Spiritual PracticeSpiritual Practice can take many forms. Here are some resources to enrich your own practice wherever you may go.
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D365D365 is an online devotional written especially for youth and young adults. This experiences seeks to provide reflections on themes that impact our faith journey. Use this resource to create a quiet space in your life for meditation and prayer.
WHAT IS YOUR SPIRITUAL TYPETake this quiz to find out your spiritual type! Not only is it fun, it can be instructive to help you discover ways to best fill your soul and build your spiritual practice.
HELPING CHILDREN GROW SPIRITUALLY
Here are some ways adults can help children grow spiritually from Rabbi Sandy Eisenberg Sasso:
1. Encouraging the religious imagination in children requires us to nurture it in ourselves. Spend time reading and learning about your religious tradition, about faith. Live your faith. Talking about God makes more sense when people also engage in living God. Let your children join you in expressions of care, gratitude, and hospitality. 2. Children want to know what you think, not what some "expert" thinks. Don’t be afraid of the conversation. 3. Create an everyday spiritual world — where symbols, rituals, objects are as familiar as Happy Meals and teddy bears, where religious personalities and biblical characters are as commonplace as Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck. 4. Don’t preach! Tell stories. Allow children to act out the story and to retell it in their own words. Create an environment where children get to tell their stories. Don’t tell them what the story means — let them develop their own relationship for the narrative and tell you what it means to them. Let them find their place in the story, the place it connects to their lives. 5. Belong to a community where people live the stories of faith. Children need coaches not just for soccer; they need spiritual mentors for life. 6. Don’t say what you later have to correct. Don’t talk down to children. They are deep theologians. The theology of the books you read to children should also be satisfying to you as adults. 7. Let them know you approve their doubts, questions, challenges. Encourage searching. 8. Make time for prayer, for silence. Teachers ask 400 questions per day. They answer 80 percent of them. We abhor a vacuum; whenever there is a silence we rush to fill it up. At quiet times, children give us a glimpse of something precious, eternal: their souls. They need intentional quiet to remain in touch with their spirit. |