This year I've been making some changes in Communal Prayer in the True Vine Atrium. For the last several years, the children have been leading a fairly structured service of songs, prayers and readings at the end of each atrium. This has been fine but unremarkable.
Since we began meeting in September I have been experimenting with a more relaxed prayer time. Generally I have been picking a few songs to sing together and reading a psalm from a prayer card, or a piece of scripture that is meaningful. I've begun inviting a bit of spontaneous prayer from the children and it is going well. Up to this point, I've been leading (with a little help from the children), but now that we are becoming accustomed to this style of prayer I will be asking children to take the lead. I still feel unsure about what this prayer time will look like, but I believe we are on the road, and I will keep looking to the children to lead the way!
We've been incorporating children's artwork into our prayer time when possible. Last Sunday we had two lovely prayer cards copied by the children that we read and prayed together. I took some photos and have included them in this post for you to enjoy.Below you can see the prayer table from Sunday. Our flowers were brightly colored and very attractive to the children! Every flower was used and the table was brimming! It makes me happy just looking at it!
Hi Leslie, Thanks for sharing about something that you didn't get "right" the first.: ) Also, it is interesting that your intuition alerted you first that something wasn't quite right. Maybe we should trust that still, small voice more.
ReplyDeleteHi Sheila! I think you're right- we should trust the voice more! I don't think I was actually aware of my dissatisfaction until I saw that it could be another way. Perhaps I need to listen a little more carefullly!! :)
DeleteOh, we had the very same discovery just a few weeks ago!!!! after 6 weeks of slowly introducing the structured communal prayer to our level 2 kids and promising them they would get the chance to lead a prayer time, we went to a weekend of level 3 formation and were told that the structure we were using was too defined for Level 2. We panicked a bit - and are slowly trying to reverse directions and open it up to a more spontaneous prayer time - but it is hard, since the kids were all prepared to do the structured time - they want to replicate that! Guess we are always learning, and have to be prepared to humbly accept our mistakes before the kids!
ReplyDeleteI can't believe we had the exact same experience! I guess level 3 training is the time when catechists have the best opportunity to figure out that mistake! We were lucky to discover it this summer and start the year without the structure. This week I asked a child to lead the prayer time without me for the first time. She wanted to write everything out in order ("like we had it last year") and did make notes for herself. She did a really nice job leading. It is good to be humble!
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