to re-focus our lives of prayer as individuals and as families. Begin with one of the above - I bet the practice of one form of prayer with your children will lead you into the others! Praying with our children is one of the greatest privileges of parenthood. To see into and share the joys, hurts and worries of their hearts is one of those experiences that always leads me to both Thanks! and Wow! prayers. I'll bet you will find it the same!
Faithfully,
Elizabeth
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
Because Life is What Happens While You Are Making Other Plans
When I planned tonight's book discussion, I not only failed to take into account that it was the Wednesday of public school vacation week, I was naive enough to think the flu raging around me wasn't going to strike! I woke up this morning with the stomach flu, so . . . Rather than share the wealth, I will stay home tonight and RESCHEDULE our discussion to NEXT WEDNESDAY EVENING, FEBRUARY 27TH AT 7:00PM IN MY OFFICE!
Jennifer called those of you who I knew were planning on coming. I hope this reaches those of you I didn't know were planning on coming!
See you next week instead!
Faithfully,
Elizabeth
Jennifer called those of you who I knew were planning on coming. I hope this reaches those of you I didn't know were planning on coming!
See you next week instead!
Faithfully,
Elizabeth
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Preparing for our Book Discussion
Next Wednesday evening at 7:00 is the first of our book discussions of Elizabeth Caldwell's Making a Home for Faith: Nurturing the Spiritual Life of Your Child. I would like to focus our discussion around pages 40 -44, the section she calls Every Parent Needs. Caldwell writes that to raise faithful children, every parent needs to be able to do the following:
1. Read a story from the Bible.
2.Tell a Bible story.
3. Deal with children's questions.
4. Pray (privately and publicly).
5. Take some time daily or weekly for personal meditation.
6. Ask faith questions.
7. Struggle to understand and interpret affirmations of faith while balancing a life of faith in mission and witness and the being of faith in mediation, Scripture, reading and prayer.
8. Explain the meaning of the sacraments and the liturgical year.
9. Struggle with language for God.
10. Become familiar with the basic beliefs and religious pracitices of other faith traditions.
11. Regularly participate in adult education.
12. Be layleaders in worship.
Seems like you would need a full seminary education for this, doesn't it? It is a rather daunting list for any of us, but it is not beyond the realm of what any one of us can do. As you ponder these questions this week, identify those practices you already are doing. I'll bet you already have some practice of private prayer (even if the prayer is just of the "Help me, Lord!" variety as the bathtub overflows!) and most likely, you are struggling like the rest of us to understand the affirmations of faith and balance a life of service, witness, prayer, study and reflection! The other pieces are harder. Not all of us were raised in a faith tradition and we may not know the biblical stories - how to find the ones we know or how to figure out where the ones are that we maybe heard in Church once upon a time. We may not know what to say when our children ask us questions and it is hard enough to understand our own faith traditions, sacraments and liturgical year, never mind have enough knowledge of other faith tradtitions to share them with our children.
Please think about what you know and what you need to know more about as you prepare for our discussion on Wednesday. I am happy to guide and support you in your faith journey with your children, but I need to know what you would find most helpful. Would a session on the liturgical year be useful? What other classes would you be willing to come to? Does the blog provide you with helpful information? If not, what would you like to see in this space? Those are just the questions I begin with. Leave me a comment or email me. Better yet, come next Wednesday night and we'll talk about it! See you then.
Faithfully,
Elizabeth
1. Read a story from the Bible.
2.Tell a Bible story.
3. Deal with children's questions.
4. Pray (privately and publicly).
5. Take some time daily or weekly for personal meditation.
6. Ask faith questions.
7. Struggle to understand and interpret affirmations of faith while balancing a life of faith in mission and witness and the being of faith in mediation, Scripture, reading and prayer.
8. Explain the meaning of the sacraments and the liturgical year.
9. Struggle with language for God.
10. Become familiar with the basic beliefs and religious pracitices of other faith traditions.
11. Regularly participate in adult education.
12. Be layleaders in worship.
Seems like you would need a full seminary education for this, doesn't it? It is a rather daunting list for any of us, but it is not beyond the realm of what any one of us can do. As you ponder these questions this week, identify those practices you already are doing. I'll bet you already have some practice of private prayer (even if the prayer is just of the "Help me, Lord!" variety as the bathtub overflows!) and most likely, you are struggling like the rest of us to understand the affirmations of faith and balance a life of service, witness, prayer, study and reflection! The other pieces are harder. Not all of us were raised in a faith tradition and we may not know the biblical stories - how to find the ones we know or how to figure out where the ones are that we maybe heard in Church once upon a time. We may not know what to say when our children ask us questions and it is hard enough to understand our own faith traditions, sacraments and liturgical year, never mind have enough knowledge of other faith tradtitions to share them with our children.
Please think about what you know and what you need to know more about as you prepare for our discussion on Wednesday. I am happy to guide and support you in your faith journey with your children, but I need to know what you would find most helpful. Would a session on the liturgical year be useful? What other classes would you be willing to come to? Does the blog provide you with helpful information? If not, what would you like to see in this space? Those are just the questions I begin with. Leave me a comment or email me. Better yet, come next Wednesday night and we'll talk about it! See you then.
Faithfully,
Elizabeth
Thursday, February 7, 2008
The Season of Lent
Ash Wednesday is the beginning of the season of Lent. Lent is the forty days (Sundays don't count because each Sunday is a little Easter) period during which we remember Jesus' temptation in the desert following his baptism. It helps us get ready for Holy Week and the celebration of the resurrection at Easter. Most folks associate Lent with fasting or giving up something. This is one lenten tradition, but there are others. For example, we stop saying the word "allelulia" beginning on Ash Wednesday. We do not say it again until the Great Vigil of Easter when we kindle the new fire and light the paschal candle.
It can be hard to keep a "holy Lent"at home as the Prayer Book invites us to. But here are some themes you can share at home as a family during this season. Lent is:
-a time for looking at the things we have done that are wrong and asking forgiveness
of God and those we have wronged.
-a time to grow closer to God by either giving up something or adding something to our lives that helps us focus more on God.
-a time to think about new ways to show our love for others as God shows God's love for us.
-a time to remember our baptismal promises and try to live into them (check out pg. 304 in the Book of Common Prayer for a refresher!)*
The seasonal color for Lent is purple - it is both the color of penitience and the color of royalty. In the words of the Godly Play story the Mystery of Easter, "Purple is the color of kings. We are preparing for the coming of a king and his going and coming again . . . purple is a serious color and it reminds us that something sad is going to happen." (The Complete Guide to Godly Play, Vol. 4, pgs 29-20). The purple color reminds us that Jesus must die before he can rise again.
There are many ways to incorporate purple into your family life during Lent. A purple scarf in the middle of the table or purple placemats are easy wasy to remind your family daily. Lent is a good time to write a family grace if you don't have a favorite. Learn it together and share it when you are together. Paper chains are another easy way to bring the seasons of the church year into your home. Perhaps each family member might want to write the name of someone or something they are praying for on one of the rings each day and the entire family can share that intention in silence together for a moment before mealtime or bedtime. Small purple napkins can be tucked into your child's lunch box or backpack with a note like "I love you and so does God" or "I am praying for you today." Little things like this connect us to one another and to our larger Christian family - past, present and future!
Be creative! Lent can be a refreshing and nurturing time for us as individuals and families. If you have a family lenten tradition you would like to share, please write about it in the comments so that others can try it at home too!
Faithfully,
Elizabeth
*Adapted from: The New Prayer Book Guide to Chrisitan Education, edited by Joe Russell
It can be hard to keep a "holy Lent"at home as the Prayer Book invites us to. But here are some themes you can share at home as a family during this season. Lent is:
-a time for looking at the things we have done that are wrong and asking forgiveness
of God and those we have wronged.
-a time to grow closer to God by either giving up something or adding something to our lives that helps us focus more on God.
-a time to think about new ways to show our love for others as God shows God's love for us.
-a time to remember our baptismal promises and try to live into them (check out pg. 304 in the Book of Common Prayer for a refresher!)*
The seasonal color for Lent is purple - it is both the color of penitience and the color of royalty. In the words of the Godly Play story the Mystery of Easter, "Purple is the color of kings. We are preparing for the coming of a king and his going and coming again . . . purple is a serious color and it reminds us that something sad is going to happen." (The Complete Guide to Godly Play, Vol. 4, pgs 29-20). The purple color reminds us that Jesus must die before he can rise again.
There are many ways to incorporate purple into your family life during Lent. A purple scarf in the middle of the table or purple placemats are easy wasy to remind your family daily. Lent is a good time to write a family grace if you don't have a favorite. Learn it together and share it when you are together. Paper chains are another easy way to bring the seasons of the church year into your home. Perhaps each family member might want to write the name of someone or something they are praying for on one of the rings each day and the entire family can share that intention in silence together for a moment before mealtime or bedtime. Small purple napkins can be tucked into your child's lunch box or backpack with a note like "I love you and so does God" or "I am praying for you today." Little things like this connect us to one another and to our larger Christian family - past, present and future!
Be creative! Lent can be a refreshing and nurturing time for us as individuals and families. If you have a family lenten tradition you would like to share, please write about it in the comments so that others can try it at home too!
Faithfully,
Elizabeth
*Adapted from: The New Prayer Book Guide to Chrisitan Education, edited by Joe Russell
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