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July/August 2002 Spirituality |
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| Susan Dermond |
Helping children to enjoy and appreciate the sacred moments in their lives has been a topic in this column, and several ways to facilitate that process, including Nature games, stories, and body work have been discussed. Another fun activity for many families is making a children’s altar. If the word altar smacks too much of organized religion to your ear, substitute another term, such as treasure shelf, gratitude corner, or sacred space.
What to put on it?
An altar can be a place for religious pictures, icons, or symbols, and if these items have meaning for your family, let your child place them on the altar. For example, you might want to use a Buddha statue, an Om symbol, the figure of St. Francis and the wolf of Gubbio, or a Menorah.
The altar is also a spot for displaying and enjoying other special finds and mementoes. The fun and the self-discovery will really come in when you and your child together select other special items that you think of as "sacred," or special and inspiring. For example, a letter from grandma or a stuffie that was the gift of a good and loving friend might be placed on the altar. A photograph of a pet, especially one that has died, communicates more to the child about the heart’s love you wish to awaken than any number of words.
"The eyes should be trained to see truth and beauty," as Donald Walters says in Education for Life. Ask your child what objects from nature he finds beautiful. A special rock or crystal can be worth a trip to the gem store. An afternoon looking at the infinite variety of crystals, gems, fossils, and other geologic treasures or a walk in the woods together to find pine cones, seed pods, or lichen might turn out to be the best part of the whole altar project.
In the classrooms at the Living Wisdom School, we sometimes have altars that display the bounty of the season, for example fall leaves and berries. At other times the altar might relate to the unit the class is studying.
One of the most inspiring, breath-taking altars we’ve had went along with a marine-life unit of the primary class. Beautiful blue and green flowing fabrics cascaded down the wall behind the altar. On the altar were gifts from the sea such as starfish, conch shells, and shark’s teeth. Next to the altar was a rock fountain that provided the sound of water. Poster-sized photographs of underwater life surrounded the whole thing. And finally the children hung from the ceiling their jellyfish, made with long sparkling tentacles. The whole corner shimmered and gurgled and soothed.
The infinite variety and wonder of sea-life-forms on our blue-planet did not have to be explained to the children. They were living in it!
Another, simpler, beautiful altar was created by a couple of volunteers in the intermediate class. The teacher gave the students, fabric, several calendars, and a few candles and pictures. The students chose to do a "color altar." They used magenta fabric to cover the table, chose close-up photographs of blossoms in reds and pinks to display across the altar, and found rose candles and a small piece of pink quartz. One student was so happy with it that she convinced her mother to buy a fuschia azalea to add the finishing touch of a live plant.
These students were expressing their inner sense of aesthetics and appreciation and uplifting their environment, and receiving the message from the teacher that this aspect of life matters!
What to do with it?
Once you’ve created the altar, what do you do with it? The process of creating the altar is valuable in itself, but you can do much more. You can light candles to create that special ambiance and sit in front of it and sing together. You could pray for other people or kneel or sit there for bedtime prayers just before tucking in. You could use the space for cleansing; when you’ve had a hard day or have not been getting along, you could smudge each other with sage.
When your child has a worry or fear, after talking about it you could sit together at the altar. Talk about why you chose the items on the altar so the child can revisit their beauty or meaning. Light incense and candles, sing. Finally, a hug or foot rub can ground and relax the child into this peaceful and happy place.
All of these ideas will be much more effective in teaching your child that there is a resource of calmness within if you actually have these practices in your own life. If your child senses that you are manipulating her to get her to feel a certain way, she won’t be interested. But if you are sharing your own practices—positive thinking, expressing gratitude, going within for strength, using nature’s beauty to uplift you—your child will be eager to join in.
Susan Dermond is the contributing editor of I Came from Joy, a spiritual activity book for children, and the Director of the Living Wisdom School, Pre-school-Gr. 7. Yoga for children is offered at the school on Saturdays. Call 503 671-9112 for more information on the school or Saturday classes.