Tom McGrath - Raising Faith-Filled Kids: Ordinary Opportunities to Nurture Spirituality at Home
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- Book:Raising Faith-Filled Kids: Ordinary Opportunities to Nurture Spirituality at Home
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Family life is a spiritual path
Is your family calendar so jammed that theres never enough time to be spiritual? Maybe you need to think about spirituality in a new way. Author, editor, and speaker Tom McGrath shows how the hectic and ordinary moments of family life offer endless opportunities to live more deeply. This book is full of stories and ideas for parents who care about their childrens souls.
McGrath suggests how we can foster a healthy spirituality in our childrenwhile tending to our own spirits as well. He presents many useful lessons and practical strategies for passing on religious heritage, including:
Introducing children to sacred time
Examining the image of God we actively (or passively) present to our children
Fostering empathy to build our childrens moral character
Learning to pray creatively as a family
Developing spiritual disciplines as parents
Cultivating a spirit of forgiveness in the home
If you ever wanted to be a great and inspiring parent, this book gives you the tools to learn how.
Mark Victor Hansen, co-creator, #1 New York Times best-selling series Chicken Soup for the Soul
Tom McGrath: author's other books
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For Marge and Pat McGrath, who, for over fifty years, have faithfully and generously traveled a path of love, with lots of laughs along the way. For Kathleen, Judy, and Patti, my best teachers. And for Tap and Marty and Peggy (and your families); Im grateful to have companions who bring such joy to the heart.
3441 N. Ashland Avenue
Chicago, Illinois 60657
(800) 621-1008
www.loyolapress.com
2000 Tom McGrath
All rights reserved.
The Scripture quotations contained herein are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Catholic Edition, copyright 1993 and 1989 by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the U.S.A. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
eBook ISBN: 978-0-8294-3060-8
Based on the print edition: 978-0-8294-1425-7
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication: 00-035408
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I came that they may have life, and have it abundantly.
Jesus Christ (John 10:10)
I was at my friend Tinas house for a barbecue recently. Tina is a wonderful woman, a great mother, kind to her friends and generous to strangers. Her home is bright and welcoming. She prays daily and does what she can to maintain conscious contact with God throughout the day.
Tina heard I was working on a book. Whats it about? she asked brightly.
Its about how parents can raise kids with a living faith in God, I replied.
Tinas face fell, looking sad and guilty. Oh, thats something Im just no good at. I really need a book like that.
Tina, Im writing this book with you in mind. Because, you see, you are good at raising your kids with a living faiththe faith you have surrounds them as they grow. Beyond that, you have everything it takes to do the job well. And finally, many parents I meet feel, as you do, that they are totally inept when it comes to raising their kids with faith, so they dont recognize the natural steps they can take to nurture their familys experience of faith right in their homes.
I find that many normally competent people appear to be lost at sea regarding this important aspect of their childrens lives. They feel guilty for not being more intentional or active in nurturing their childrens faith, yet they seem unsure about how to remedy the situation. Its as if theyre being asked to do something they havent had the least experience withlike teaching their kids to speak Gaelic, Urdu, or Swahili.
Yet by and large, the parents I talk to attempt to live a spiritually grounded life. Maybe they dont go to church as often as they feel they should or pray as much as they wish they did. But they have faith in God, pray regularly, and live in ways that express and deepen their relationship with their creator. They are not faithless people. If pushed on the topic, most would say that faith has been extremely valuable to them. In fact, what most pains them is that they fear they will be unable to pass along the benefits of this faith to the children they love so dearly.
But we need to understand how faith operates. You dont pass on a living faith like a quarterback handing off a football to a running back. And parents dont create faith. Faith comes from God, and God has placed the seed of faith in each child. Its a longing for connection to deep and profound truth that is planted within each one of them. Parents have a major influential role in how prepared the child is and how well the faith is nurtured. But we dont create faith, possess faith, or control it. Faith is a relationship like the relationship between a vine and its branches. Faith flows. Our main task is to encourage the flow and not block it.
Many parents underestimate their ability to influence their childrens faith development. I think thats because they underestimate the value of ordinary family life as a channel of faith. And they also underestimate the power of their own faithno bigger than a mustard seed, they worryto influence their childrens faith development.
I hope, through this book, to help you see with new eyes, to enable you to look at the activities and interactions of daily living in your family and see in them sacramental moments that point to a loving God. This book is not going to ask you to disrupt your daily routines, but rather to see those moments within the give-and-take of daily living as ways in which God is present and calling you to live life more abundantly.
Many people fear that if they answer the call to become more spiritually alive they will be required to make radical changes in their living situation. The fantasy they fear possibly takes the shape of having to leave their family, move to a remote mission in a destitute country, and live on wild honey and locusts. Becoming more spiritually alive does involve radical changes. But I have found that rather than taking precious things away from me, the changes open my eyes to new depths and riches that are all around me. Rather than losing something, I gain everything.
Perhaps youve seen the program on public television, Antiques Roadshow, where people bring old treasures and oddities they find or have stored in their homes, attics, or garages and get them appraised by experts. Its great fun to see what people own and to learn how much the items turn out to be worth. Some of the pieces are worth no more than whatever sentimental value they hold; other items are worth a fortune.
My favorite viewing moment came when a nice lady brought in a painting of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. As it happens, this patriotic painting was worth no more than fifty dollars. But while she was standing in line waiting her turn for the appraisal, she decided to clean the frame. When she removed the frame, one of the expert appraisers caught sight of something amazing and unexpected. It turns out that a later, and less talented, artist used the back of an existing painting to paint Washington, Jefferson, Hancock, and Co. But the original paintingkept in pristine condition within the frame all these yearswas a rare and wonderful painting by a colonial-era painter. It was worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.
All this time the people in that home had a treasure within reach and never knew it. We all do. It may not be worth cold, hard currency. But in fact the treasure we are heirs to is much more valuable. Because what is more valuable than life? And what Jesus promises uswhether in cloister, mission, monastery, or messy, chaotic homeis to give us life more abundantly. We just have to have eyes to see.
In this book I will talk about ideas to help nurture your childrens faith that can be applied in family living. But Ill also spend three chapters talking about your spiritual life. The truth is that being a parent is indeed a spiritual path. This is your mission, should you choose to accept it.
We are not doing this job alone. In nurturing faith in our kids, we have at our disposal the power of our own spiritual tradition. Committing to a spiritual path affords us disciplines, practices, and the example of holy heroes and companions to accompany us on our way. We have the example and support of other parents who take this duty seriously. And we have the Holy Spirit, whom Jesus promised, to serve as our guide. The first steps in getting started are to acknowledge our intention to raise our children well, ask God for help, and respond when the next ordinary opportunity arises.
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