Okay, I wrote this really fast at 10:30pm without re-reading it, spell checking it, or adding links. (Bad blogger, bad!) But hopefully it well help out Mike (see below.)

Nighty Night!

Rachelle

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Mike,

Kid’s and the Abbey…well, for instance, our night started out with Emily and Israel (adults) showing everyone thier new pet corn snake. (A big hit with the kids…it lived in Emily’s shirt sleeve, pocket, and under her bandana all night. Josh and Tonya came in, our neighbors from up the street, and the girls climbed all over Josh who they call “thier human jungle gym.” (We set boundaries with the kids about who they can climb on and such. They have two or three adults who are close to thier families and they are allowed to sit on those people’s laps, if they ask first. It’s important to help kids understand what physical boundaries are appropriate to which people…especially in house church situations.)

Eventually we all had dinner together. The kids have memorized our communion prayer and our dinner songs. Sometimes we let the kids pick which sung dinner prayer we will do. On those nights we end up singing anything from “Johnny Appleseed” to “Father I Adore You.” This week during dinner, our girls (6 &4) cooed over one couple’s new baby. The baby was pretty overstimulated so Mom took him into my office/our meditation room for a nurse. For the first time in a month, his dad had to take him home early and mellow him out. Otherwise the whole babes-in-arms thing works pretty well for them.

Our neighbor wandered by and I spied her out the front window. I waved her in and she had a plate of lasagna with us while her 18 month old played. After dinner Catie (4) reminded me that she had been “fwusterated and angrwy” a lot this week and asked to go break a plate. So a bunch of us went outside to break plates. I tried to get the kids to tell Jesus why they need to break the plates, but breaking the plates is too fun, damn it. So they just donned their glasses and slammed the prettiest plates down on the rocks. “You can have my pieces Mommy, to make something yater.”

After dinner, Eden showed everyone the “fuzzy village” she made in school. All the adults patiently listened in on every detail. Shelli, who is a teacher, asked Eden how her art teacher set up that particular project. Eden felt proud to be able to give Shelli “tips.” I asked the kids to be quiet for ten minutes while we worked out some group details together. Then we did the ignation examen — which the kids know as “high point/low point.” (We encourage families to do this practice with the kids a few times a week around the dinner table.) The kids told theirs to their parents and then did random collage pieces while the grown ups collaged thier high/lows. At about nine we put our kids to bed (the other family with kids had already left.)

During the week we spend time reading Bible stories to our kids, we teach them simple forms of centering and encirciling prayer, we talk about God. Eden (6) often draws pictures that “I saw in centering prayer” in her prayer journal (everyone in our community has one). We try to practice family sabbaths on Wednesday night and Sundays. (As far as I know, we are the only family who does this so far…but the other famlies may have thier own rhythms that we don’t yet know a bout.) Ian and Elijah, both 3, also attend Sunday school at local churches. All the kids will cash in on various VBS programs at local mega churches this Summer. (Eden and Catie will go to one each month.)

The 3 year olds have a hard time…as do thier parents. So we have lined up a childcare provider. She’ll start in the Fall. I’d love to do Godly Play but I think it’s too complicated for our resources/size of group. We’ll probably buy a program from Group and adapt as neccessary. But we’ll still have nights when the kids are with us, and the older kids (4 and up) will be welcomed to stay upstairs almost any night. We’ll pay the childcare person $30 a week. We decided to pay someone rather than have the adult rotate b/c our group is so small and you really feel it when someone isn’t with us. Plus, our parents really REALLY need some time to care for thier own souls one hour a week.

One conviction I hold pretty strongly right now is that the the soulcare of children should rest primarily in the home. When I was a children’s pastor, I thought it was the church’s job to indoctirnate the kiddos. But now I think the parents should pay attention to thier kid’s spiritual temprament, and work with thier community to make space for their kid’s needs. Thankfully, the grown ups in our community are pretty aimiable with this process and we’ve been able to work things out — though we’ve had to abandon singing quiet meditative worship tunes! We also formed a group of like minded odd ball missional communities and we meet every month for dinner in someone’s homes. It’s kid’s chaos (7-11 kids) and it gives our kids a chance to play with other kids who’s families have similar stories. At our last meeting it was one of the Mom’s birthdays. She’s a poet, so we had a poetry reading. The kid’s totally dug it and stood in the candlelit backyard reading Shel Silverstien and reciting things they wrote themselves. (Ages 3-10).

Oh, one more thing before I dash. (It’s late.) When we get new folks in the Abbey, esp. folks who have found us through the internet, we do a background check. It’s a bit awkward, but we just explain that because we meet in a home with children we’ve made it standard policy to ask for references. So far we haven’t met with resistance.

Is that helpful? I think you’ve brought this up before, so it’s obviously a struggle for your community. Let’ s keep talking!

Rachelle