Four summer habits to bring your family closer

Eat outside every night. Whether you have a state-of-the art outdoor kitchen area or a simple picnic table in the backyard, eating outdoors is a daily opportunity to enjoy the summer weather. It also leads to kids running off and playing outside—giving parents an opportunity to connect and unwind in the fresh air. But unless you make outdoor eating a daily habit, you risk enjoying it only when you entertain friends for a barbecue.

Go to the nearest lake. There are few day-trips easier (and cheaper) to plan and execute than packing a beach bag and picnic lunch and heading to a nearby lake. Kids and lakes are a natural fit, but many children are growing up swimming only in pools—and they’re missing out on the joy that comes with sand, frogs, and chasing minnows with a net.

Don’t be afraid of the dark. The darkness of winter is cold and harsh, but summer’s darkness is soft and inviting. Take your kids out at night in the summer and show them the stars. Build a fire in the backyard and roast marshmallows. Go camping.

Bike together. If your bikes are gathering dust in your garage, dust them off, pump up the tires and find the bike paths in your area. If you’re fortunate enough to live in a community where events are close by, try to bike—rather than drive—to go out to dinner, see a parade, or attend a festival. An added benefit is the free parking.

—by Annemarie Scobey, from the pages of At Home with Our Faith, Claretian Publications’ print newsletter for parents on nurturing spirituality in the home. Winner of the 2012 Best in Class award from the Associated Church Press, as well as a First Place General Excellence award from the Catholic Press Association for the past three years running. Here’s a sample issue.

We offer very low rates for parish use, as well as our free Moms’ Night Out monthly discussion guides.

And don’t miss our popular single-page parish handouts on handing on the faith, helping kids understand the Mass, Lent, and Advent.

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Grace from sacraments? How do I find it?

• Coincidences with people. When you meet up with someone you wouldn’t have expected, look for what God might be trying to say to you through the other person, or what you might have to offer him or her.

• Through touch. Every sacrament has a physical aspect to it. Allow your child to feel God’s touch through you with a loving squeeze after communion or a hug after reconciliation.

• Flashes of insight. Pay attention to your thoughts right after receiving a sacrament and teach your child to do the same. This is prime time for the Holy Spirit.

—by Annemarie Scobey, from the pages of At Home with Our Faith, Claretian Publications’ print newsletter for parents on nurturing spirituality in the home. Winner of the 2012 Best in Class award from the Associated Church Press, as well as a First Place General Excellence award from the Catholic Press Association for the past three years running. Here’s a sample issue.

We offer very low rates for parish use, as well as our free Moms’ Night Out monthly discussion guides.

And don’t miss our popular single-page parish handouts on handing on the faith, helping kids understand the Mass, Lent, and Advent.

New! Like us on Facebook and follow Homefaith on Twitter.

Once more, with feeling, part two

A child’s wonder at receiving a sacrament can jump-start a ho-hum adult faith.

“In the weeks leading up to my daughter’s first communion, she was so focused on it,” says Bethany, mother of two. “At first I thought maybe it was about the dress, but it was really about her true belief that Christ was coming to her in a way she had not experienced before. She saw it as a tremendous privilege. I hadn’t been thinking very much about going to communion before that, and she moved me from taking it for granted to appreciating it.”

Tom and Sally’s little Katie and baby Michael are now in sixth and third grade respectively, and they’ve each received two more sacraments in addition to baptism. Sally explains that while she sometimes wishes her own faith life included more “lightning bolt” moments, she understands that is not the way God usually works. This makes her appreciate the sacraments all the more.

“There are moments in my life that come closer than others to the lightning bolt level,” Sally says. “I see the sacraments as an opening in just this way, a window in time where the veil between heaven and earth is blown aside. The trick is in feeling that, in stepping outside of the details, the pressures, and the everyday bits of life that cloud our vision. I’m hoping that practice makes it more possible to do this.”   (Part one appeared here)

—by Annemarie Scobey, from the pages of At Home with Our Faith, Claretian Publications’ print newsletter for parents on nurturing spirituality in the home. Winner of the 2012 Best in Class award from the Associated Church Press, as well as a First Place General Excellence award from the Catholic Press Association for the past three years running. Here’s a sample issue.

We offer very low rates for parish use, as well as our free Moms’ Night Out monthly discussion guides.

And don’t miss our popular single-page parish handouts on handing on the faith, helping kids understand the Mass, Lent, and Advent.

New! Like us on Facebook and follow Homefaith on Twitter.

One-on-one

We pull west into our driveway, the waning sunset silhouetting the basketball hoop on this “unseasonably warm” day. The daughter says, “Stay here, Mom, we’re going to have some fun.” She leaps out of the car and bounds up the steps into the house.

The oldies station is on the car radio, and here is Bob Dylan singing his anthem of the ‘60s:

Come senators, congressmen, please heed the call

Don’t stand in the doorway, don’t block up the hall 

For he that gets hurt will be he who has stalled

There’s a battle outside and it is ragin’…

For the times they are a-changin’.

The daughter reappears cradling a basketball. “Come on, we’re going to play!” I leave the radio on, the windows open. Bob Dylan moves on to family matters:

Come mothers and fathers throughout the land

And don’t criticize what you can’t understand

Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command. . .

“Good shot, Mom!” She shows me how to aim for the corner of the box that’s painted on the backboard. We take turns shooting. “Guard me,” she says, “and watch this new shot I’m working on.”

“Guard” is purely a figurative term since she’s got six inches on me. (How did that happen?) She swoops and leaps as the night advances. Two stunning planets now hang in the evening sky.

Your sons and your daughters are beyond your command is something every parent must confront sooner or later. The parents of Dylan’s era had it harder than most: Many of their kids completely rejected their parents’ whole worldview. In contrast my husband and I have had it easy—our daughter’s latest protest tactic is revolving with her arms spread wide to indicate when I’m being a “helicopter parent.” But she’ll be off to college before you know it—beyond our command.

“The days are long but the years are short,” writes Gretchen Rubin of the Happiness Project. The psalmist says it too: “This is the day the Lord has made. Let us be glad and rejoice in it” (Ps. 118:24), and ”Teach us to count our days that we may gain a wise heart” (Ps. 90:12). The daily crises of parenting can blind us to the blessedness of the moment. Sometimes the basketball hoop in the twilight must win out over the homework, the dinner waiting to be made.

Dylan is wrapping up. You can hear the Bible echoes here if you listen:

The slow one now will later be fast

As the present now will later be past . . .

And the first one now will later be last

For the times they are a-changin’

Our kids change right before our very eyes. The boy whose shoes you were tying now can outrun you, will soon tower over you. (Someday, who knows, he might be tying your shoes.) That might not have been what Jesus was talking about when he said, “The last will be first, and the first will be last” (Matt. 20:16), but we’ll take it nonetheless. When they are infants it seems like we have all the time in the world with our kids, but in fact the opposite is true.

The clock is running; time is short. Take your best shot.

—by Catherine O’Connell-Cahill, from the pages of At Home with Our Faith, Claretian Publications’ print newsletter for parents on nurturing spirituality in the home. Winner of the 2012 Best in Class award from the Associated Church Press, as well as a First Place General Excellence award from the Catholic Press Association for the past three years running. Here’s a sample issue.

We offer very low rates for parish use, as well as our free Moms’ Night Out monthly discussion guides.

And don’t miss our popular single-page parish handouts on handing on the faith, helping kids understand the Mass, Lent, and Advent.

New! Like us on Facebook and follow Homefaith on Twitter.

Once more, with feeling

At their infant son Michael’s baptism, Tom and Sally stood at the altar with their son’s godparents and their 3-year-old daughter, Katie. As part of the baptismal rite, the priest invited all of them, including Katie, to mark Michael’s forehead with the sign of the cross.

“For me, that moment was a brush with the divine,” Sally remembers. “Katie’s loving touch, her simple symbolic gesture, so clearly united the two of them in the world with God in heaven. The idea of her loving him, and the two of them showing God’s care and tenderness to each other through the many phases of life they would share, was so palpable and so clearly an act of God. It was as forceful as lightning for me. That day will always be an example of what a sacrament can and should be. It’s one of the greatest gifts of my life.”

Our children’s sacraments can be moments of God’s grace for parents as surely as they are moments of grace for children. For parents who didn’t pay too much attention the first time around, children’s sacraments also offer a second chance to learn, listen, and be open to the movement of God.

Carol, a director of religious education for her parish and mother of four, sees many parents who reconnect with their own faith as their children are preparing for a particular sacrament. “Sacramental preparation for children can be a re-awakening for parents,” Carol says. “Especially when the materials used for preparation are to be done as a family, the parents are able to appreciate the sacraments more deeply. It gives them an opportunity to really reflect on what they believe.”

Some parents say they weren’t ready to hear about sacramental grace when they were preparing for the sacraments themselves, but now, with more life experience, they see value where before they saw tedium.

“In the 30 years between my own first reconciliation and my son’s first reconciliation, I didn’t go to reconciliation at all,” says Jeff, father of two. “I felt like, why should I confess my sins to a priest? I can say I’m sorry to God directly. But as I’ve seen how sin breaks relationships and tears apart families, I understand that there is something powerful about naming my sin out loud. Reconciliation changes me in a way that a private prayer cannot. I didn’t understand that when I was younger.” …continued next week

—by Annemarie Scobey, from the pages of At Home with Our Faith, Claretian Publications’ print newsletter for parents on nurturing spirituality in the home. Winner of the 2012 Best in Class award from the Associated Church Press, as well as a First Place General Excellence award from the Catholic Press Association for the past three years running. Here’s a sample issue.

We offer very low rates for parish use, as well as our free Moms’ Night Out monthly discussion guides.

And don’t miss our popular single-page parish handouts on handing on the faith, helping kids understand the Mass, Lent, and Advent.

New! Like us on Facebook and follow Homefaith on Twitter.

Tips on managing kids’ activities

From parents who have been there—or are there right now.

•  “When choosing among activities, we look for those lifetime activities that people continue to be involved in after they’re done with their schooling—cross country running over lacrosse, for example.”   —Denise, mother of three

•  “We will not miss Mass for a game or practice. If there is a game Saturday afternoon and Sunday morning, one will have to be missed. We might not be able to go to Mass as a whole family; some of us will go Saturday and some on Sunday, but with some flexibility, Mass is not skipped.”  —Carol, mother of four

•  “Learning to find the lesson in the various activities they do takes time, but usually you can break down things into how we should treat people and how God wants us to behave.” —Scott, father of two

—by Annemarie Scobey, from the pages of At Home with Our Faith, Claretian Publications’ print newsletter for parents on nurturing spirituality in the home. Winner of the 2013 Best in Class award from the Associated Church Press, as well as a First Place General Excellence award from the Catholic Press Association for the past three years running. Here’s a sample issue.

We offer very low rates for parish use, as well as our free Moms’ Night Out monthly discussion guides.

And don’t miss our popular single-page parish handouts on handing on the faith, helping kids understand the Mass, Lent, and Advent.

New! Like us on Facebook and follow Homefaith on Twitter.

A Blessing for Mothers of All Sorts, Sizes, and Shapes of Body, Mind, and Spirit

• O mothers, one and all, some of you have carried your children in your womb. Others of you have welcomed babes in need of your attention who came to you from another birth mother. May the love you’ve extended return to you a hundredfold.

• O mothers, do not live in regret of what you wished you would have done, or what you did do and wished you had not. As you look back on your mothering, may you remember that you tried to do your best.

• O mothers, those of you for whom much of your life with your children is before you, do not imagine you can do this alone. Remember it takes a lot of leaning on the Divine Mother whose heart enfolds every mother and child. May you draw strength daily from her kindly presence.

• O mothers, do not forget to care for yourself. Find what enriches and enlivens your deepest self. May you have the vitality it takes to generously give of yourself daily.

• O mothers, you who have gone on to another sphere of life. We bring you to mind and heart today. May the peace you now have seep into the weary and troubled places of mothers’ hearts everywhere.

By Joyce Rupp, a Servite sister and author of many books, including her latest, My Soul Feels Lean: Poems of Loss and Restoration (Ave Maria).  Reprinted with permission.