Religious Education in the Family Part 15

[24] For a study of children's wors.h.i.+p see H.H. Hartshorne, _Wors.h.i.+p in the Sunday School_; "Report of Commission on Graded Wors.h.i.+p," _Religious Education_, October, 1914.

[25] "Parents who give up such a practice as family prayers mainly because they know of many other people who have done the same are just as much the slaves of public opinion and ignorant cant as the narrowest Lowlander who forbids his children secular history on Sunday."--Lyttleton, _Corner-Stone of Education_, pp. 207-8.

[26] Quoted by W.S. Athearn, _The Church School_.

[27] A number of good poems are given in A.R. Wells, _Grace before Meat_.

[28] W.B. Forbush gives a number of poetic forms of prayer for children in _The Religious Nurture of a Little Child_, pp. 12, 13.

[29] By Samuel Walter Foss.

[30] One handy form is _The Heart of the Bible_, prepared by E.A.

Broadus; another, _The Children's Bible_.

CHAPTER XIII

SUNDAY IN THE HOME

Almost every family finds Sunday a problem. Other days are well occupied with full programs; this one has a program for only part of its time.

Other days are rich with the liberty of happy action, but this one is frequently marked by inaction, repression, and limitations. As soon as the evanescent pleasure of Sunday clothes has pa.s.sed, for those for whom it existed at all, the children settle down to endure the day.

-- 1. THE MEANING OF THE DAY

Fathers and mothers who vent a sigh of relief when Sunday is over must marvel at the strains of "O day of joy and gladness." Yet this day defeats its purpose when it is of any other character. We have no right to rob it of its joy and its healing balm. On the day made for man, sacred to his highest good, whatever hinders the real happiness of the child ought to be set aside.

Instead of accepting traditions regarding the method of observing the Sunday, would it not be worth while to ask ourselves, For what use of the day can we properly be held responsible? Here are so many--fifty-two a year--days of special opportunity. To us who complain that business interferes with the personal education of our children through the week, what ought this day to mean? To us who lament the little time we can spend with our families, what ought this day to mean? And what ought we to try to make it mean to children?

We call this G.o.d's day; what must some children think of a G.o.d who robs his day of all pleasure? If this is the kind of day he makes, then how unattractive would be his years and eternity! It is the day when we have our best opportunity to show them what G.o.d is like, to interpret his world and his works in terms of beauty, kindness, riches of thought, and love.

It ought to be the day reserved for the best in life, for the treasures of affection, for the uses of the spirit. Whatever is done this day must come to this test, Is this a ministry to the life of goodness, truth, and loving service? Does this enrich lives? In other words, we may put the broad educational test to the day and its program and determine all by ministry to growing lives.

-- 2. CONSERVING THE VALUES

The family faces the problem of the opposition between the rights of man on this day and the greed of commerce, the fight between a day of rest and a day of work. Man's right to rest is a.s.sured, legally, but commerce in the name of amus.e.m.e.nt and in the guise of petty and unnecessary trading constantly maintains its fight to invade the day of rest, to turn it from ministry to man as a person to the dull level of the week of ministry to things. The home has much at stake in this struggle. It needs one day free from the life that tears its members apart, free from the toil that engrosses thought, free for its members to live together as spiritual beings.

In the need for one day, free from the things that hinder and devoted to the life of the spirit, the home finds the guiding principle for the use of the day; all members are to be trained to use it as a glorious opportunity, a welcome period, a day of the best things of life. It is devoted to personality, to man's rights as a religious being.

Surely one of the best things of life will be that we shall meet one another, shall look into faces of friends and companions! And this opportunity of social mingling is lifted to a high level when it is an act of the larger family life, the life that brings G.o.d and man into one family. That is what the church meeting and service ought to be: our Father's larger family getting together on the day of the life that makes them one. For the child the church school and the children's service of wors.h.i.+p are their immediate points of vital touch with the church family. If we think of the day as affording us the pleasure of social mingling with friends and members of that family, Sunday morning will cease to be a period of unwilling observance of empty duties. Of course that will depend, too, on the measure in which the church and school grasp their opportunity to make this the best of days.[31]

Further, let the home keep this day as the one of personal values all the way through, sacred to that life of love, friends.h.i.+p, and joy in the presence of one another which is the essential life of the family. It has always been a good custom for friends to visit on this day, for families grown up and established around their own hearths to gather again for a few hours. It is the day when we have time to discover how much greater are the riches of friends.h.i.+p than aught besides, when, looking into the eyes of those we love, we see "the light that never was on sea or land," the ultimate good!

The hours of being together are the hours of real education. Children cannot be with good and great people and remain the same. Their lives need other lives. Above all, they need us. This should be the day for real mothering and fathering. Nothing ought to be permitted to interfere with this, neither our social pleasures nor the demands of the church.

-- 3. THE PROBLEM OF PLAY

What shall we do with the child who wants to play on Sunday? Is there any other kind of child? They all want to. It is as natural for a child to play as it is for a man to rest; it is as necessary. A child is a growing person learning life by play. Because play seems trivial to us we a.s.sume it is so to them; we would banish the trivial from the day devoted to the higher life. In some families play is forbidden because children find pleasure in it, and adults find it impossible to a.s.sociate piety and pleasure.

Shall we then throw down all barriers and make this day the same as all others? No, rather make the day different by throwing down barriers that stand on other days. Let this be the day when the barriers between father and sons, parents and children, are let down and all can enter into the joy of living.

Play is to a child the idealization of life's experiences and the realization of its ideals. That is why he plays at school, idealizing the everyday life; that is why he plays at housekeeping, at being in church, at being a railway engineer, even a highwayman or an outlaw. The traditional games are the game of life itself in terms of childhood.

Play as idealized experience and realized ideals is to the child what the church, wors.h.i.+p, and the reading of fiction and essays are to the adult. Play is the child's method of reaching forward into life's meaning. Some games as old as history carry a weight of human tradition and experience as rich for a child as the adult obtains from historical review and from a.s.sociation with the past. There is a sense in which the child playing these games opens the Bible of the race.[32]

We cannot make children over into our pattern; we have to learn from them. Indeed, we come to life through their ways. We must become as little children. Before we settle the question of play on Sunday we do well to be sure that we know what play means to children, that we really grasp something of its educational value and its religious potency. Then we can proceed to a family policy in Sunday play.

-- 4. A POLICY ON PLAY

_Keep the day as one of family unity._ Help the child to think of it as a day protected for the sake of family togetherness. You can play that for this day the ideal is already realized of a family life uninterrupted by the demands of labor and business.

_Maintain the unity by doing the ideal things together._ Go to the place of wors.h.i.+p together, provided it is the place where the child can find expression for spiritual ideals. If the Sunday school does not really lift the child-life and really teach the child, if it is not honest with him and makes no suitable provision for his developing nature, he will be better off in a quiet hour of family conversation and reading at home. That means the application of parents to this hour.[33] It banishes the monstrous Sunday supplement with its hideous, debasing pictures. It subst.i.tutes conversation in the whole group, reading aloud of stories and poems, biblical and otherwise, and songs, hymns, or at times the walk in the fields or parks. Fortunately the better type of Sunday school is more and more to be found; children are more and more receiving a ministry actually determined by their needs. So far as the church service is concerned the ideal situation is found when a parallel service is provided for children, based on their needs and capacities.

As to attendance, under other circ.u.mstances, in the family pew, that depends on whether the child is gaining an aversion to the church by the torture and tedium often involved. Without doubt many adults acquired the settled habit of sleeping in church because that was the only possible relief in childhood.[34]

_Maintain the family unity by stepping into the child's ideal life.

Expect activity and use it._ Why should we a.s.sume that because the adult finds a Sunday nap enjoyable the child will be blessed by enforced silence? I would rather see a father playing catch with his boys on Sunday than see the boys cowed into silence while he slept a Sabbath sleep. Children will play. Their play is innocent; more, it may be helpful and educative; we can insure these values in it by our partic.i.p.ation. That is the parent's opportunity for a closer sympathy with his children. Playing together is the closest living, thinking, and feeling together. Where games are shared, confidences, secrets, and aspirations are shared, too. Besides, the partic.i.p.ation of the adult may tend to tone up the game and to moderate boisterousness.

_Seek the beautiful._ Speaking as one who has been under both the puritanical regulation and the so-called "continental" freedom of Sunday observance, nothing seems much more beautiful than the sight of an entire family playing at home, in the park, or off in the woods or the fields of the country. Life is strengthened, ideals are lifted, family ties knit closer, grat.i.tude is quickened, and courage stimulated by play of this kind.

-- 5. POINTS OF DIFFERENCE

But because it is evidently most important that this day should be different from other days, it is well to mark that difference in our plays and pleasures and to follow some simple principles for Sunday play.

First, make it the day of the _best_ plays. The partic.i.p.ation of parents will tend to have this effect. Sometimes some forms of play may be reserved for this day.

Secondly, our play should never interfere with the rights of those who desire to be quiet or to observe the day in ways differing from ours. We must respect the rights of all.

Thirdly, our play must not cause additional or unnecessary labor.

Fourthly, our play must not interfere with the pleasures of others. For instance, in the city children who can use the public tennis courts every day should keep off them on Sunday in order to give opportunity to those who can use them only on that day.

Having said so much on play on Sundays, we must not leave the impression that play is the princ.i.p.al thing. It would be the princ.i.p.al thing for children compelled to work or confined in crowded tenements on all other days. This is a day of rest. Play should not be carried beyond the rest and refreshment stage.

Nor must we a.s.sume that a recognition of play involves neglect of wors.h.i.+p and instruction. Both should be cherished among the delights of the day. Every attempt to make the day a happy one, by normal play, a.s.sociates the emphasis on wors.h.i.+p with increased happiness in the child's mind.

-- 6. THE SUNDAY AFTERNOON PROBLEM

"What shall we do?" the children ask restlessly on Sunday afternoons, and it is by no means a strange question. All the week they have their school work, on Sat.u.r.days their play. No wonder Sunday afternoon seems dull. Yet if we older ones use it aright this is our opportunity to give them the best time of all the week. We can make this part of the day really a holiday if we just take time to plan it right. There is something wrong in the home in which the child, as he grows up, does not look forward happily to his Sunday afternoons.

Sunday afternoon should be a family festival time. Keep it sacred to the family. Business and social life claim us all the week, and the church claims its share of this day; but these afternoon hours we can, if we will, reserve for our own home life, for the closer drawing together of children and parents. To hold this time sacred for the children and their interests will help to solve "the Sunday afternoon problem."

1. _The child's question, "What shall I do next?"_--Children are dynamic, perpetually active. They grow in the direction toward which their activities are turned. Repression is impossible. We must either find the best things for them to do, or let them chance on things good or bad. The following outline for Sunday afternoon is given in the hope that it may help to answer the "what next."