In Rebecca Nye’s excellent article in the last issue of Premier Childrenswork, she spoke of children’s spirituality as a game of hide and seek, which I greatly value as a metaphor for the illusive art of spotting children’s spirituality.
This month, I’m going to share some ideas as to how to bring that spirituality to the fore. But this article comes with a warning: when you start consciously looking at spirituality, you will be profoundly affected yourself. This is not a skipping across the surface exercise, this could change you! This could lead to two possible responses: ‘Yippee’ or ‘Aaaaaaah’. But we cannot work with children if we don’t know where our own spirituality is, so we need to touch base first. To this end, I’d love to recommend a podcast to you, available here.
Mark Yaconelli, speaking at ‘Faith Forward’ introduced a very simple method of getting back to a spiritual experience that is mine alone, and yours is yours alone, and how to revisit that lovely place as and when you need to. The actual exercise only takes about five minutes, depending on you and how long you stay there. Do try it – I keep sharing it with others and they’re finding it a very positive experience. This is for you, contacting your spiritual nature, without words of the more academic focus that we so often employ. After that, you’ll feel more confident about setting out on a task that many ministers find challenging.
When you start consciously looking at children’s spirituality, you will be profoundly affected yourself
When I do this exercise, I find myself (brace yourself) in a Japanese temple in a town called Mishima, which is in the shadow of Mount Fuji. We were in Japan because our son lives and works there, and we went to Mishima specially to see Mount Fuji. More than anything else, I remember walking under the big red gate and onto the central courtyard (again, very big) looking at the lake, the garden, the plants, the temple buildings and being blown away by the beauty combined with an amazing sense of it being a ‘thin place’: God was there, no matter the faith being articulated. As we travelled round Japan, we were all slowly more and more profoundly touched by the sheer spiritual thinness of the place. So I came back and spent quite a long time working out just what was it, other than more than a thousand years of prayer, that made those ancient places of worship so spiritual for me, when the lovely cathedral that I walk past most working days, a listed UNESCO site, rarely clouts my soul in the same way? I think it’s the multi-sensory nature of the temples that took me by surprise:
- You enter through a big gate
- You hear the water running
- You see the stunning architecture, carefully designed to nurture that ‘zen’ feeling
- You wash your hands as you go towards the temple itself
- You smell the incense, and the perfume from the wonderful flowers
- You remove your shoes (even if it’s raining) before entering the sacred space
In other words, all the way into the sacred space, you are being told that this is somewhere very special
CREATING SACRED SPACES
So the question is, how can we turn the spaces that we occupy when we are working with children into somewhere where the sacred-ness of the space is brought out? Clearly, spirituality is evident everywhere in our lives, but I’m thinking about the spaces that we use week by week. You could also encourage families to think about their homes as spiritual places, and suggest things they could do to ‘find’ their spirituality more easily on a daily basis
David Csinos’ excellent book Children’s ministry that fits will tell you all about the impact that the environment has upon (children’s) spirituality. Start with a critical look at the actual space that you work in, and ask the children what they would like included in their space week by week. It isn’t likely to be the latest hi-tech gizmo. In my experience, they want candles.
What are the images on the wall like? It’s often the by-laws to hire the church hall, so how could you make the space more friendly, more beautiful? It may not need a cross, but some lovely pictures of nature – perhaps some slides that move on after a while? Some plants? Soft colours? How about a short film of buzzing bees on lavender? Ikea sell little semi-circular tents which just hang on a hook that children can use as ‘bolt holes’: somewhere to go to be alone, on their own with a book or their thoughts, and a few of these would make for an interesting corner. And maybe you could paint it a restful colour, as a way of staking your claim, and influencing others with whom you share the space?
What else can you put in this space? One of my favourites, and one of the cheapest, is a sort of snow globe, made from a small ‘Kilner jar’ with some glitter in it. Add some water, give it a swirl, and hey presto! Watch your children as they watch the glitter settling down. Then, after a while, ask them how it made them feel? If you want a really slow version, prepare beforehand using glitter glue, which takes several days to break down, but you end up with a twinkling pretty sludge that holds all ages captive as they watch the patterns.
Get some of the truly prophetic books about God by Sandy Sasso: God in between is my favourite. Beautiful children’s books will inform your spirituality and gently move you along on your journey with the children. There’s also a podcast in the same series if you want to hear directly from her about the place of story.
If you have a Godly Play desert bag use that so that children can run their hands through the sand – it’s incredibly tactile and calming. If you have space outside, include a small area where you can contain a rectangle of coloured gravel, buy a small rake and let the children rake the stones. Not to make anything, but just to rake them and make patterns.
How about that tinkling water that I heard in the temple? This is easier outside, where you can set up a water feature, or make a cheap equivalent: you’ll need an old fire grate, a pot and some stones, along with a jug of water and a bowl. If you’re over a hard surface you can leave out the bowl, but you will get through a lot of water. Set the grate (over the bowl) with some stones on top to make it look better. Now pour water over the stones, listen and repeat as and when.
Or, back inside, you could ask the children to lie down (small children find sitting unaided quite hard) and listen – what can they hear? Once they get past gurgling tummies, a spot of the inevitable wind and other varied sounds, they’ll get to the blood in their ears and maybe their heartbeat. Where can they hear God in all that, the God who made it all?
What about the floor? If you are going to ask the children to lie down on it from time to time to just take a few moments of silence to listen to God, then you may need a stock of clean rugs, towels etc. for the children and you to lie on. And I do hope you are going to try that - when we listen, God can be heard. If you have an area that is ‘yours’, try and impose the ‘no shoes’ rule. You could add the equivalent of that big red gate – a threshold, to indicate a special place.
If it’s an outside space, try and make some sort of boundary, so the children know what is in and what is out: they’ll treat inside with more respect. Are you going to get them to wash their hands as they enter? Baby wipes might be a good compromise. And that will keep the lovely things cleaner for longer.
Candles do need to be supervised, gently. Children know that they can be dangerous, but I personally feel that only real candles will do – none of those safe electronic things for me! There is something about the movement and life of a real flame that catches all of us, and brings us closer to God. You could even borrow a small pagoda and set up outside for a few weeks, and see how that affects the children.
How can we turn the spaces that we occupy when we are working with children into somewhere where the sacred-ness of the space is brought out?
You could focus on nature in a churchyard, if you have one, or on the immediate environment of the church, looking at what lives there as the focus for you work. It needs a quick risk assessment, but what’s that if your children are going to experience themselves and God in a new, more accessible way?
If you fancy a spirituality workshop event, ask pilgrimpaths.co.uk to come and lead you in exploring a labyrinth. This ancient, Christian footpath is an amazing experience for many children and adults alike.
What would be great is an outside area that is the children’s – a little part of the church grounds that they take responsibility for. They can design and plan the layout with you, then raise money to buy plants (herbs are great), wind chimes, pathways, bee or insect hotels, bird boxes – your local school may already have such a ‘spiritual garden’ and can help you to think about it. By doing this we are giving the children the opportunity to say what helps them to be still, not imposing our adult concepts upon them.
Finally, my top tip after that is to start using Godly Play. As a Godly Play advocate, I continue to be amazed at how this story telling process enables children to touch base spiritually, and then articulate and share that, with such mutual blessing! Godly Play does take time and energy, more than the cost of the resources, but do contact your local trainer and practitioners and find out about it godlyplay.org.uk Many churches use Godly Play on a more occasional basis, but any inclusion will be hugely beneficial to the children’s spiritual lives, and yours.
I started with a warning - don’t try any of this unless you are prepared for God to touch you too. At a recent GP event a few of us were saying t hat G odly Play h ad c hanged t he w ay i n w hich we minister right across the ages- it’s powerful stuff!
So, try a few ideas, and let your imagination lead you. One last website; prayerspacesinschools.com will give you hundreds of simple ideas for your weekly life with the children – do take a look.
Ronni Lamont became fascinated by children’s spirituality as a response to what she observed in her own children’s faith journey. She is an Anglican priest, author and trainer. She edits assemblies.org.uk
