Preface
Is there anything more pure, more full of wonder and hope for the future, than the prayer of a child? We find it difficult to imagine what that might be. For a child’s heart, when it forms a prayer of thanks or praise or petition, has none of the self-consciousness and ambivalence of adulthood; it is a laser beam of light and love—focused, clear, and burning with urgency.
Prayer is natural to human beings, whether they are children or grown-ups. It takes place all the time, and not just in churches and synagogues. As Rabbi H.H. Donin has pointed out, we pray even when we don’t realize we’re praying. “Thank God!” we sigh in relief, on hearing that someone we love is recovering from a serious illness and out of danger. Some prayers don’t even invoke God’s name: a gorgeous sunset might evoke a muttered response (“How glorious!”) that is really an act of praise; a guilty conscience might bring us back to someone we’ve hurt (“Forgive me”), where our desire for reconciliation reaches upward as well as outward.
But prayer, like many other human capacities, will atrophy if it is not used and developed. A child possesses an innate ability to pray, just as he has a built-in capacity to learn language. No one would dream of being silent all the time around a child; we not only talk in the presence of our children, but we devote a great deal of time to teaching them words and their proper meanings, pronunciations, and grammatical relationships. As parents, we help our children learn to name and thus understand the world around them.
Prayer is a particular form of language (though it often aspires to go beyond words) that children can pick up with the same ease and facility that they do any kind of speech. But the tragic reality is that those of us who live in the prosperous Western nations have largely failed, in recent generations, to teach our children the language of prayer. This failure, this neglect of our children’s spiritual dimension, has had grave consequences for the moral and psychic health of our culture.
If you are reading this book the odds are that you care deeply for children and want to find ways to enrich their lives and deepen their hearts through prayer. The moral decay that now permeates our culture places children at greater risk than ever before: violence, drugs, teenage pregnancy, and suicide loom like the Four Horses of the Apocalypse over our children’s lives. The number of incidents where children commit violent, senseless crimes is on the rise. As we write, the horror of the Littleton, Colorado high school massacre is still sending shock waves through America.
Even if the vast majority of our children will never have a direct experience of the extremes of violence or criminal behavior, there is a widespread feeling that the innocence and idealism of youth cannot survive in such a cynical and materialistic society. We worry about a generation growing up whose emotions and moral sensibilities are blunted, and we say that something needs to be done.
But what can be done? Our first impulse—an impulse that is quickly taken up by politicians—is to restrict a child’s access to bad things. So we propose stricter gun control laws and install V-chips in our TV sets. There is much to be said for such measures, but most people recognize their limits. In the long run it is what lies inside a child’s heart—rather than externals like guns and violent movies—that will determine their behavior and their future. Nurturing a child’s heart is a task that takes years of love and attention; it’s not a task that can be accomplished by legislation, however well-intentioned.
That’s why more and more parents are questioning the moral health of our culture. Now that they are parents themselves, recent generations—from Boomers to Gen Xers—are rethinking the abandonment of traditional values and disciplines and are casting about for ways to instill moral values in their children, without committing the sins of smugness and narrow-mindedness committed by earlier generations.
Celebrating the virtues has rightly become an important element of character education, but too often discussion of the virtues remains abstract, as if classroom discussions about courage will make children courageous. We do need to talk more about morality—particularly around the dinner table—but the limitation of talk is that it remains a thing of the head and not the heart.
The secret to your child’s moral and spiritual development is this: your child should not simply admire goodness, but actually fall in love with goodness. The Greek philosopher Plato believed that in order to live a full human existence we must develop a feeling of eros for the Good. Today we associate the word eros with “erotic,” or merely sexual, love, but for the Greeks, eros conveyed a passion that involved the whole of a person’s character.
Traditionally, it was in reading—and listening to—stories, including the great epic tales of heroes, that children developed eros for the good, the truth, and the beautiful. Storytelling anchors the virtues in the concrete experience of believable characters. Through the miracle of imagination, a child can enter into a sympathetic relationship with the heroes of great literature, vicariously experiencing both their mistakes and their achievements. In previous books we have written on the relationship between storytelling and virtue, stressing the need to expose children to books and films that exemplify what we call the “moral imagination.”
But in addition to storytelling, there is another path to a child’s moral development—prayer. We have become convinced that prayer is a vital means through which children make the connection between virtuous behavior and their own emotional and personal growth.
For most of the twentieth century—one of the most secular periods in human history—prayer was not something that one discussed in public. Even when prayer wasn’t dismissed outright as a outmoded relic of primitive religion, it was reduced to something that was utterly private and individualistic. Of course, prayer is an intensely private experience in the soul of each human being, but so is romantic love, marriage, patriotism, and nearly every affair of the heart. Yet in all these other realms we recognize that private experience intersects with universal truths, truths that we can and must address publicly.
At the dawn of the new millennium, prayer is no longer taboo. For the sake of our children and our future, it is time that we explore this ancient and hallowed means for reaching out beyond our human limitations to seek out a higher power.
Of course, the first thing that many of us say to ourselves when we consider whether we should bring prayer into the life of our family, is: “How can I teach my kids to pray if I don’t know how to pray myself?” There’s the rub. It’s at this point where many of us hesitate, perched on the knife edge between good intentions and the challenge of putting them into practice.
Scientists have a phrase for the way human beings absorb new information; they call it the “learning curve.” In most cases the learning curve is steep at first, as we struggle to understand both the basic concepts and the finer points. But after a while the curve levels off and we become able to assimilate new ideas more quickly.
The learning curve for prayer can appear formidably steep and intimidating, but it is just at this crossroads, this moment of hesitation, that grace lies in wait for us. When parents hesitate to teach children something they don’t know themselves, they have already stepped out onto the right path, though they don’t often recognize it. Most of us sense that prayer is something that we must practice before we can preach it. This desire to avoid hypocrisy is in itself a step in the direction of spiritual authenticity. In the life of the spirit, wanting is often the same as having. The twentieth-century French novelist Georges Bernanos once said: “The wish to pray is a prayer in itself.... God can ask no more than that of us.” And 1500 years ago St. Augustine said that “We would not seek You if we had not already found You.”
And that brings us to the purpose of this book. It is our hope that we can provide encouragement—and a little help with the learning curve—as you embark on the adventure of praying with your children.
Of course, it is possible to purchase one of the literally hundreds of collections of prayers for children on the market and give it to your children. But, to return to the analogy we used above, that would be a little like giving a two year-old a dictionary and wishing her luck.
The central thesis of this book is that parents need to do more than simply give their kids prayers to say. Rather, parents should learn to pray themselves by praying with their children. This leads directly to the other conviction at the core of this book: that there is nothing wrong with making family prayer the springboard that helps you to develop your own interior life. The first thing that attentive parents discover when they teach their children to pray is that the children quickly become the teachers, reminding us of the innocence and wonder that we have lost, and restoring it to us with a grace and simplicity that can sometimes take your breath away.
In writing Bless This House we have tried to produce something that is more than just a manual of prayer. We’ve taken a few tentative steps in the direction of what we can only call the spirituality of family life. In the course of assembling this book we found—to our amazement—that very little has been written about the relationship between the ordinary, everyday experiences of living together as a family and the inner world of the spirit. Our emphasis, then, is not simply on the “how-to” of prayer, but also on the moral and emotional contexts in which family prayer can take place.
We might not have written this book if we hadn’t received the invitation to do so. Prayer is not a subject on which we consider ourselves authorities. Neither of us is ordained nor do we have degrees in theology. In fact, we joked at one point about whether to entitle this book (with an eye to our own situation) Prayer for Dummies or The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Prayer.
Our credentials for writing on this subject are simply that we are the parents of four children ranging in age from a toddler to a teenager and that we have been praying with them over twelve years now. We’ve relied on our own experiences, a few good books, and a series of conversations with spiritual writers who have plumbed the depths of prayer.
In short, we’re not going to pretend that we’re a Super Family—clean-cut, well-adjusted, full of greeting-card sentiments. Not hardly. We snap at each other when we’re tired; we try—and fail—to balance work and family time; we struggle on a daily basis with selfishness, resentment, and anxiety. To put it delicately: we are an expressive family, which sometimes means that all six of us are screaming at each other at the top of our lungs. On the other hand, we are also a physically demonstrative bunch—hugging, kissing, biting, wrestling, etc. For better or worse, no emotion is repressed in the Wolfe household. And yet somehow we manage to hang in there, find the time to calm down, and even to lift our voices in prayer. Slowly, but surely, prayer has become an essential part of our cohesiveness as a family.
It is all too easy, when addressing the subject of children and prayer, to slip into sentimentality and a pious, otherworldly tone—what the poet Patricia Hampl calls the “eau de cologne language of spirituality.” We’ve tried to avoid that mindset like the plague it is. On the contrary, we’d like to think of ourselves as “spiritual realists.” As every parent knows quite well, family life is an exercise in barely contained chaos: babies crying, older kids rampaging, parents struggling with exhaustion and a day that is never long enough. Family prayer times are commonly beset by fidgeting, bickering kids, ringing phones, and distractions galore. In these circumstances, it isn’t likely that we will find mystical illumination, or even emotional uplift.
That’s why it is so important to remember that prayer is an art. Like any art form prayer requires us to overcome the powerful forces of inertia. The life of the spirit requires time and discipline to grow; you can’t just take a few prayers, add water, and expect instant holiness. The self-help industry has generated a lot of revenue by promising seven (or some other quasi-sacred number) “easy steps” to healing, wisdom, and prosperity. But the great spiritual masters know that the only effective steps are the small ones that we take every day of our lives—just like a one year-old learning to walk.
The good news is that with discipline comes liberation. The obvious analogy here is with the musician who practices. After practicing innumerable scales and arpeggios, musicians can play with such freedom that they seem to be making up the music as they go along.
So it is with prayer. Somehow, by placing ourselves on a daily basis in the precincts of grace, the joy of heaven can suddenly irrupt into our lives. In our household, there are times when family prayers take place in the midst of giggles, good-natured wrestling matches, and the occasional naughty joke. Our family would certainly scandalize those who think that piety requires a long face and rigid posture. But there’s no reason why prayer has to turn anyone into a prig. Many of the great saints and holy ones have possessed a mischievous sense of humor. In this regard St. Francis springs to mind; he often indulged in playful irony. To take just one example, he loved to call his body, with all its embarrassments and complaints, “Brother Ass.”
We’ve tried to write about prayer in the same vein of earthy humor and realism that characterized St. Francis’s approach to life. If prayer means anything at all, it is about the way the divine penetrates the earthly, making ordinary things radiant and turning the chaos of our days into a joyful dance. As G.K. Chesterton once said, “Angels fly because they take themselves lightly.”
There are other challenges that face those who attempt to write about prayer. For example, this book is addressed to a large and diverse readership, and yet prayer is a practice that often takes place within specific religious communities and traditions. What makes this even more difficult for us is that we have great respect for the differences and specific habits and rituals of the world’s enduring religious traditions. Americans have a tendency to think that they can create their own personal systems of belief, but this frequently leads to stagnation rather than freedom, eccentricity rather than wisdom. So in compiling this book we were faced with the question of how to show respect for specific traditions while also striving for breadth and variety in approaches.
In struggling to find the proper balance, we have followed two basic principles. First, both the selections of prayers and our commentaries on them keep to the middle of the stream rather than paddling up the individual tributaries. In other words, we include many prayers from the Roman Catholic tradition, but not the rosary or other prayers that involve a theology that is obviously controversial for non-Catholics. In a similar vein, we’ve gathered many Jewish prayers and blessings, but not entire Jewish ceremonies that properly belong to a specific, communal context. And so on. However, if you are offended by encountering the prayers of traditions other than your own, this book is not for you.
Second, we’ve borrowed an idea from C.S. Lewis’s popular book, Mere Christianity. In his preface to that book, Lewis says that his exposition of Christian doctrine is intended to serve as a hallway—a meeting place where many different believers find common ground. But Lewis goes on to say that a hallway is not a dwelling place. Most of us need to find the door of the particular tradition that seems most welcoming to our spirits, and then to enter into that room to eat our meals and get warm by the fire. Some people prefer to move from room to room, sampling the goodness of several different traditions. The danger of this approach is that it becomes a sort of spiritual dabbling—an assortment of finger foods rather than a square meal—but a serious interest in the diversity of religious expression around the world is an antidote to arrogant provincialism.
Our hope is that this book will also serve as a hallway, and that you will move on into the rooms where you can find nourishment and comfort. To that end, we’ve included an annotated bibliography that includes several classic and contemporary works from a variety of religious traditions.
Then there is the vital question of who it is that we are praying to. Some people would say that it doesn’t matter to whom prayers are addressed because they have a therapeutic value in and of themselves. Prayer, to this way of thinking, has a calming effect and is simply a form of “personal expression.” There’s an element of truth to that. Prayer can bring deep inner peace and it is always colored by our unique personalities. But we think it is both ill-advised and self-defeating to think of prayer as merely a therapeutic device. If you approach prayer from a purely pragmatic point of view, as a kind of stress-relieving technique, you’re bound to be disappointed. There are many practices, ancient and modern, that are geared to calming body and soul, including meditation, deep breathing, and guided visualization. Prayer, however, requires us to speak and even if we never hear an audible answer to our prayers, the whole process only makes sense if we are entering into a conversation with someone.
Here the witness of our children can infuse a healthy dose of common sense into the discussion. A child addresses his prayers to a person and seeks attention—and answers—from that transcendent figure. Children have a startling capacity for praying in a naturally conversational tone, as if they were talking to a beloved aunt or uncle. Modern psychology has brought much good to our world, but some of its more ideological strains have tended to caricature faith and spirituality as the result of “childish delusion.” We prefer to side with the Pulitzer Prize-winning child psychiatrist Robert Coles, who refuses to reduce faith to wish-fulfillment. After a lifetime of work with children all over the world, Coles wrote The Spiritual Life of Children, in which he concluded that he sees children “as seekers, as young pilgrims well aware that life is a finite journey and as anxious to make sense of it as those of us who are farther along in the time allotted us.”
We don’t want to imply that prayer is incompatible with doubt or uncertainty about the existence and character of God. As most of the great spiritual writers attest, doubt is a close cousin to faith; healthy doubt, allied to an open mind and a curious heart, provides fertile ground for the inner life. Perhaps Coles’s analogy of the pilgrim is apt here. A pilgrim is not a mere wanderer; he has a goal, whether that be God or some form of enlightenment. But even the most ardent pilgrim knows that he is still on the road, that the journey itself is marked by moments where the path is sometimes clear and sometimes hard to discern. Just be careful that you don’t let your adult uncertainties become a burden to your child. And by the same token, don’t assume that your child’s faith is merely naïve, that it cannot help you to recapture an intuitive knowledge that you’ve found it difficult to hold onto.
Jesus rebuked his disciples for keeping children away from him. They had fallen into a trap not unlike that of some psychologists: they looked on spirituality as the serious business of grown-ups. But Jesus said: “Let the children come unto me, and do not hinder them; for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven” (Matthew 19:14).
So, with children as our guides and teachers, we write from the perspective that prayer is addressed to a personal God who created the world and who knows and loves each and every one of us in that world, and who answers our prayers in real, if mysterious, ways.
The first four chapters of Bless This House address the central features of prayer in the context of family life. Chapter one raises the question of why prayer is so urgently needed in family life today. Chapter two contains a sketch of what we call “a spirituality of family life” and the ways in which prayer can help us cope with conflict and stress. In chapter three we focus on the role that prayer can play in your child’s moral, cognitive, and spiritual development. Finally, chapter four responds to the many practical questions that occur to parents when seeking to introduce their children to prayer. When do I begin praying with my children? What if parents are of mixed faiths? Are there particular places or postures that are conducive to prayer? And so on. The remainder of the book is devoted to a collection of classic and contemporary prayers. Each section of prayers is introduced with anecdotes from our own family or that of others and contains practical suggestions for how to integrate the many different types of prayer into your family devotions.
It is our earnest hope that you will unlock your child’s—and your own—potential for the divine conversation that is prayer. It is a well-known paradox of the spiritual life that when we gather together and focus our love and attention outward—on God’s goodness and grace—we actually grow closer to one another. That is the secret of praying together as a family.