Sophfronia Scott - This Child of Faith: Raising a Spiritual Child in a Secular World

THIS CHILD OF FAITH

Sophfronia and Tain

George Duncan

RAISING A SPIRITUAL CHILD IN A SECULAR WORLD

THIS CHILD OF FAITH

SOPHFRONIA SCOTT & TAIN GREGORY

2018 First Printing

This Child of Faith: Raising a Spiritual Child in a Secular World

Copyright 2018 by Sophfronia Scott

ISBN 978-1-61261-925-5

The Paraclete Press name and logo (dove on cross) are trademarks of Paraclete Press, Inc.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Scott, Sophfronia, author.

Title: This child of faith : raising a spiritual child in a secular world / Sophfronia Scott and Tain Gregory.

Description: Brewster, Massachusetts : Paraclete Press Inc., 2017. | Includes bibliographical references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2017041997 | ISBN 9781612619255 (trade paper)

Subjects: LCSH: Mother and child--Religious aspects--Christianity. | Children--Religious life. | Christian education of children. | Parenting--Religious aspects--Christianity. | Child rearing--Religious aspects--Christianity. | Gregory, Tain. | Sandy Hook Elementary School Massacre, Newtown, Conn., 2012.

Classification: LCC BV4529.18 .S393 2017 | DDC 248.8/431--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017041997

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All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in an electronic retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any otherexcept for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.

Published by Paraclete Press

Brewster, Massachusetts

www.paracletepress.com

Printed in the United States of America

For Pastor Kathleen Adams-Shepherd who remembers every childs name

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

T ains nine-year-old face is calm despite the many film cameras and the super-bright lights illuminating the hallway of Newtown High School. My son has just completed the first audition of his young life. Hes trying out for a new musical being produced by Broadway professionals that a Newtown father, Michael Baroody, brought to town for NewArts, a resiliency program he designed to use theater to help in the healing process for our community after the December 2012 tragedy at Tains school, Sandy Hook Elementary. A documentary team learned about the endeavor and is filming the whole process. The director of the documentary, Lloyd Kramer, is asking Tain and the other children questions and enjoying the silly nature of their answers. He asks Tain, Whats the most important thing in your life? I can see the slight smile on the directors face, and he and I both are expecting to hear a long list of the virtues of the Mario Kart video game or Tains most powerful Pokemon trading card. Instead Tain thinks for a moment then answers with one word.

God.

Lloyds face freezes. Hes stunned, speechless. He looks at me, but I hold up my hands in a dont ask me kind of way. He finally asks why, and Tain goes on to explain Gods love and care of us, how God made the world. Tain says the words in a matter-of-fact way, without showing any doubt that each utterance is true. Why am I shocked? Because, as a parent, I can only do so much. I can model behavior, give Tain access to certain environments, tell him things. I can scatter seeds, but I have no way of knowing what has taken hold, what he will absorb and own for himself. Until that moment, I had no idea how firmly rooted Tains faith was within him. For me it was affirmation with a capital A.

That was the spring of 2014 . The documentary has become Midsummer in Newtown, funded by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allens Vulcan Inc. and Participant, the company that produced the Oscar-winning Spotlight. It premiered in April 2016 at that years Tribeca Film Festival and went into wider release and then digital formats (Amazon Video, iTunes) in 2017. Tain and I have done many press interviews (CBS Evening News and Sunday Morning, ABC News, the Associated Press, BBC America), and I noticed the journalists tended to focus on the same concepts and questions: Tains faith is amazing. You can tell its important to him. You can tell it helps him. How did he get that way? How do you parent a kid to have such faith?

I know they were asking because in all the screenings, the moment when Tain says God has quite an effect on the audience. Ive heard gasps and felt a stillness fall over the room. Thats when I realized it may seem as if my husband and I are doing something unusual, perhaps even extraordinary, in how were raising Tain. Ive been involved in Christian formation at our church for a few years now, attending workshops and teaching Sunday school for both children and teenagers, so I understand how some parents are at a loss as to how to help their children develop their faith. Sundays are taken up with sports and a host of other activities. The concept of Sabbath went out the window long ago.

And yet, parents know the concept of faith is important, even if they dont make time for it themselves. They sense it is the greatest gift they could give their children, but they dont know how to give it. Or they have a misguided notion about it; they think they can make random appearances at church or simply drop their children off at Sunday school to let someone else make it happen. But developing a childs faith is so much more than taking the child to church. Perhaps its this something more that parents fear, because they worry they dont have it in themselves. They fear their own faith is wanting.

Tain and I wrote this book to shine a light on possible answers for parents by sharing our story. We hope our experiences will help parents get to the heart of a question that becomes more perturbing as our world grows ever more complicated. How do you help a child have faithreal faith, something he or she owns and not a regurgitation of something heard? How do you create a life space where a child can learn to understand what they believe?

But please note: this is not an instructional how-to book. As youll see, we muddle along because theres no direct route here. Its as if God is a great secret I am dying to tell Tain, but I cant because I know it will mean nothing to him if I do. He has to discover Gods presence and his own faith for himself, kind of like Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz. Tain has to know the home God has created for him lies within him and all around him.

To do otherwise would be like putting him in an arranged marriage, telling him he must be wedded to a belief he hasnt fully connected with on his own. He must develop his own love match, explore the depths of his own devotion.

Sections of this book will have Tains Take on stories and portions of an interview he did with our Pastor Kathie, who was rector at our church during the time were relating here. Tain was worried about what has already faded from his memory, but I showed him how the same tools I use in my writing to help me remember are all around him: photographs, pictures he has drawn, snippets he has written down that Ive saved. He has no journal as I do, but I remind him he has the living memory of the people around him, such as Pastor Kathie.