Praying The Lord's Prayer

Thanks again for all the great comments on prayer in the 'praying with children' posts.  I've been inspired by your ideas and am grateful for you thoughts.  I wish I currently had more time to dig deeper into this journey of praying with children, but I have been comforted in reminding myself that this can certainly be an ongoing conversation.

I found so much inspiration in your comments and on blogs through the season.  There are a couple posts on others blogs I want to share.  First, check out the Lenten Prayer tree on Warm as Pie.  I've also been happily browsing a blog that I found during this season - Thoughts from the Sheepfold.  I loved the prayer garden for home and the blog as a whole makes me excited about going back to work someday in Children's ministry (not in the near future, but someday).

==========

One prayer that I love to come back to over and over is The Lord's Prayer.  We say it at home from time to time and I love that Jonah always joins in the liturgy for the Lord's Prayer (even when he isn't following along with the rest of the service).  We have several books of the Lord's Prayer, and I thought I'd share my two favorites.  They are very different in their approach, but both are lovely.

First, Time Ladwig's The Lord's Prayer:  This book is modern in its approach and shows a complete story in the illustrations that illuminates the meaning of the prayer in an everyday setting.  A father and daughter go to an older woman's home to help fix up her yard and fence.  They do the work and the little girl is tempted to take a necklace that she finds (which has the Lord's Prayer on it).  The illustrations are thoughtful and there are lots of things to discuss through the book with an older child.

The Second Lord's Prayer book that I love is Give Us This Day illustrated by Tasha Tuder.  I love Tuder's work and have since I was a child - corgis and all.  The pictures are sweet, and though they lack the coherent story line of Ladwig's work, they show children in creation and capture the wonder of nature. 

Do you have a favorite book on the Lord's Prayer or a way of saying the prayer with children?

The Mealtime Grace

 This week I was given a stack of books on home-education, celebrating the church year and children's spirituality by a friend who was paring down her bookshelves.  It feels a bit like Christmas with a new stack of books to page through and I've been doing just that, over and over, never settling with one book for long, but just flipping through one each time I walk past the table, which has been the books home this week.  In one of the books it mentioned the importance of the daily mealtime and/or bedtime prayer with a child (and, of course, I can't find it in any of the books now.)  But it made me pause and think about how, what seems like the simplest of prayer times, can be the most formative.   It is easy to take the saying (or singing) of a mealtime grace for granted.  After all, Jim and I have always shared a simple prayer of thanks before meals and after Jonah arrived it changed to a simple song, but it has always been there.  It is as much a part of each day as waking up or brushing our teeth, one of those things that is rarely absent from our rhythm.    

When I was a child my father said a prayer each night at dinner and it always ended the same way, there was such comfort in those prayers.  Short and repetitive, but very meaningful and those prayers imprinted me.

When Jonah was born Jim and I adopted a song that our community group sang as a grace.  We held Jonah's hands starting at around four months and sang together each night.  "We thank you Lord for happy hearts; for rain and sunny weather.  We thank you Lord for this our food and that we are together. Amen."  I still remember the day Jonah, at six months old, reached out his wee hands to hold ours when we went to sing before a meal.

When Jonah was three he started to get goofy when we were singing the song, so I decided some variety might keep him interested (and it worked).  We began singing the Doxology and Bless our Home.  We soon added The Clapping Song which some friends introduced us too and it remains a favorite; it is fun because everyone at the table participates.

Because we have guests frequently and we now have a variety of songs I made cards with the different prayers last year and put them in a basket on the window sill  (photo above).   Each song is on a different color and we have a few poems in the basket too.  Jonah loves handing out the prayer cards and reading along.

Sometimes the simplest act is the most formative; the prayer so familiar that it easily becomes commonplace in our rhythm is the most dear.  In the full days of mothering it is good to remember that simple things are often the most important.

-------------------------------------------------------------

Below are a few of our favorite mealtime graces.  If you have a favorite, please share it in the comments.  We'd love some new ideas.

The Clapping Song
This is all to a simple tune and everyone claps along.  At each ______ the next person at the table adds something they are thankful for.  You sing the stanza with three _____s and "right where you are" as many times as it takes to let everyone participate.

Thank you God for giving us_____________
Thank you God for giving us_____________
Thank you God for giving us _____________
Right where we are.
(repeat above as many times as necessary)
Amen

Bless our Home

This is sung to the tune of Edelweiss.  I found this in Martha Zimmerman's book "Celebrating the Christian Year" (an amazing resource!).  This is my favorite of our graces; I love the line 'may our talk glow with peace'.

Bless our home, bless our food;

Come, O Lord, and sit with us;

May our talk glow with peace,

May your love surround us;

Friendship and love, may they bloom and grow,

Bloom and grow forever; 

Bless our home, bless our food;

Come, O Lord, and sit with us.

Note: I've also enjoyed the book Saying Grace: Blessings for the Family Table by Sarah McElwain.  Simple and beautiful inspiration for mealtime graces.  I know there are other lovely books of graces (this is just the one I happen to have).  If you have a book of mealtime graces/ prayers you like; please share the title in the comments.

Praying in Color

Once again, thanks so much for all your comments on the last two posts on praying with children (Praying with Children and Praying for Japan). I love that this is becoming a bit of a dialogue and I feel inspired by your ideas and energized to continue on this journey through lent. And please feel free to leave links to your own posts on prayer, your ideas and thoughts in the comments again today.

This week I used a prayer exercise from the book Praying in Color by Sybil MacBeth. A friend lent me the book and it is a super fast read. I was envisioning that it would have lots of colorful ways to pray, but really it is all about what I would call 'doodle prayer'. Her basic method is draw a shape of some sort and then write initials or a name inside. While you draw the shape and embellish it think about that person and perhaps some specific needs you want to pray for, but you can also just sit there with the shape, the colors and the name and continue 'doodling'.

I like the way 'Praying in Color' breaks free from having to 'say something' and that it uses one's hands. I am most comfortable when my hands are doing something and so I found this quite appealing. For similar reasons I think it is a great way to pray with children. After dinner a couple nights ago I spread out paper, explained that we were going to have a time to draw while we pray - "You can draw something you are thankful for or you can draw a shape with someone's name in it if there is someone you want to pray for, or maybe you will think of something else." Then we lit our lenten candle saying "We light the candle to remind us that God is with us" and we drew for about fifteen minutes. We didn't ask the boys questions about what they were drawing or make comments. They didn't say much either, so again it is that act of trust that the Holy Spirit is speaking with each of us. And it was a really special time all of us intent on our drawing.

(Though, in case anyone had the idea that these prayers around here are totally serene and predictable, let me share that this time ended with daddy's crayon accidentally going over the edge of Jonah's drawing and a bit of a melt down ensued (and of course if Jonah is crying then Rowan tends to join in, so they were both crying.) Small boys were then rushed off to bed. So next time I won't plan this for bedtime - lesson learned.)

Notes:

In Praying with color the author recommends that you use a nice pen and good quality markers, this would be fun with older children or for oneself, but we used bees wax crayons as these are our drawing material of preference these days (and I really love the smell, which I was very aware of as we 'prayed in color'.)

There is a children's edition of Praying in Color (pictured above), which I read, but didn't use with Jonah. First, I think it is written for an older child. I'm pretty sure I would have really enjoyed it as a child. But, it also begins with a chapter on 'Prayer Problems' like feeling antsy, thinking of other things when you pray, falling asleep... Again, I think that for an older child who felt some of these things, the book deals with them well. But Jonah has never been told that he has to pray a certain way and I just don't think this is applicable yet. Somehow presenting him with the very idea that there are problems with prayer or that there is a right way to pray (even thought the book goes on to debunk this idea) seems unhelpful.

I also hung a sheet of paper in our godly play room at church and briefly explained 'praying in color' and told the children that they could spend time drawing with God during their work time. They didn't use it the first week, but I'm hopeful that this can be a beginning of a little prayer corner.

Praying for Japan

Thank you to those of you who left comments on last week's post Prayer with Children.  I would love this to be an ongoing conversation where we can dialog on living prayerfully with children.  Please feel free to leave thoughts on praying with children or ideas for playful and prayerful spaces in the comments again today!

I began reading Rebecca Nye's book Children's Spirituality today and, from what I've read so far, I would highly recommend it.  I skipped ahead to her section on prayer and loved what she had to say.  I agree whole-heartedly with her views of spirituality and prayer.

I found this bit on Trust and prayer so encouraging-

Trust plays a key role in providing conditions that nurture children's prayer life.  It is about trusting that a child may be praying even if we can't be sure that this is happening.  Just as adults, sometimes, can give the outaward signs of praying even though little may really be going on inside, children can give the outward signs of not praying, according to our criteria, but perhaps a lot is going on inside. 

So we need to take a generous, trusting attitude to what may constitute prayerful activity for children.  It may look as if a child is just doodling or idly rolling balls of play dough or gazing blankly out of the window (rather than producing a facsimile drawing of the Bible story or listening attentively to us) but in these moments God and the child may be in deep communion.  And so it is important to treat what they are up to with the respect with which we'd treat someone deep in prayer and avoid disturbing or interrogating them. (pg 69)

-------------

This strengthened my desire to create spaces and places that are playfully prayerful.  Never pressing my children to pray in any certain way, but creating space to reflect on the things they are hearing about and experiencing prayerfully (and playfully).

Monday I got out our cloth map (my mom found the fabric and made this map and it is one our favorite 'toys'/resources) and an electric candle.  I let Jonah place the candle by Japan and I said a prayer for the people of Japan and we talked about what is happening there.  We had let Jonah watch a video of the wave coming (one we had watched before hand and deemed appropriate/ not too scary) and had talked about what was happening over the weekend, so he had lots of thoughts.  I then simply prayed for the children who saw the wave and might be scared.

Jonah then moved the candle around the map and we prayed for some family and friends around the globe.  He loves working with the map and ran to tell Daddy about how we prayed with the map when Daddy arrived home.  Not everything we do is met with such enthusiasm, which is fine, but it is lovely when he is so excited about something we have done together.

Prayer with Children

A question I've been asking a lot over the past few years is 'how do you help your child pray?'  I think the question looms large for me, because I don't understand prayer myself.  Oh, there are quite a few books about prayer lining my shelves, so I can tell you lots about prayer, but on a more practical level I feel like I struggle along.  My personality isn't contemplative by nature and the demands of small children make quiet space infrequent.  One of the most pivotal moments in my spiritual life was when I realized that having a relationship with God is not reliant on 'quiet times'.  Don't read this wrong, time alone in the Bible and in prayer is a great thing, but there is nothing biblical about needing 'daily quiet time'.  Certainly we are to seek and know God's word and are to desire to be in prayer continuously, but I believe that this will look different in different season of our lives.   For me, at this time, reading the word and prayer are much more organic in my days: Jim and I discuss a passage one of us is studying in a group over dinner, I find myself praying over soapy dishes, find that a conversation with a friend has turned into a sort of prayer, study scripture to lead my Bible study or to answer a specific question, practice a godly play lesson, do godly play with the boys...   I suppose that if I had to sum up the most common prayer in my life I would say that it is simply 'being aware that God is with me and welcoming that'.

I know that there is lots of room for growth in this area for me and while I mention that God is with us through our days (to which Jonah now says quite seriously 'oh, I know, I know') I want to share prayer on a more tangible level with the boys.  Some children are eager to say prayers each night, but Jonah has always asked that we 'do the talking'.  He takes part in our mealtime graces and I know that God is working in him, but I want to create spaces and opportunities for him to pray when he is led.  I never want prayer to be an expectation or something he feels coerced to engage in.  The other factor in praying with Jonah (or any child) is that, on many levels, I'm pretty certain that he could teach me many things about prayer and so I want to enter the conversation with God and Jonah not primarily as guide, but as fellow children of God.

 I made the goal to do one new simple prayer with the boys each week in Lent and I will try to share them here because I would love to begin a conversation and hear what others are doing.  I would love suggestions or resources if anyone knows of anything!

Our first week was inspired by my Bible study's work in Galatians.  I simply took nine rocks (from the myriads of stacks of rocks in this house) and wrote the fruit of the spirit on them with sharpies.  

The boys and I lit a candle and then I prayed "God give us..." and then handed Jonah each rock, which he read and then dropped into a bowl of water.  

I left the bowl out and several times in the past day I've heard 'ping, ping, ping'.  Jonah my 'just be playing' with the rocks in water, but the space is there and he is engaging and as far as I'm concerned that is prayer.  He is aware that this is a space we created to talk to God and he is going there and doing what he does to form relationships and ask questions - play.  

Do you have any prayers or prayer activities you have done as a family you can share in the comments?