Know who cares for me?

So I have been reading this book called 10 Principles for Spiritual Parenting: Nurturing your Child's Soul. As the title indicates there are 10 principles. This book came highly recommended by a friend of mine and sounded like a good idea because my little girl finds wonder in EVERYTHING including big hairy spiders. I want to foster that wonder and help her find what that means in her life, and how she honors that every day. And let's be honest, with all the volunteer work I do at church most of the spirituality feels drained out lately, so I could use the reminder on a daily basis myself. I think I said this before, but the God language in this book was startling at first. I haven't spent time on my faith in a God context since I was probably 8, and to be honest, the man scared me.

So anyhow, the first principle is "Know God cares for you". It took me a longer time in my late teens and early 20's than I care to admit to acknowledge that all the blessings in my life were no longer just coincidence and definitely the work of something bigger than us all. Once I accepted that it was amazing how less alone I felt. Since then I have often thought of how much different my life may have been during that time period if I had never forgotten how to feel and recognize that something bigger than me, all of us.

What I did enjoy about this part though was that in addition to the normal suggestions for prayer, there was a couple realistic and less denominationally related ideas on how to integrate daily rituals to establish a connection between our children and deity, guided meditations for children and adults alike.

Shortly before reading this chapter, Emily and I started a dinner time chalice lighting every night, and a morning chalice lighting upon waking every morning. Em gets so pumped about this that she is eager and waiting when the time comes. She has the words memorized and has begun to think through out the day what she would like to say as far as joys go during our lighting. For me, it has become a nice reminder to be present in daily life and to appreciate all the small joys I am blessed with on a daily basis. It fits nicely into our daily schedules and provides us both with a quiet time to sit with the spirit and be thankful, and to reflect.

When we light out chalice we say: Life is a gift for which we are grateful, we celebrate all the glories and all the mysteries of this great gift.

In the morning we talk about what we are looking forward to or hoping for in our day, and at dinner we reflect on the memorable events that took place and what we are thankful for.

At the end of the morning circle or dinner, we say "May all that we do be done in love" and blow the chalice out.

If anything I got out of reading about this, it is an increased awareness of spirit. And while I still wouldn't use the word God when describing my own spirituality, I am much more comfortable and respectful of when others do than I was 10 years ago, and now know more what they mean...