Why Raising Kids is Spiritual Formation (for you)
"...it's like nurturing a flower with round-up!" (ritual pt. 4)
A few years back there was this little thing called COVID. Maybe you remember? It made some headlines. Well, during that season, like all families, we found ourselves at home. Together. At home. TOGETHER. A LOT. Kids did school from home, I worked and studied from home, we played at home, and went for walks…at home. Just around the living room, lap after lap. Thankfully, we did have a bit of a backyard at the time with a cubbyhouse and a little swing set. Man, did those swings see some action during that year or so.
One day I was working in my study doing some profound thing I’m sure, and my daughter Aria, who was seven at the time, came in to talk. I make a point to be VERY interruptable (this is one thing I hope they say when my kids talk about me to their therapists in years to come). So I put my arm around her and we started talking about our day. At one point I asked her, "Where did you see Jesus today?”.1 Without so much as a second thought, she said, "He was with me on the swings." “The swings?”, I asked. I had to know more. She answered, "Well, Porter (her then six-year-old brother) was being mean to me while I was swinging, and so I asked Jesus to help me." “Wow” I responded, now very curious, and asked “and did he stop?” “No,” she said, “but it was ok because Jesus was still there with me, and so I wasn't sad anymore.”
At that moment, I found myself wondering why I didn't spend all of my time with her.
I can still get so distracted and concerned with all my “deeply profound” things that I forget that kids are profoundly deep, and in their innocent and beautiful way, they are wise.
Jesus seems to agree with this thought. On several occasions in the Gospels, Jesus points to little children as the gateway into the Kingdom of God.
Why does Jesus point to children? Children by nature are rowdy, messy, and unorthodox. They take silly risks and make mistakes. They paint, dance, and sing as if no one is going to judge them. They live with their hearts wide open - even willing to interrupt Jesus’ sermons so they can jump up in his arms (Mark 10:13-16).
To us, this makes Jesus endearing: “Awww, the King of Kings is good with kids!”
But in the first century, the reaction was much different. Children had no rights, were of little importance, and were best kept quiet and out of sight. Kids were of the lowest status, and some children - especially girls - could be abandoned by the city gate with no repercussions if their families decided they didn’t need or want them anymore. In the Greco-Roman world, children were largely useless.
AND THIS is precisely why Jesus points to them and it is shocking to his followers. Jesus always overturns the world’s systems of power, violence, and injustice to reveal what God’s character is really like.
It seems that in God’s eyes, it’s the powerless, the weak, the vulnerable, and the easily ignored who have the advantage when it comes to entering God's Kingdom. Children have all of these in spades.
But Jesus sees them.
I sincerely believe that children have rich experiences of God long before they even have adequate words to describe them. While they are still developing cognition and rationale, children come into the world with their ability to experience and express emotions fully intact.
It’s as we grow into adulthood that we learn to label, judge, and compartmentalise our emotional and bodily centres, and learn what is "good and acceptable" social behaviour. Though children aren’t able to fully articulate their inner world, they have an abundance of outward expression (cue the tantrum my seven-year-old had this morning over whose turn it was on the Switch).
Of course, my natural response to his tantrum is what so many of us probably feel. I got frustrated, I got angry, and basically, I threw a tantrum about his tantrum. It dawned on me the other day that getting angry or raising my voice is about as helpful as trying to nurture a flower with Round-up. Still, there I went.
I have so far to go. How frustrating.
In reality, even our kids’ disruptive and negative behaviours are invitations from them. They are what Lacy Borgo calls kids’ "bidding for connection”. In other words, they’re reaching out for us to reach back to them. When we do so, we give them a picture of life that is safe and a picture of God that is compassionate and caring. (Thankfully, there’s lots AND LOTS of grace all around when we get it wrong.)
When we think about this “connection bidding” in terms of the spiritual development of our children, our role as parents shifts from mere behaviour management into helping cultivate a connection with their Creator (and with us as well).
I love this poem from Jane Tyson Clement. It suggests that our roles as parents are more than simply teaching “right answers” to our kids, that just maybe we are meant to be learning from each other.
“Child, though I am meant to teach you much,
what is it, in the end,
except that together we are
meant to be children
of the same Father,
and I must unlearn
all the adult structure
and the cumbering years
and you must teach me
to look at the earth and the heavens
with your fresh wonder.”2
If we stay humble, vulnerable, and present enough to allow it, our children teach us about who God is.
We teach them too. Of course.
However, I wonder sometimes if knowledge and certainty have become overrated and curiosity and wonder underrated. We are not meant to just transfer information about God but to open up space for children to experience God.
So, how does all this connect with this series on ritual?
Several years ago, I was serving as a spiritual director at a men's retreat. During one of the breaks a young dad with young kids came up to have a chat. He told me that in the past he had a deep connection with God, but his spiritual life was suffering due to the demands of work and family. I understood where he was coming from and felt compassion for him. I also felt sad he felt he had to choose: Family or spiritual growth.
I asked him, “What if your work and family ARE your spiritual life? What if they aren’t two separate things?” As we chatted we began looking at the things already in his routine and how he could begin to ritualise them. I was so happy to hear from him several months later when he told me that putting his kids to bed, which had been a point of frustration, had now become the most special part of his day.
Seeing these everyday moments with our children as deeply spiritual experiences not only helps shape their lives but can be formative experiences of prayer for us as well. Not only the prayers and bible stories, but regular acts of loving, caring, and playing with our little ones can become rituals of prayer and profoundly transformative practices.
I am still on the journey of learning to remain open and present with my kids. I still experience many frustrations, adult tantrums, and moments where my insides spark and short-circuit. But the more I practice, the more I remember that my home and my family is holy ground. It becomes the primary place where I, along with Aria, learn that Jesus is with us, even when someone is being mean to us on the swings.
Two Ritualising Practices:
For the newbies- Ritual: a concrete practice that points to, or represents, a belief or ideal.
The Teacher
The ideal we’re grounding in practice here is reminding ourselves that while we are responsible for our kids, they are here to be teachers to us as well and we want to stay humble to that reality. Also, while we seem to hold all the power in the relationship (especially when they’re young), Jesus subverts power and sees it as an opportunity to serve, so we seek to do the same.
The ritual is to allow our kids to give us a review. Ask them “What are some things you’d like for Mum/Dad to get better at?” Then we give up the right to argue with or correct them. We subvert our power and hand it to them. Then we take what they say on board and ask God to help us.
A prayer for this practice: “Lord, may I see these kids the way you see them, as a gateway into your Kingdom. Help me stay humble and teachable, even when it’s hard.”
The Mirror
So often, the thing I get mad at my kids about is something I don’t like inside of myself. Our partners and kids really are the best mirrors for our souls.
The ideal is to deal follow Jesus’ words to deal with our telephone poles before adjusting their dust speck (Matt 7:3-5).
The ritual: Don’t give your kids a punishment/consequence for something you’ve also done that day.
Instead, sit with them and be honest about your struggle with whatever that thing was. Ask Jesus to help you both work through it together. This helps them see that you also make mistakes and gives them a beautiful example of honesty, vulnerability, and teaches them how to ask for forgiveness.
A prayer: “Jesus, we both messed this one up today. Can you help us to learn from this and help to encourage each other in this so we can look more like You.”
Finally, I want to say that I’ve learned so much about this space from Lacy Borgo. She is a wonderful writer and has done ground-breaking work in the area of children's spiritual development. She has developed a curriculum for children's spiritual formation and has written several books all of which I would highly recommend.
Here are several great books on this topic:
Their Name is Today: Reclaiming Childhood in a Hostile World – Johann Christoph Arnold
Spiritual Conversations with Children – Lacy Finn Borgo
Good Dirt Series – Lacy Finn Borgo and Ben Barczi
The Conscious Parent – Dr Shefali Tsabary
This question comes directly from Lacy Borgo’s work. You should know her work. Especially, Lacy Finn Borgo, "Spiritual Direction with Children: the Next Natural Step in the Christian Historical Progression of Children's Spiritual Formation" (2016)
Clement, Jane Tyson, "No One Can Stem the Tide: Selected Poems" (2000) p. 39