Just as children need healthy food, they need spirituality
“Children have an inherent capacity for spiritual insight and experience, which is sometimes extraordinarily vivid and powerful. Many adults can recall powerful experiences of deep spiritual perception in early childhood, which sometimes leave a life-long impression. This is not primarily a matter of children’s ‘beliefs’, but of their capacity for spiritual experience that can be either nourished or neglected.
If we recognise children’s capacity and need for spirituality, it is part of our responsibility as parents and as Quaker communities to nourish our children’s spiritual lives, just as much as we are responsible for feeding, clothing and educating them. Just as children need healthy food, they also need opportunities to experience the inward place of gathered, prayerful stillness, and to encounter people whose lives express forgiveness, integrity and compassion.“
— Craig Barnett, 2013
Local development worker for Britain Yearly Meeting
Today’s Invitation
Nourish children’s spiritual lives.
This Week’s Query
What was your experience of spirituality as a child?
How would you explain the Divine to a child?
Read the source of today’s quote
Banner art by Rebecca Price
