Religion for Our Children
Foundations for Self-discovery
From Heaven to Earth
Childhood is a very precious time, for many different reasons. It begins with a heavenly aura which draws us into its light and warmth, it continues with the astounding work of the incarnating being taking hold of its new body and it eventually dissolves in the awakening to a destiny in the earthly world. It is a time of great adventure and of amazing achievement. It is precious because it lays the foundation for the whole of life. Everyone who has studied the human being closely knows that the younger the years the more important they are. What we achieve in the first three years is in a league of its own: standing, walking, speaking, thinking. Coming Out of the Spirit World we are delivered into a totally different and strange setting that we have to come to grips with. It is no easy task! To childhood and youth belongs the journey from our spiritual home into this other kind of existence. It is a journey that needs its time if a right transition is to be made.
It is the task of the religious life to accompany this transition and in particular to provide the needed balance for the loss of our heavenly origins. For we inevitably have to lose them if we are to become ego-beings of the present time. This loss takes place gradually over a longer period of time. In our very early preschool years we only slowly become aware that this world is quite different from the other world. The two start out as one. For the young child everything is imbued with being, everything can have a personal name. All the forms of life in nature can be experienced as beings. We do not have that feeling of identity that we later acquire that separates us off into our own world. The small child learns by absorbing its surroundings. It therefore needs no formal religion, for life is still one and the spirit is in everything. Life itself is a ritual. Of course. this stage of life is all too frequently brought to a tragically quick end, nipping many a potential later development in the bud. How often an adult crisis will have been sown in the misguided ambition of parents to push their children headlong into ‘real life’! Towards the end of the first seven years the child has completed the first stage of its journey. Heaven has been left behind and in the next seven years the focus moves more and more strongly towards the earth. An increasing gap opens up between our heavenly origins and our growing involvement in earth existence. It is at this time that a formal (or formed) religious life becomes necessary as a compensation for what we are losing. Without such compensation the soul can lack the nourishment that it needs. The nature of this compensation. over the whole period of this journey, is the conviction of our spiritual nature. In losing our awareness of our heavenly origins we have to gain the consciousness of our own spiritual identity which gives us the tool we need in order to seek the heavenly sphere again.
Such a formed religious life has elements which belong to the different rhythms of life: to the day with its alternation of waking and sleeping. to the months with their succession of festivals and seasons. to the year with its relationship to the bodies and beings of the universe. There is also the rhythm of the week, born out of God’s work of creation, which provides the time structure of our working life. We have, in general, a working week of five days and a weekend. The latter is really a misnomer. Saturday is the week-end, named after Saturn, the god or planet of memory, of looking back and of contemplating what has been. Sunday is the week-beginning, the day of the Lord, named after the Sun which brings the forces of creation for the coming working week. Our weekends tend to have predominantly the character of recovery and relaxation. We need to take care that what belongs specifically to Sunday also has its space.
The Children’s Service
So for the children it is important that Sunday also has this Sun element. The soul can find refreshment in many of the ways in which we relax and enjoy ourselves, but it also needs to open itself to the spirit in order that the greater Spirit, the Spirit of Christ. can find a welcome place in our hearts. He has to be invited in. This invitation forms the active response asked of the children who attend our Children’s Service. The service begins where the children have inwardly come from in their religious experience in their first seven years: the acknowledgment of everything in the world as a revelation of being. It then describes the Christian archetype which is found in all earth existence: life leads to death in order that new life may arise. But this new life is not a repeat of the old as it is in nature, it comes into being as a metamorphosis, ultimately as a transformation, of the old and it restores to us our perception of the spirit. On this basis it is then possible to refer to Christ’s death because it is the gateway to new life. And that new life can become real when we provide a space for Christ in our hearts. And so we come to the ‘working week’, when we apply ourselves to understanding the world and to playing our working part within it. Our motivation must ultimately be the love which Christ brought into the world and which is the substance of his teaching. Here in simple words the purpose of our existence on earth is stated. The response to this is the children’s prayer:
when they raise their souls to the Spirit of God he will be with them. In its own way the Children’s Service leads to a kind of communion. The reading from the gospel follows and then a song, and the service concludes with words of dismissal.
This service moves in a quite natural way between the earthly and the spiritual. A wonderful balance is maintained and the pivot of this balance is the Christ who lives in our hearts. We can imagine that as we leave our heavenly origins behind and increasingly come to our own identity we can carry this picture in our souls, normally below the threshold of our consciousness, as the assurance of our spirit being. Is this then not the true compensation that we need? We can lose the heavens if we can refind them as the substance out of which our true selves grow. This is the life gift which the rhythmic attendance of the Children’s Service gives. Its purpose is not to give intellectual convictions but to provide inner assurance of being, that power - of Christ - which gives us the strength to stand in the world on our own ‘inner feet’. This is one of the most essential gifts that all human beings need at a time when life tends to take away all outward supports and obliges us to stand on these inner feet.
Practicalities
From the above description it will be clear that there is no need for a formal religious life in the sense of a service in the first period of life. Certainly, life itself can have a religious framework, especially at the beginning and end of the day. The Children’s Service becomes relevant when children cross the six/seven transition and start their formal education. For practical reasons younger children often sit with their parents during the Children’s Service, but it has to be said that this is not ideal. In principle, children should attend the service when they are the right age.
All children who come to the service also meet for religious instruction. The content of this is dealt with in another leaflet. Arrangements for this vary in different places. Regularity at both service and instruction is essential. The final phase of this period leads to the Confirmation. Michael Tapp
From Heaven to Earth
Childhood is a very precious time, for many different reasons. It begins with a heavenly aura which draws us into its light and warmth, it continues with the astounding work of the incarnating being taking hold of its new body and it eventually dissolves in the awakening to a destiny in the earthly world. It is a time of great adventure and of amazing achievement. It is precious because it lays the foundation for the whole of life. Everyone who has studied the human being closely knows that the younger the years the more important they are. What we achieve in the first three years is in a league of its own: standing, walking, speaking, thinking. Coming Out of the Spirit World we are delivered into a totally different and strange setting that we have to come to grips with. It is no easy task! To childhood and youth belongs the journey from our spiritual home into this other kind of existence. It is a journey that needs its time if a right transition is to be made.
It is the task of the religious life to accompany this transition and in particular to provide the needed balance for the loss of our heavenly origins. For we inevitably have to lose them if we are to become ego-beings of the present time. This loss takes place gradually over a longer period of time. In our very early preschool years we only slowly become aware that this world is quite different from the other world. The two start out as one. For the young child everything is imbued with being, everything can have a personal name. All the forms of life in nature can be experienced as beings. We do not have that feeling of identity that we later acquire that separates us off into our own world. The small child learns by absorbing its surroundings. It therefore needs no formal religion, for life is still one and the spirit is in everything. Life itself is a ritual. Of course. this stage of life is all too frequently brought to a tragically quick end, nipping many a potential later development in the bud. How often an adult crisis will have been sown in the misguided ambition of parents to push their children headlong into ‘real life’! Towards the end of the first seven years the child has completed the first stage of its journey. Heaven has been left behind and in the next seven years the focus moves more and more strongly towards the earth. An increasing gap opens up between our heavenly origins and our growing involvement in earth existence. It is at this time that a formal (or formed) religious life becomes necessary as a compensation for what we are losing. Without such compensation the soul can lack the nourishment that it needs. The nature of this compensation. over the whole period of this journey, is the conviction of our spiritual nature. In losing our awareness of our heavenly origins we have to gain the consciousness of our own spiritual identity which gives us the tool we need in order to seek the heavenly sphere again.
Such a formed religious life has elements which belong to the different rhythms of life: to the day with its alternation of waking and sleeping. to the months with their succession of festivals and seasons. to the year with its relationship to the bodies and beings of the universe. There is also the rhythm of the week, born out of God’s work of creation, which provides the time structure of our working life. We have, in general, a working week of five days and a weekend. The latter is really a misnomer. Saturday is the week-end, named after Saturn, the god or planet of memory, of looking back and of contemplating what has been. Sunday is the week-beginning, the day of the Lord, named after the Sun which brings the forces of creation for the coming working week. Our weekends tend to have predominantly the character of recovery and relaxation. We need to take care that what belongs specifically to Sunday also has its space.
The Children’s Service
So for the children it is important that Sunday also has this Sun element. The soul can find refreshment in many of the ways in which we relax and enjoy ourselves, but it also needs to open itself to the spirit in order that the greater Spirit, the Spirit of Christ. can find a welcome place in our hearts. He has to be invited in. This invitation forms the active response asked of the children who attend our Children’s Service. The service begins where the children have inwardly come from in their religious experience in their first seven years: the acknowledgment of everything in the world as a revelation of being. It then describes the Christian archetype which is found in all earth existence: life leads to death in order that new life may arise. But this new life is not a repeat of the old as it is in nature, it comes into being as a metamorphosis, ultimately as a transformation, of the old and it restores to us our perception of the spirit. On this basis it is then possible to refer to Christ’s death because it is the gateway to new life. And that new life can become real when we provide a space for Christ in our hearts. And so we come to the ‘working week’, when we apply ourselves to understanding the world and to playing our working part within it. Our motivation must ultimately be the love which Christ brought into the world and which is the substance of his teaching. Here in simple words the purpose of our existence on earth is stated. The response to this is the children’s prayer:
when they raise their souls to the Spirit of God he will be with them. In its own way the Children’s Service leads to a kind of communion. The reading from the gospel follows and then a song, and the service concludes with words of dismissal.
This service moves in a quite natural way between the earthly and the spiritual. A wonderful balance is maintained and the pivot of this balance is the Christ who lives in our hearts. We can imagine that as we leave our heavenly origins behind and increasingly come to our own identity we can carry this picture in our souls, normally below the threshold of our consciousness, as the assurance of our spirit being. Is this then not the true compensation that we need? We can lose the heavens if we can refind them as the substance out of which our true selves grow. This is the life gift which the rhythmic attendance of the Children’s Service gives. Its purpose is not to give intellectual convictions but to provide inner assurance of being, that power - of Christ - which gives us the strength to stand in the world on our own ‘inner feet’. This is one of the most essential gifts that all human beings need at a time when life tends to take away all outward supports and obliges us to stand on these inner feet.
Practicalities
From the above description it will be clear that there is no need for a formal religious life in the sense of a service in the first period of life. Certainly, life itself can have a religious framework, especially at the beginning and end of the day. The Children’s Service becomes relevant when children cross the six/seven transition and start their formal education. For practical reasons younger children often sit with their parents during the Children’s Service, but it has to be said that this is not ideal. In principle, children should attend the service when they are the right age.
All children who come to the service also meet for religious instruction. The content of this is dealt with in another leaflet. Arrangements for this vary in different places. Regularity at both service and instruction is essential. The final phase of this period leads to the Confirmation. Michael Tapp
Children's events in the congregations
Children's camp in December 2017 in the Johannesburg Congregation held at Goodlands Estate. Click on the photo to access a gallery of photos.