"If we teach the family to pray, ... our children will know how to respond ... for the rest of their lives."

The Sentinel asked members of several different religious traditions to share their thoughts about children and faith. These traditions share key common ground, such as the deep desire that children feel God's presence with them. Yet each comes at the important work of fostering faith from a unique perspective.

NURTURING OUR CHILDREN

I give thanks to my Heavenly Father for two major things. First, that He provided a faith I have been able to learn and use. And second that He has given me the life experience and ability to practice my faith and to teach others about it.

Some people call my Heavenly Father by the name of "God," which of course He is, but I feel closer to Him when I acknowledge that He is my Heavenly Father. He is the Heavenly Father of all of us, for we are indeed, children of God.

In my faith, we try to take one evening out of each week to focus on parenting: learning and providing an atmosphere for our families that is conducive to behavior that Heavenly Father would approve.

During this time, the lessons learned by a prospective mother could be that it is important to have the right attitude about the coming birth. She should learn that she is simply the earthly means for the child to develop in faith about his Heavenly Father.

The mother must be prepared to accept the child as a gift for a short period and, during that time, to prepare the child to be an independent being with the proper attitude toward life. To do this, she and the father must provide a healthy atmosphere and environment, one full of love and caring for the physical body as well as the mental outlook.

I personally feel that God loves His children so much that He has provided this family unit to assist the children in their development. And I love to stress this in the classes I teach. I find the small children easily accept the idea that Heavenly Father is supporting this earthly family group, and they appreciate the idea that God is right there to help them with His loving care. Quickly they learn to depend upon God for that added help in the difficult role of earthly life.

My greatest joy is when "graduation day" arrives, and the parents acknowledge the child's progress into adulthood. Ideally, they also realize how much progress they have made as they have worked with the child toward this goal. What has been a task is realized to have been a project of love.

Anne Howe

Anne Howe is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

LET THE CHILDREN OF ZION EXULT!

Every child knows how to pray. Prayer is not a matter of theology; it's an expression of joy. Jewish children learn to sing songs to welcome the Sabbath, to celebrate thankfulness to God for good things in their lives. At Passover, a small child may not understand fully what it is to be freed from slavery, but that child knows about special foods, lots of family and friends gathered at a festive table, and songs that tell stories to mark the special day.

Celebrating renewal of life at Rosh Hashana might be a challenging theological theme for an adult, but a child can taste apples and honey, an sing happy songs that say how glad we are for another New Year.

One learns to pray and express a loving relationship with God not by studying theology but by getting in and doing it. Songs and stories are the ways that children learn personal and communal experience and the rhythm of the calendar that governs our lives as Jews.

As parents and teachers, we give our children memories: flickering candles, tasty foods, gleaming table settings, ritual objects, songs, and holidays stories on which to build a deeper understanding at a later age. We teach them to have a sense of awe and wonder, as well as joyfulness at holiday times. We teach our children that it is good to speak to God when we're happy, and to seek comfort from God when we're sad. We can teach them that although we don't always understnd all about what God does, we cherish the wonder and mysteries of life, and the ways in which these feelings nourish our faith.

I once asked children in our preschool, "How do you know where God is if you can't see God?" One little girl told me, "That's easy! I know God is right inside me whenever I feel happy!" Would that all theologians were so succinct!

Cantor Robert S. Scherr

*Ps. 149:2 (Tanakh The Holy Scriptures, Jewish Publication Society, 1985)

HELPING OUR CHILDREN KNOW GOD

How do we remember God in the family? How do we convince our children that they are held not just by our strong arms but also by God's strong arms?

Three simple ways come to mind.

One is the art and act of grace at table. Families pray in thanks for their food a million different ways. In our home, we use a grace that asks for the presence of God at our table and "all around us." Some families thank God even for their vegetables. Others ask the children what good thing they want to give thanks for that happened during the day. Still others use the Hebrew blessings.

It matters less what we do when we pray at table than that we pray. Otherwise, it looks like our provision comes from the kitchen. Ultimately, our nourishment comes from God.

I remember the first time my kids asked me if we had to pray in a restaurant. I was on the verge of saying no when I said yes. I was delighted at their relief at knowing they could give thanks.

A second is the art and act of going to sleep. In our family, we ask our children once they are in bed if anything good happened during the day. When they tell us of their days, we are often quickly moved to prayer.

It is important to let children speak their own words of thanksgiving and their own words of regret. We are teaching them proportion: how to take big and little things to God in prayer. The message is double: what happens to you is important, and recognizing your relation to God is even more important.

A third, less regular, way to practice prayer in the family is to be ready to pray when anything bad happens. And to remember to pray when something wonderful happens. Again, if we teach the family to pray, and to do so as a way of marking special time from normal time, our children will know how to respond to such events for the rest of their lives.

Prayer disrupts the material claims on our time—the feeling of pressure, the ever-faster pace of human life, the sense of a clock that never stops ticking—on behalf of God's timeless love.

When we speak to harried parents today, those always rushing in the same kind of stream, from work to home until both places feel the same, they speak of wanting time "off," time to think, to let spiritual ideas come to thought without having a deadline.

Each of us can find ways during our days to suspend time and to disrupt our highly structured time on behalf of more time with God. When we do, we enlarge our days, putting human activities into their right proportion, as subordinate to God, the true Giver of all our days.

Rev. Donna E. Schaper

Reverend Donna E. Schaper is a minister with the United Church of Christ in Massachusetts.

WHO IS GOD? A FATHER'S ANSWER.

My wife and I have two sons, ages seven and twelve. Like most children, they are curious about God. Their questions get more complex as they grow, but, as Bahá'ís, we have always focused on these ideas:

First we say, God made everything, including you.

Then we say, God is pure love. He loves you—even more than we do. You can always count on Him if ever you are afraid or need anything. He will always send help if you ask Him, even if He just sends one of us to hug you.

You can't see God, we say, because He is too big to see. He is everywhere at once. And even though we sometimes call Him "He," God is not a man or a woman. God doesn't have a physical body. But He is always there, watching over you.

There is only one God, we say, knowing that some of their friends are Christian or Hindu or Jewish or Muslim. And God has always sent His Messengers, who we believe include Buddha, Jesus, Moses, Abraham, Krishna and Muhammad, to teach us about Himself and to tell us how to be good.

We are Bahá'ís because we follow Bahá'u'lláh, who we believe is the most recent of God's Messengers. Like the Messengers before him, Bahá'u'lláh, reflects God's love and will perfectly. Through his life and his writings, Bahá'u'lláh teaches us how to live in today's busy world.

One thing Bahá'u'lláh tells us is to love other people no matter where they come from in the world. After all, Baha'u'llah said, God made us all as one people, and God loves us all no matter where we were born, or what our skin color is, or whether we are boys or girls. You can show God that you love Him by being good and trying to love other people.

Brad Pokorny

Brad Pokorny works for the Baha'i International Community as an editor. He and his wife, Ruwa, live in New Hampshire with their two sons.

QUAKERS AND "THAT OF GOD" IN EVERYONE

We believe there is "that of God" in every person, whether child or adult. This means we try to see God in everyone. We have "that of God" in ourselves, too, of course.

Sometimes we call that the Light. The Bible says, "Be still, and know that I am God" (Ps. 46:10). As Quakers, we practice getting very still and going into a quiet place inside where we can be with God. This is what we do when we worship. It's also a way of praying.

Children are included in our worship meetings. Those too young to sit in silence for a whole hour may have activities or instruction provided for them for part of the time. Some congregations also hold First-Day School, which has a curriculum and adult leaders.

Quakers are not a creedal religious body, and membership requires no particular beliefs. We do, however, have a tradition of testimonies or behaviors: equality, integrity, harmony, peace, simplicity. Discussions of faith with children might center on these testimonies as some of the important things we have learned about living with others as God would want.

Sometimes when we worship or pray, we just let the Light and Love of God fill us. We may get a message from God for ourselves or for people we are worshiping with. If we get a message to be shared, we give the message and then go back into the Silence.

Sometimes we bring something with us that we want to place in God's Light. Maybe something is bothering us. When we hold a worry in the Light, we realize that God can cover any problem with Love and Light and take care of it ... in the same way that turning on a light in a dark room helps us find something or not be afraid.

Sometimes we have a concern about others; maybe they are hurt or in danger or doing something that requires great strength and courage. We hold them in the Light and know that they, and what they do, are in God's care. Maybe we don't love someone as much as we should and don't know how to make that right; when we hold someone in the Light, we are giving the largest gift of love that we can give.

And we place ourselves in the Light, too, so that God's Love can give us strength and new ways of looking at life. There are two surprises here for us. The first is that we can do this anywhere and anytime. The second is that the Light doesn't shine just on what we hold in the Light, it shines on everything else in our lives as well.

Shelly Angel

Shelly Angel is a member of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) and lives in Richardson, Texas.