Occupational Therapy for the Religious Lives of Our Children

For the past couple of months my son has been in occupational therapy once a week. It has been helpful for him as he works on understanding his body and how to give it the increased physical and sensory stimulus it seems to need.

I was not immediately sold on the therapy, though.

He spends a little under an hour playing with his therapist - rolling in beanbag chairs, jumping rope, throwing sticky frogs at a target while holding his head upside down, practicing yoga positions, spinning in an egg-shaped chair, and even snacking on Nutella and crackers. It was hard for me to understand the benefit and to justify the cost.

My son absolutely loves it. He loves his therapist. He loves the child-centered world that is her therapy room. He loves the stimulus and the attention. From the waiting room I can hear almost non-stop laughter from the first activity to the moment his time is up. Every time we walk out of the building he says, “I love that. I can’t wait till next week.”

I have begun to come around on the benefit of the therapy, and it has gotten me wondering why we don’t have a system to offer “religious therapy” for our children as well.

As a pastor it was not uncommon for parents to bring children to me to have specific conversations about religious questions, or even to talk through a death or divorce. Often those were just one time visits, not regular and reoccurring appointments. There was no chance to build on conversations in a meaningful way. I would have loved to have spent every day in ministry in one on one conversations with children. It would have been one of the most valuable uses of my time as a pastor.

It is important to note here that unless a clergy person is also trained and certified as a counselor, they should NOT meet regularly with a child or an adult to help work on psychological or emotional issues. It is imperative that pastors refer people to professional therapists for ongoing counseling.

BUT, that’s not what I am suggesting here. What I am imagining would be something more along the lines of music lessons or even religious tutoring...but with way more laughter and joy than I had at many of my piano lessons as a child.

Here are some of the ways that I imagine this kind of religious “therapy” for children might look:

• With younger children it might include reading together from the many beautiful children’s Bibles or picture books that are available today, especially those that tackle theological and biblical concepts that when explored early on can shape the way children’s religious thinking is colored.

• With older children it might mean agreeing to read books together in preparation for conversations about God and the world. Can you imagine giving a child the opportunity to read something by Katherine Patterson, C.S. Lewis or Madeleine L’Engle knowing that another adult was anxious to hear their opinions and listen to their questions?

• We could retell the stories of the Bible to each other using nativity sets and other “religious manipulatives” like those used in programs like Godly Play. 

• We could talk about our prayers together, establish good habits, and learn creative ways to pray, like Praying in Color. 

• We could look at artistic interpretations of Bible stories and images of God through art cards and icons, talking about how the artist visualized God and/or interpreted the story. What art do they like? What does the artist teach them about God? How do they describe God through their own art? 

• We could see and touch objects used in worship on different occasions and in different seasons of the church year. My office was filled with the “stuff” of our religious lives, and it was always a place where children could come and explore. What better way to teach them that church is a welcoming place and that the rituals of the church are important than to actually let them get their hands on them? 

An obvious question all of this raises is why parents would need to take their children to a professional for these kinds of conversations and exploration. After all, I am always stressing that children are more interested in what their parents believe than in what their pastor believes.

I also could probably give my son the same physical stimulation he gets from his occupational therapy on my own, but the truth is I don’t have the professional education and training to motivate me and to keep me on a consistent track with him at home. (Last year I tried to teach my own child to play the piano; that did not go well.)

Inviting a pastor or religious educator into this kind of ongoing personal education with your child would show them that this kind of exploration, learning and practice is just as important as all of the other things we run them to after school and on Saturday mornings.

This past week while my son was in therapy I sat in a different spot in the waiting room, from where I could get an even better understanding of what was happening in my son’s therapy, since I was just on the other side of a thin wall from the therapy room. I could tell that they were working their way through some modified yoga poses that will help him to loosen his hamstrings. The therapist had shown them to me in a few quick minutes before his session began.

I could hear him struggling to get them right and to stay on task, and then I heard what was the most important lesson I have gotten from his time in therapy.

I heard his therapist make him focus and say, “It is important that you pay attention when we are together, because you will need to be sure to help your parents understand how to do this when you are at home together.”

What a perfect reminder for all of us. So often our religious lives as parents are enhanced simply by the fact that we are trying to help shape the religious lives of our children. What better thing to do than to make sure that they receive the very best training from someone we invite into their lives who in the end will help us keep our lives on track as well.

How do you think your child would benefit from this kind of one on one education?

Prayer for My Son on Martin Luther King Jr. Day

About two years ago, when our son was in Kindergarten, I remember lying in bed with him one night talking about celebrating Martin Luther King Day. We talked about who Dr. King was and how he wanted to make sure that all people were treated fairly. It seemed like we were on track for a good, Kindergarten-appropriate conversation.

My son’s class had studied Dr. King that week, and my son had learned that King had been a pastor. His teachers, knowing that I am a pastor, gave him the opportunity to share with the other students what a pastor is. I think my son was a little shocked to have learned of the great importance of this man, and then to have found out that his mother did the same job. He made sure to let me know that he was probably going to hold me to a higher standard than he had before; he started by asking me what I had done to celebrate Martin Luther King Day. “I went to work at church,” I told him. He was less than satisfied.

Having once had a conversation with the leadership of my congregation about which was a more religious holiday, Martin Luther King Day or President’s Day (you will notice that I did not have Martin Luther King Day off), I thought I would take a moment to talk with him that night about why a pastor would do the things that Dr. King did.

This meant that I was going to have to explain to him about American slavery.We talked about how white people (who looked like us) used to own other people (who, incidentally, looked like his best friend) and how many Americans and many religious people fought for many years to change that. We even talked about Abraham Lincoln and how he was killed because of the things he did to help the slaves. We talked more then about how even after slavery African Americans were not able to vote or not allowed to vote. We talked about how Dr. King was killed for trying to teach the world that all people should be treated equally. We talked about how we believe that God created all people equal no matter the color of their skin. We talked about how special it is that even though there was a time when there was such horrible discrimination, we now have an African American President.

When I was done he had two very honest and painful reactions.

First, he worried that, like Lincoln, this President might also be killed, because people wouldn’t want him to be President. We talked about all the things they do to keep the President safe.

Second, he shared that he was relieved that he had white skin, and so would not have had to experience that kind of discrimination. What could I say to that?

While part of me was offended by his reaction, I would be lying to say that the same thought had never crossed my own mind. Thank goodness I don’t have to deal with this kind of discrimination. I could totally relate. And yet what I have learned in my life so far is that I do have to deal with it. I have an obligation to deal with it, as a human being and especially as a Christian. And so in that moment I realized that my task as his mother, and sometimes his pastor, is to teach him to try face issues of race as a white person in the world.

I don’t remember exactly what I said to him at that moment, but when it comes to an issue like this, our message must be unending.

What I hope I said to him, and what I hope I continue to say to him, is that, yes, it is important for him as a man and as a person of caucasian descent to always be mindful of who he is in the world: that he will be given privileges that he has not earned; that he will be extended grace that will be withheld from others; and that as a Christian it is his calling to always live a life of humility and courage in the face of racism.

So this is my prayer for my son today: 

May the witness of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. continue to teach him what it means to be a person of faith in the world; may the example I set teach him what it means to act with love in the face of hate; may he grow to be a man of courage who might just be able to have a part in changing the world for the better. Amen.

A Good Goodbye

This past week I have shifted into a new phase of ministry, which has necessitated saying goodbye to the congregation that I have served with joy over the past ten years. I was sad to leave, but excited for new possibilities

I was especially good at holding my emotions together over the entire transition, and though I am notorious for “losing it” in worship at the first sign of sentimentality, I held it together through all of my lasts - until it came to the last moment I would be at the church with my now eight year old son.

This was the place where he was born, baptized and raised. While I have always been pretty clear that in my Presbyterian tradition and as a pastor that this was not my church home, it has become more and more clear over the past few weeks that this was HIS church home for sure.

It made me consider how we allow children to say goodbye to church - especially when it has been a place of joy and an extended family for his entire life. Here is what we did to say goodbye:

While I finished up a last few details in my office, my husband took our son around the majority of the building, saying goodbye to all of the classrooms and meeting rooms where he has spent countless hours - saying goodbye to murals and movie theaters, storytelling tents and puppet theaters, computer labs and nursery.

After that I took him to the sanctuary, and we sat together for a moment in the spot in the front pew where we have sat almost every Sunday for the past five years (when he started joining me in worship). He is known for not being willing to sit still for very long and realized that he had a captive audience in me.

Over the next fifteen minutes he “acted out” for me almost an entire worship service, and I was fascinated to watch him both mimic back to me things he has heard me say countless times as well as put his own spin on the theological meanings of our worship together.

He welcomed me to this time of worship and we sang the first few verses of his favorite Christmas carols, announcing the hymns as I remember them doing in my grandfather’s church when I was little, making sure that I turned to the correct page in the correct book and sang along.

He baptized an invisible baby after pouring invisible water into the baptismal font. He took care to ask the parents the name of their child - Bob, it turned out. Then he baptized Bob in the name of the Father and the Mother (which I don’t think he has ever seen/heard anyone do). Finally he walked through what I can only imagine was in his mind a packed sanctuary to show the baby off to the crowd. He even stopped at my pew, as is our tradition, to allow me to hold the baby myself - very briefly - to welcome the baby to the community.

He invited invisible children to sit with him on the steps for a Children’s Sermon, echoing the same message that I had given just a few days before about the gifts of the Magi and what each represented. Just as I do, he closed this time with prayer.

He joyfully jumped into the pulpit, after going back down to figure out how to turn on the overhead light that glows on one’s head. Interestingly, though it wasn’t clear what text he had chosen to interpret, it was clear that he understood the part of the sermon where the preacher attempts to convict the congregation to make a change and to live a better life, as he went on and on about the true meaning of Christmas and how we are supposed to observe it.

He celebrated Communion from behind the table using a liturgy that almost sounded like the one we use each month, breaking invisible bread and holding it up for his empty sanctuary to see, and pouring invisible wine into a pretend cup and speaking very eloquently about the blood of Christ in a way that made it seem much more lovely and much less bloody than it usually does to me.

When he was all done we sat together in the first pew again, and he made me tell him all of the things that I appreciated about his service - much like I am sure he has heard me do to my husband on occasion. We sat and snuggled for a while and talked about how much we we would miss being there and sitting in our spot together. We looked thoughtfully at the giant stained glass Jesus that adorns the back of the chancel, and giggled one last time about the electric lights that were installed on the back side of the building to make the window glow even in the evening.

I am not sure how often we think to do these kinds of goodbyes with children when we leave a church. Sure we say goodbye to the people, but how often do we help them say goodbye to the traditions and to the space that they have come to know as sacred.

I firmly believe, as the song goes, that the church is not a building and not a steeple; but having grown up myself in a church building that oozes sacred vibes, I recognize that there is something sacred in saying goodbye to the place where sacred growing has happened.

I am sure that someday we will return to that space, and he will make the typical comments of someone who has gotten older and taller, about how much bigger it all used to seem. But I know that this space will forever color his understanding and expectations of worship and community; that for a long time to come this will be his default setting when he thinks about what it means to go to church; that one day when he looks for a church on his own, and some day after that when he looks for a place to raise his own children, this will be what he seeks out.

I am grateful for how he has been shaped, and grateful for this very intentional goodbye.

Candlelight Carol - John Rutter

We have sung this song by British composer and conductor John Rutter on Christmas Eve in my congregation almost every year over the past ten years. There is something about it that so perfectly captures the intimacy and the cosmic nature of this night.

My favorite memory is of asking my husband at about 10:30 p.m. if he would come and fill in the tenor section in the choir that night for our midnight service. He agreed, and then as he looked at the list of music said, “Oh no, I can’t sing that one…it makes me cry.” That is a feat unto itself.

A beautiful modern carol, that makes grown men cry.

May you have a blessed Christmas Eve.

How do you capture the wind on the water? How do you count all the stars in the sky? How can you measure the love of a mother, or how can you write down a baby's first cry?

Candlelight, angel light, firelight and star glow shine on his cradle till breaking of dawn. Gloria, Gloria in excelsis deo! Angels are singing; the Christ Child is born.

Shepherds and wise men will kneel and adore him, Seraphim round him their vigil will keep; Nations proclaim him their Lord and their Savior, but Mary will hold him and sing him to sleep.

Candlelight, angel light, firelight and star glow shine on his cradle till breaking of dawn. Gloria, Gloria in excelsis deo! Angels are singing; the Christ Child is born.

Find him at Bethlehem laid in a manger: Christ our Redeemer asleep in the hay. Godhead incarnate and hope of salvation: A child with his mother that first Christmas Day.

Candlelight, angel light, firelight and star glow shine on his cradle till breaking of dawn. Gloria, Gloria in excelsis deo! Angels are singing; the Christ Child is born.

Social Media Nativity

I thought it might not happen this year, but early yesterday morning I finally got my Christmas Cards in the mail.

Someday I wonder when I will stop sending Christmas Cards and  handwritten thank you notes. When will the internet take over my traditional forms of communication, personal touches or thoughtful gestures?

This short video (that I first discovered last Christmas) might help us to reflect on the ways that we communicate, the ways we connect, and the ways we reconsider ancient stories in light of our modern sensibilities.

Plus it is pretty cute.

Advent According to Rowan Williams

Today's post is a lovely explaination of the meaning of Advent by the former Archbishop of Canturbury - Dr. Rowan Williams. It runs about ten minutes but it is worth it. I especially like the way he says - sweets and chocolates!

 Enjoy.

The Longest Night - a Prayer for Children

On this day and night of the Winter Solstice, we remember those for whom Christmas is a time of pain and not a time of joy; when the holidays bring difficult memories and no visions of sugar plums; when we pause today to mourn the loss of precious children through an act of senseless violence.

The prayer below is one that I used this past Sunday with our congregation after the children led us in their annual Christmas Program. We often talk during this time and in the face of these kinds of events that we should hug our children more tightly. I would agree with that, but I believe that these are the moments when we should also consider how we care for and embrace children who are not our own.

 

This prayer was written by Ina J. Hughes and adapted by Marian Wright Edelman of the Children's Defense Fund.

 

We pray/accept responsibility for children

 

            Who sneak popsicles before supper,
            Who erase holes in math workbooks,
            Who can never find their shoes.

And we pray/accept responsibility for those
            who stare at photographers from behind barbed wire,
            who can’t bound down the street in a new pair of sneakers,
            who were born in places we wouldn’t be caught dead,
            who never go to the circus,
            who live in an X-rated world.

We pray/accept responsibility for children
            who bring us sticky kisses and fistfuls of dandelions,
            who hug us in a hurry and forget their lunch money.

And we pray/accept responsibility for those
            who never get dessert
            who have no safe blanket to drag behind them,
            who watch their parents watch them die,
            who can’t find any bread to steal,
            who don’t have any rooms to clean up,
            whose pictures aren’t on anybody’s dresser
            and whose monsters are real.

We pray/accept responsibility for children
            who spend all their allowance before Tuesday,
            who throw tantrums in the grocery store and pick at their food.
            who like ghost stories
            who shove dirty clothes under the bed and never rinse out the tub,
            who get visits from the tooth fairy,
            who don’t like to be kissed in front of the carpool,
            who squirm in church or temple and scream in the phone,
            whose tears we sometimes laugh at and whose smiles can make us cry.

And we pray/accept responsibility for those
            whose nightmares come in the daytime,
            who will eat anything,
            who have never seen a dentist
            who aren’t spoiled by anybody,
            who go to bed hungry and cry themselves to sleep,
            who live and move, but have no being.

We pray/accept responsibility for children
            who want to be carried and for those who must,
            for those we never give up on and for those
            who don’t get a second chance,
            for those we smother and for those who will grab the hand of anyone kind enough to offer it.

 

Amen

Guide My Feet: Prayers and Meditations on Loving and Working for Children, edited by Marian Wright Edelman, 1995.