Habits of a Child's Heart

Habits of a Child's Heart: Raising Your Kids With the Spiritual Discipline by Valerie E. Hess

My rating: 4 of 5 stars
In Habits of a Child’s Heart, Valerie Hess and Marti Garlett present a very accessible retelling of Richard Foster’s Celebration of Discipline. They take each discipline that Foster covers in Celebration of Discipline one at a time.  They give an overview of the discipline, providing stories from their own experiences with the discipline.  Then they give the parent suggestions for practicing the discipline. The practices are very practical and often geared toward the challenges faced by parents.  The authors then give age specific suggestions as to how children could practice each discipline.  They offer three categories, young children (5-7), middle childhood (8-11) and adolescence (12-15).

Present in this outstanding work is the assumption that the disciplined life is accessible even to children.  The goal of the disciplines is not simply character development or building a Christian worldview. Rather it is building of experiences with God through God’s grace.  Experiences like these are the stuff of spiritual direction.  Fathers Barry and Connolly point out in their book, The Practice of Spiritual Direction, that with out such experiences there can be no direction.  The spiritual director is primarily concerned with the experiences the directee is having with the Spirit.  Parents have a great resource in the Habits of a Child’s Heart for offering places where children can experience grace moving on them.

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My Philosophy of Spiritual Formation

Definition
I define spiritual formation as the process of being formed by God into the very image of Christ as we are immersed in the streams of a wide orthodoxy, diving into intimacy with others and the Trinity. Or as Robert Mulholland succinctly expresses it, Spiritual formation is the “process of being conformed to the image of Christ for the sake of others." To put it in terms more familiar to the church, spiritual formation describes how discipleship happens.

Jesus said he came to bring life and life to its full (John 10:10). Living in the kingdom of heaven means living that eternal kind of life now. There is within us the desire for the depths of relationship with Christ that make this full, abundant life possible.

Deep calls to deep
at the thunder of your cataracts;
all your waves and your billows
have gone over me. Psalm 42:7 (NRSV)

Romantic and Spiritual - a great retreat

This week Elaine and I went on a much needed retreat together. We dropped the kids off at Grandma Carmack's and made our way to Mendon Country Inn.  The first year we were married we spent a Christmas Eve there on our way to Elaine's family get together. Our heating core was plugged and half way there the little electric heater, plugged into the lighter, went out.  By the time we got there our feet were blocks of ice and the fireplace and Jacuzzi in our room was a welcome experience. We loved our stay and the South African innkeepers were charming.

A little over eight years latter we had no idea where we had stayed, and it took some searching to find them. We got into the same room we were in years ago. Come to find out St. Gregory's Abby is only about twenty miles away. We went over there for communion, and I had a chance to show Elaine where I have spent my time when on my retreats there. We had pittance and a chat with the monks after the prayer service.

The weather was rainy and cold. We spent most of our time indoors, though the first night the weather broke, and we walked down by a creek flowing into the St. Joseph river.  The bed and breakfast had a little island with a gazebo surrounded by the flowing brook.  It was lovely to be in creation.

When driving we had some conversations about our frustrations in ministry and what it would take to breakthrough. Elaine and I serve as a tension between my realization of powerlessness and hers of action. The great question we have to live into is - how do we create space for people both in and out of the church to grow in the Spirit.

The innkeepers, Cheryl and Gerard, were wonderful at creating a hospitable space. The last morning we chatted over breakfast for a couple hours. It was a wonderful encouragement.  Hospitality is a wonderful thing.

There was another gran sorprendido.  Across the street there is a small mexican restaurant.  I could smell the hot tortillas. We decided to go there for dinner rather than an upscale option.  We didn't have great expectations - expecting a dive, but what we found was the best authentic mexican food I have had in years. Salud is the name of the place, and it made us wish we were going to be there for another week to sample everything.