Children and mealtime grace

For some time, I have been planning to write something about the way our family has grace before meals.

Then we got an email from Kathleen Karhnak, Central Philadelphia Monthly Meeting, about the Phila YM Children's Religious Education Program's newsletter. She has an article in the latest issue.

Kathleen's article is wonderful. It's called Foundations for Children in Quaker Worship (pdf). Here's an excerpt:

Something that’s helped me is paying attention to fostering my child’s noticing those feelings of joy and connectedness, sometimes following his cues instead of expecting him to follow mine. For example, my 2 year old son was beginning to resent family mealtime worship. Why should we just sit here in silence when there’s food RIGHT THERE waiting to be eaten? We now have, in addition to quiet thank-filled worship, a sung grace followed by clapping and exclaiming, “Yay, God!” The clapping was introduced by Tim and we joined in. It’s now a permanent part of grace. My son seems to have that feeling of joy, love, and connectedness during grace now that I remember from my childhood and which is also part of my adult experience of worship. And it’s okay, too, if he samples some of the food while giving thanks for it!

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In our family the four of us take turns, from youngest to oldest, choosing one of several options: Silence, speak a prayer, or sing a prayer. The songs are usually a chorus of "All Creatures Great and Small," "The George Fox Song," "The Appleseed Song (Johnny Appleseed's prayer)," or maybe "Simple Gifts." We end by squeezing hands and saying "amen" -- unless it's the four year old's turn. He is adamant that we not say "amen" when it's his turn!

We frequently forget to have grace until we've already started. Sometimes almost finished!

Our eight year old usually calls for silence. Lately he has been closing his eyes and bowing his head. He sometimes lets it go on for a while. For a long time, when someone chose silence, our four year old would smack his lips or whine that he didn't want silence. If he was leading grace that night, the eight year old would doggedly persist until we got at least four or five seconds of silence.

One evening, when we were particularly tense or tired or both, I called out, "Laughing." So we did. It was wonderfully cleansing and joyful -- and funny! For most of a year afterwards, Four Year Old asked for laughing pretty much every turn he had. It was less and less funny for the rest of us, but he was having fun, so we forced out some guffaws for his sake.

Another time there was lobbying from various small parties about what I should choose, so I called for each of us to pick something. After that, Four Year Old wanted to pick "everyone choose" each time.

He's making progress. At the end of November, we were almost done with dinner when the 4 y.o. said, "We forgot grace!" So we had end-of-meal grace.

Then on his next turn a few days later, he actually chose silence. The silence didn't last long before he squeezed our hands to signal the end -- and we didn't say "amen," of course -- but it's what he chose. Yay!
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• Do you have a practice of mealtime grace?

• What gives you joy that makes you say, "Yay, God"?

• Do your spiritual practices help you center and appreciate the gifts of life? Do you ever feel as if your usual practices are just keeping you from the spiritual food that God has put RIGHT THERE on the table?