Treasure in a Shell

On one end of my daughter’s bed there is a collection of boxes and treasures that often threatens to overflow it’s shelf and cover her bed to such an extent that there is no place to sleep without fear that a piece of art or breakable tiny dish will be damaged. Hidden away in one of her treasure boxes, wrapped in a small cloth, is a rather large clam shell. The other day she took it out and carried it around to admire it before putting it safely back in its chest. At one point, while turning it over in her hands, she said,

“Do you know what my shell reminds me of? My baptism.”

It is at moments like this that my wife and I are reminded that beneath the surface of paper crafts, Lego projects, and fights over who gets to sleep with the cat, there is a deep contemplative soul in each of our children. Sure it comes out of this one more easily than that one, or at this time more than that time, but it is always there, absorbing, growing, learning. They are slowly building their understanding of who they are, and who God is, and how the two fit together. They are learning to fall in love with their Maker.

In my impatience I often want to rush this. To give them all the information so they sound smarter than the other kids. My children are my resume for awesome parenting. But some things, as I have been begrudgingly learning, can’t be rushed.

Slow Down, Dig Deep

For the past few years our church has been slowly building a children’s program that is very different from what I grew up attending. It is called Catechesis of the Good Shepherd. It is Montessori based, and often the kids can be seen pouring rice, polishing brass, or planting little seeds in pots of dirt. The direct influence of this is hard to see. When parents come in and ask their child what they are working on and they answer “Cutting up this paper,” or when they ask what they learned about today and the child just shrugs, it is easy to step back and ask: “Why?” However the curriculum is not focused on teaching information, it is focused on shaping the heart of the child, and that is something much harder to gauge.

Because we think of education in terms of filling the head we tend to ask questions to evaluate just that. But what sort of questions can you ask to evaluate the heart? Are you more patient now? Are you more aware of God whispering to your heart? Do you have a greater appreciation for the role of art in worship? Most of these questions would be met with the same blank stare and uneasy shrug from anyone on the receiving end. Teaching the heart to love works very differently. It takes time. It takes repetition. Often one does not recognize the change until years later when they look back and realize they see the world differently now. Many of us who are less contemplative, don’t look back, and so don’t notice the change.

Yet my wife and I have been watching. We have been waiting. And over the past few years our children have asked more questions about God, or brought him up more readily in conversations, included him more often in their art, in their play, in their life. Then, from time to time, there is a direct link between what they are doing at church and what they are thinking about. My daughter contemplating baptism while looking at her shell is one such time. The first animal life God created was in the sea, and so shells are a symbol of new life in Christianity. In my daughter’s Catechesis Atrium there is a baptism station where children can “work” with materials and think about what baptism means. One activity, or “work,” makes use of a shell to pour water over their fist. It’s often hard for children to articulate what new data they have in their mind, but they leave with a growing love for their Good Shepherd who has given, and continues to give so much to them.

That is not to say the mind is neglected. The children are walking through the gospels every year starting at three years of age. They are learning the parables Jesus taught by mixing leaven into a lump of dough, planting wheat seeds, and marveling at tiny mustard seeds on the tip of their index finger. They are learning the cities in Israel, the waterways and mountains. The five year olds have a model of Jerusalem with walls and cisterns. The historical realities of Jesus’ birth, life, death and resurrection are made known to them not only through the reading of Scripture but through touching and feeling and smelling.

Who’s the Teacher?

When I was being trained to lead Catechesis, one of the things that stuck out to me is that “catechists” are not teachers.  Jesus is the Teacher.  It is comforting for me at least to know that I am not responsible for making my kids into perfect people.  It is not my job to make them into Christians.  I am not the Teacher.  I can’t invite them into a relationship with Christ.  But the Shepherd that called both me and my wife so many years ago is now calling out to each of our kids, calling them to follow Him, and they are having their hearts shaped by the greatest Teacher of all. 

Our culture can get over focused on head knowledge, often to the neglect of the heart.  Growing up I felt that my knowledge of God was somehow a measure of my closeness to Him.  This carried over into parenting.  As a young parent I started reading through kids’ Bibles with my children so that they would know the story of scripture from cover to cover.  I guess I still do that.  But thanks to this program I no longer equate my kids’ knowledge of scripture with their relationship with God.  In our home we now take time to teach our kids to pray, and to teach them worship songs, and try to spend time with God together, not to learn, but just enjoy being together with God.  And we also watch, watch for things our kids say while playing, while cleaning their rooms, and while looking through their treasures… we are looking for glimpses into what Christ their Good Shepherd is teaching their hearts.

Interested in learning more about Catechesis of the Good Shepherd? Visit their website.  Godly Play uses much of the same approach and while I have not worked with it, everything I hear about it is very positive.  Our church looked at both and felt Catechesis of the Good Shepherd was the best fit for us.