Category: Catechist Chat

Meditation & Imagination Update

Update Round-up:

Christian sends in this link from his blog, on the topic of imagination, art, and catechesis.  Smart people would read his blog regularly. He has a really fun post up right now about language and the Egyptian revolution, for fellow word geeks.

(Am I the only one who wishes the wordpress spellcheck function would learn the word “catechesis”?  Every time I see that red squiggly underline, I get nervous, and have to go check my dictionary to make sure it is a real word. It is.)

Jeffery Miller (the Curt Jester) posts about pantheism and “centering prayer”.  Including this handy link to a This Rock article on the topic.  So let’s make sure we are super clear: “meditative prayer” as described on this blog and used by reputable catechists, is not “centering prayer”.  Not.  NOT.

Here’s what the Catechism has to say about meditation:

II. MEDITATION

2705 Meditation is above all a quest. The mind seeks to understand the why and how of the Christian life, in order to adhere and respond to what the Lord is asking. The required attentiveness is difficult to sustain. We are usually helped by books, and Christians do not want for them: the Sacred Scriptures, particularly the Gospels, holy icons, liturgical texts of the day or season, writings of the spiritual fathers, works of spirituality, the great book of creation, and that of history the page on which the “today” of God is written.

2706 To meditate on what we read helps us to make it our own by confronting it with ourselves. Here, another book is opened: the book of life. We pass from thoughts to reality. To the extent that we are humble and faithful, we discover in meditation the movements that stir the heart and we are able to discern them. It is a question of acting truthfully in order to come into the light: “Lord, what do you want me to do?”

2707 There are as many and varied methods of meditation as there are spiritual masters. Christians owe it to themselves to develop the desire to meditate regularly, lest they come to resemble the three first kinds of soil in the parable of the sower.5 But a method is only a guide; the important thing is to advance, with the Holy Spirit, along the one way of prayer: Christ Jesus.

2708 Meditation engages thought, imagination, emotion, and desire. This mobilization of faculties is necessary in order to deepen our convictions of faith, prompt the conversion of our heart, and strengthen our will to follow Christ. Christian prayer tries above all to meditate on the mysteries of Christ, as in lectio divina or the rosary. This form of prayerful reflection is of great value, but Christian prayer should go further: to the knowledge of the love of the Lord Jesus, to union with him.

THAT is what we’re teachin’ the kids.  Just so ya know.  And they like it.

And speaking of teaching the kids:  Dorian’s got week up one of Ask A Catechist, and I am an utter slacker in getting my own my comments posted.  But that’s okay, because hooooweeee that was a hairy question, and did I really want to answer it?  But don’t worry, my shutting up powers aren’t that strong.  I’ll be there soon.  Meanwhile I’ll just put this stylish graphic in my post, so that you’ll know that yes, I really am participating.

See.  A box.  With answers inside.  Click and find out more.

Prayer, meditation, and imagination

Meditative prayer, which my 5th graders love so much, asks you to use your imagination.  When we pray the rosary, we do this.  We think about the mystery, we imagine the mystery, we let our mind’s exploration of the mystery show us things we hadn’t seen before.

But if you have fallen into the hands of weirdness before, you can become scared of imagination.  When someone says “It is okay to use your imagination to help you pray”, we fear what they mean is “it’s okay to make up pretend stuff about God, or whatever it is you choose to believe that suits your fancies”.

No.  Not that.

But abuse does not disprove right use.

Father L. makes the case for right use of imagination. Go read.  It’s not just me and my woozy liberal friends* making this stuff up.  But for goodness sakes if it makes you nervous, just stick to the rosary for a start.   About as good a ground for rehabilitating your imagination as you could hope.

****************************************************************************

*Ahem.  I’m not claiming me or my meditative-prayer liking mentors in the catechetical hierarchy are in fact woozy liberals.  Which would be laughable.  I’m saying, maybe when you see me post about these things, you fear that is what we are.  Nope.  Not.  But yeah, I will totally, yes TOTALLY lead a room full of ten-year-olds through a meditation on the gifts of the Trinity as explained in the Apostle’s Creed.  Salvation, all that.  With candles. And reflective music.

It’s almost as if kids want to spend time with Jesus.  Cultivate a prayer life.  Go figure.

MED-I-TATE, MED-I-TATE . . .

That was my 5th grade boys last night.  Whole table of them, begging to close class with meditative prayer.

Yes.  True story.

Loyola Press has been sending down a workshop leader to educate the local catechists for a few years now, and every year we’ve been put through the paces of meditative prayer.  Good stuff.  I would guess 2/3rds of the prayer exercises we learn are to my taste, and the other 1/3 are more appreciated by teachers of younger grades.

So anyhow, this was the year we finally got to experiment on the kids institute prayer sessions on a regular basis.

What we do is this: We open class with a short set of “normal” prayers.  We do the teaching stuff.  And then at the end we clean up the room, light candles, turn down the lights, put on reflective music if appropriate, and one of us leads the kids through some kind of prayerful reflection.  Each class is same set-up routine, different meditation.  We get them from our textbook and associated resources, or else we make something up.  (Something easy to lead, like slowly reading through a traditional prayer and letting the kids reflect on the meaning).

First couple rounds we had to work out some glitches, which required catechists to pretend we knew what we were doing.  Among other lessons, we learned to end the session before kids ended it themselves by getting all squirmy and goofy.  I think it helped that my brilliant co-teacher used the time after our first couple attempts to let the kids share what they thought.  When you’ve done something new, you want to talk about it.

And now they totally love it.  They ask for it.  They rush to clean-up. (Yes, with boys yelling at each other and pushing and shoving to put supplies away.)  They beg for real candles to be lit —  I have about ten zillion on our little prayer table, lighting up the crucifix and our paperboard icons.

And then they sit quietly and pray.

Lovely lovely.

More about our ADVENTure Day

This is for Dorian, who asked very nicely in the combox.

Here’s the story on ADVENTure day:  Two years ago, our then-new DRE went with a new VBS program. (Pre-packaged.)  Instead of dividing the kids into grade-level classrooms, the kids were grouped into mixed-age crews that traveled from station to station through the morning. Crafts, snacks, games, music, Bible story room (that was me), all that.   It worked very well.   We volunteers didn’t have to be jacks of all trades (an actual music teacher teaching music!), and there was more intensity and liveliness to each room.

So she finished VBS #1 resolved to do more of the same during the year.

There was a living rosary in October (on the playground, visited by a pack of stray dogs, oops), but the real big invention was ADVENTure.  Instead of running K-5 classes on Wednesday evenings in December, we would host one school-day-long VBS-type Advent program on the first Saturday of Advent.  Parents could have free babysitting from 9-3, and catechists would have off the rest of the month. [6th grade and up have regular classes all month.]

Here’s what we do, and I’ll describe this year’s program, since she made a few tweaks that helped it run more smoothly.

Students are sorted into mixed-age crews of 15-20 kids.  Not random: 5th graders with K5, 4th with 1st, and 2nd & 3rd.  I noticed this year the 2nd/3rd groups were boys in one crew, girls in the other.  (Oh my. Those boys.  Had to take the markers away.  Fast.)  Youth from grades 6 & up volunteered to lead the crews from class to class.  2-4 youth per team.  They helped with the kids, and also managed potty breaks and other crises.

Catechists paired up and we manned several lesson rooms.  This year it was St. Francis & the Nativity, Our Lady of Guadalupe, St. Nicholas, and Church Year Calendar.  In each room we were issued a story book or similar educational prop, and then a craft to go with.  Our DRE gives us a fairly free hand to adapt the lessons to our teaching strengths.  I ended up subbing out the story book with a different St. Nicholas book from the library, and running more a discussion-style lesson with tidbits from the book, rather than just reading the story.  It worked well.

(Last year in the St. Nick room my co-teacher and I alternated teaching at each class period.  This year, different co-teacher, I taught the first class, and she never let me quit.  She did all the support work with getting supplies queued up and helping manage kids.)

Our DRE conscripted her grown daughter as slave labor to get all the craft supplies organized and do necessary prep-work so that everything was ready to go and in the classrooms Saturday morning.  I brought along my own sets of coloring sheets, wordsearch and crossword puzzles just in case I needed to fill time, and I ended up using them a bunch.  (For those 2nd/3rd grade boys, I fully subbed out the worksheets and sent home the craft, because the craft was.not.happening.  Just not.)  Some of the classes that finished early just sent the kids out to the playground with their crew leaders.  That was good.

Kids were each issued a bag with name-tag and grade affixed in which to collect all their papers and artwork.  [But, this year’s crisis: a bunch of the bags split open.  Note for next year: sturdier bags.]

Class periods lasted aproximately 30 minutes.  Additionally there were two movie rooms running double-period movie viewings.  The Knights of Columbus served lunch (hot dogs or bring your own) in two or three lunch periods, plus our resident snack lady (the one whose kids have the very worst food allergies — she is a master at making sure no one dies of peanut exposure) oversaw a snack period in the afternoon.  Students brought juice boxes (boys) or cookies (girls) to provide for the snack.  There was a nicer snack cart in the catechist supply room for grown-ups.

Having the movie, lunch and snack periods meant that each teaching pair got three break periods through the day.  This is essential.

At 2:45 we brought the kids out to the car line per our usual dismissal process, and parents picked up kids between 2:45 and 3:00.

***

So there you go, Dorian.  Ask away if you have any questions.

And FYI last year our DRE also put together an Eggstravaganza on the morning of Holy Saturday — so fleshing out the long-established egg hunt with on-topic crafts and lessons.  Unfortunately I was out sick (it was either rest up or skip the Easter Vigil — pretty obvious choice), so I can’t report.   This year I firmly resolve not to catch any ailments.  Ha.

PS to Dorian: See how I am making a category name that is a tribute to your Catechist Chat series?  So that everyone will know I am truly your disciple?