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Why spiritual practice?
We sense that the time has come again for the Christian faith to be practised, lived and loved, more than just learned as knowledge (as important as that is). The disciples learned a way of life from being with Jesus as well as from hearing him teach. So the Christian path is something that we do, even something that we become, as much as something that we believe. We hope that you personally will find this reorientation towards a life rooted in spiritual practice liberating and life-enhancing, and that this will be an experience that you will share with the children you work with. When working with this material, ask yourself:
• What could this practice look like for me?
• What could this practice look like in the lives of these children?
• How can I help them to explore these possibilities in the time we have together and in other settings (home / family meal / school / church / all-age service etc)?
Falling: when things go wrong
Background Place in the Christian tradition
In Western Christianity we have not been particularly good at working out how to handle life when it goes wrong. There’s a pressure to ignore the thing that has gone wrong, or to move on from it quickly to something that is seen to be more positive. But the Judaeo-Christian tradition is actually full of resources for facing and handling life when it goes wrong. Much of the Old Testament is a whole series of reflections on how and why things fall apart. Many of the Psalms emerge from a sense of absence, loss or betrayal. Jesus himself was acquainted with life’s hard ground: check out his grief at the death of Lazarus or his Gethsemane experience - voicing his loss, remaining in the tough place. These all give us permission to stay with these falling experiences, to remain in the darkness as long as is necessary, to ask the tough questions, and to wait in silence when no answer seems to come.
Our contemporary context
Life does not always go as we wish. Bad things happen. From small daily irritations to overwhelming tragedies, life is as demanding as it is joyful and children are not exempt. One of the first and toughest learnings for any child is the realisation that things will not always turn out as they want them to. Falling over is an early experience for most children. As we get older, the falling usually takes a different form, but it is rarely far off. We fall, things fall around us, and sometimes our whole world falls in on us. Wonder doesn’t come without desolation, and to become mature human beings, bringing good to the world in the way of Jesus, we need to learn how to fall.
The practice
This month’s practice
Actions, thoughts, words and silence combine to shape a practice for dealing with things that go wrong in the lives of the children.
The practice in four steps
Combine as many of these as will work in your setting:
The falling
Falling can be done well. If you happen to have access to both appropriate matting and a trained instructor, a great way into this could be through learning basic gymnastic tumbling skills such as forward rolls, backward rolls and cartwheels, or through learning to fall into other people’s arms. In these situations, falling moves from something to be feared, to something to be experienced. ‘Here,’ you can say, ‘we are beginning to learn how to fall.’
The ground
Ask the children to lie face down on the ground and to stay there for a while - even if it’s a bit uncomfortable. Ask them to notice what to feels like to be on the ground. ‘Here,’ you say, ‘we are beginning to accept the tough times.’
The question
Remaining on the ground, get the children to remember something that has gone wrong for them. Give them space to think about it and explain that we are not going to try to put it right at this moment. Can they put what they are feeling into a silent question, such as ‘Why has this happened?’ and can they tell God that they are disappointed, angry, worn out, fearful or annoyed? ‘Here,’ you say, ‘we are learning how to make a prayer from whatever we are going through.’
The silence
Explain that we are going to let our questions remain as questions without answers. Keep some silence together for a few minutes (you could choose the length of time and explain that you will call everyone out of it). Some children may fidget, or try and tell you about their thing; just gently encourage them into stillness and silence again. At the end of the silent period, make a short prayer. It could be something like this: ‘Help us to fall well. Help us to stay on the ground as long as it takes. Help us to ask questions. Help us to wait for answers.’ And now at this final stage in the practice you can say, ‘We are learning how to wait for the moment when we can begin to rise.’
The practice in different settings
Solitary ideas
As with the previous practice in this series, blessing, encourage the children as they go to sleep to reflect on whatever has gone wrong in the day, and to imagine going through the same practice: the falling, the ground, the question and the silence.
Ideas for the family
At the end of a week have two bowls - one with sweet things and one with savoury things in (such as Smarties and olives). As the family talks about their week, they can pick and eat a savoury thing for the times that have been difficult in the week, and a sweet for the good things. Remind the parents that it is OK for the whole savoury bowl to go, and for this to be a time of tears and hugs.
