Last month, I gathered with a group of women communicators for a five-day retreat in northern Idaho. We’d been together over Zoom calls for several months by that point, but found ourselves itchy for a little face-to-face interaction.
A priest friend once confessed to me that he had been years out of seminary before he realized that, throughout his life, he had spent all of his time talking about God rather than to God. He had been excited by the idea of God, by all the accoutrements around worship, and by the call to justice. In all his excitement, it took some time before he realized that he had missed the central piece.
They sit in their carseats, next to one another holding hands. The palest caucasion skin of anyone in the family, enfolding the brown hand of his Hispanic little brother. “Are they both yours?” The woman meeting us for the first time asks. “Yes,” I reply, but she wants more. “How did you get that black haired one?” “Same way I got the blond haired one.”
Labyrinths are wonderful tools for practicing prayer and mindfulness. Labyrinths aren’t just for adults – learn how to incorporate labyrinths into your formation ministry at church and at home.
I’ve been attending yoga classes at my local studio for about a year. I’m into yoga for the stretching and centering, so when Zoe announced that the theme of the Wednesday class was going to be hard work, I immediately got nervous.
At the ripe ages of ten and seven-and-a-half, my kids now understand that their clergy parents will grant them unlimited screen time on Sunday afternoons in exchange for remaining quiet enough for us to nap.
Last week, I was in the doctor’s office with a sick kid. My son had a HIGH fever, so he was not acting like himself. I knew he was sick because he was cuddled up in my lap as opposed to exploring everything around us. With his fever-flushed head on my chest, I found myself singing to him.
I have a confession to make: We do not pray at home, as a family, with any regularity. There, I said it.
Despite my best attempts, we struggle committing to a formal Christian education time or daily devotion in our house of chaos. I couldn’t quite put my finger on exactly why, but it was likely the four busy, beautiful daughters I call my own.
A while ago I was looking for a gift to give at church for children’s baptisms or to new parents, when I stumbled upon these jumbo prayer beads, perfect for little hands. Wanting to connect the beads to a practice of prayer, I devised a little method of traveling the beads while praying The Lord’s Prayer, connecting each bead to a portion of the prayer, in the hopes that this tactile practice would help the children both memorize and internalize the prayer that Christ taught us all to pray.