At its best our time in community prepares us for the world outside of it. How do we practice and cultivate our faith the other six days a week? For our children, it is the practice of faith within the family that is often the biggest influence on their faith lives as adults.
Cultivating faith at home is really about shared and individual spiritual practices. Even the most simple daily action can have deep meaning and set a tone and convey attitude. So the simple action of saying grace/blessing/prayer before a meal. Taking time to say thanks for the food and the many hands that bring it to our tables instills the practice of gratitude. Maybe there is a yearly ritual of giving thanks around the Thanksgiving table and a simple thing to do is to extend that into a daily practice. Other things to add to the blessing are lifting up those in need, those who are sick, or grieving. It can be a time to ask for things needed in the family. It is also great to have a simple short blessing the family says every night, or a collection of them with a shared responsibility of leading the prayer. When I visited the King Center in Atlanta we toured the childhood home of Martin Luther King Jr. All of the children in the house were expected to come to dinner with a bible verse memorized and a news story from the day. What a powerful daily way of cultivating faith at home!
Children are often willing experimenters with ritual and spiritual practice. Almost anything that appeals to an adult can be appealing to a child or youth or adapted appropriately. Yoga and meditation work for children as well as adults. Teaching a child a mindfulness practice at a young age can be a valuable spiritual tool as well as mental and emotional health tool as they deal with the stress of school, activities, social life and growing up. Children are naturally curious, and pay attention to the world around us in a different way. When children are young they will often stop while walking to a destination to notice a plant, a bug, a rock. Stop and wonder with them! Again instilling the value of stopping, slowing down, paying attention! Maybe we can learn from our children how to stop and pay attention!
Practicing and cultivating faith at home is also about the ways we celebrate holidays and what holidays we choose to celebrate. In some interfaith families Hanukkah and Christmas are observed along with Passover and Easter. Do you celebrate Christmas and what are your favorite traditions? What are favored songs? Favorite stories? What about Advent or Lent? Families often fast together for Yom Kippur, Ramadan even if not all the members are Jewish or Muslim. While many people have adopted Eastern meditation practices there are also many Buddhist and Hindu holidays such as Vesak: Buddha's Birthday; Diwali. I do offer a word of caution here. It is very easy in our Western culture to feel like we can freely incorporate the customs, holidays and rituals of other people. It is important to respect the traditions from which these holidays come and when it is not our culture we must take care not to appropriating the practice. This has done great harm to those in minority religious and culture groups. If one does choose to explore these holidays in addition to a meditation practice seek out an on-line or a local community to understand the holidays and rituals associated with them. Often communities will open up their space on these holidays to the public to help deepen understanding and dialogue. I offer these examples as traditions that may be part of your heritage and to invite all of us to explore the spiritual aspects to these holidays.
Just as we pass on our family stories, we pass on our faith at home. If we do not practice any kind of spiritual practice at home, our children learn things from that as well. Parents truly are the primary spiritual teachers of children. As parents we teach by what we do and say but also by what we do not do and what we do not say. It is also true that if we do not teach our children about spirituality, then others will. This is not necessarily all bad. Young people can learn from grandparents and trusted friends. Often their own peers will invite them to share in their faith. These can be wonderful ways to learn. Yet there are those that hold only one way works, or will seek to take advantage of an idealistic young person and without a solid foundation, our children may not have the tools they need to choose what kind, if any, spiritual life they want to have.
Questions: Does your family have shared spiritual practices? Do you have spiritual practices that you might want to start doing as a family? What do you want to know more about to start a family spiritual practice? What holidays does your family celebrate and how?