Religious Education in the Family Part 17

5. What characteristics should distinguish play on Sundays from other days? Is it wise to attempt thus to distinguish this day?

6. Criticize the suggestions on occupations for Sunday afternoons.

7. Recall any especially helpful forms of the use of this day in your childhood, or coming under your observation.

FOOTNOTES:

[31] See chap. xvii, "The Family and the Church."

[32] See chap. vii on "Directed Activity," and the references for study at its end.

[33] Much may be learned by a study of Primary plans in a modern Sunday school. See Athearn, _The Church School_, chap. vi.

[34] Since we are dealing here especially with religious education in the family, the author refers to his more extended treatment of the question of children in church services in _Efficiency in the Sunday School_, chap. xv.

CHAPTER XIV

THE MINISTRY OF THE TABLE

Shall the periods for meals be for the body only or shall we see in them happy occasions for the enriching of the higher life? Upon the answer depends whether the table shall be little more than a feeding-trough or the scene of constant mental and character development. In some memories the meals stand out only in terms of food, while pictures of dishes and fragments of food fill the mind; in others there are borne through all life pictures of happy faces and thoughts of cheer, of knowledge gained and ideals created in the glow of conversation.

-- 1. THE OPPORTUNITY

The family is together as a united group at the table more than anywhere besides. Table-talk, by its informality and by the aid of the pleasures of social eating, is one of the most influential means of education.

Depend upon it, children are more impressed by table-talk than by teacher-talk or by pulpit-talk. They expect moralizing on the other occasions, but here the moral lessons throw out no warning; they meet no opposition; they are--or ought to be, if they would be effective--a natural part of ordinary conversation and, by being part and parcel of everyday affairs, they become normally related to life. The table is the best opportunity for informal, indirect teaching, and this is for children the natural and only really effective form of moral instruction.

The child comes to these social occasions with a hungry mind as well as with an empty stomach. His mind is always receptive--even more so than his stomach; at the table he is absorbing that which will stay with him much longer than his food. Even if we were thinking of his food alone, we should still do well to see that the table is graced by happy and helpful conversation; nothing will aid digestion more than good cheer of the spirit; it stimulates the organs and, by diverting attention from the mere mechanics of eating, it tends to that most desirable end, a leisurely consumption of food.

The general conversation of the family group has more to do with character development in children than we are likely to realize, and the table is peculiarly the opportunity for general conversation. Here, most of all, we need to watch its character and consider its teaching effects. Where father scolds or mother complains the children grow fretful and quarrelsome. Where father spends the time in reciting the sharp dealing of the market or the political ring, where mother delights in dilating on the tinsel splendors of her social rivalries, they teach the children that life's object is either gain at any cost or social glory. But it is just as easy to do precisely the opposite, to speak of the pleasures found in simpler ways, to glory in goodness and kindness, and to teach, by relating the worthy things of the day, the worth of love and truth and high ideals. The news of the day may be discussed so as to make this world a game of grab, inviting youth to cast conscience and honor to the winds and to plunge into the greedy struggle, or so as to make each day a book of beautiful pictures of life's best pleasures and enduring prizes.

-- 2. DIRECTING TABLE-TALK

But table-talk, helpful, cheerful, and educative, does not occur by accident. It comes, first, from our own constant and habitual thought of the meals in social and spiritual, as well as in physical, terms. And it reaches its possibilities as we endeavor to create and direct the kind of conversation that is desired. "Let all your speech be seasoned with salt," wrote the apostle, and we might add, let your salt be seasoned with good speech. That is the quality we must seek, the seasoning of healthful, saving, and not insipid, speech.

One of the great advantages of "grace before meat" lies in this: it gives a tone to the occasion. Its chief meaning is surely that we remind ourselves of the ever-present guest who is also the giver of all good. Where the grace is not a perfunctory act, but rather the welcoming of such a guest, the meal has started on a high level. We cannot do better than so to act and speak as those who take the divine presence for granted. We need not preach about it; we need only to a.s.sume it and move on the level of that friends.h.i.+p. Children will feel it; they will seek to answer to it, and will find pleasure in the very thought which they have perhaps never expressed in words.

The central idea of the grace suggests another means of helpful influences at the table, by bringing into our homes, for the meals, the friends whose lives will lift these younger ones. It is worth everything to live even for an hour with good and broadening lives. There are obligations to our guests to be considered, and their wishes should be consulted, but one always feels that children are being cheated when they are sent to eat at another table and deprived of the peculiar intimate touch with lives that bring the benefits of travel and experience. Ask your own memory what some persons who ate at the table with you in childhood meant to you.

The wise hostess knows that even when she brings together the group of mature folks, and even when they are wise and witty, she must be prepared adroitly to inspire the conversation or it may flag at times.

How much more does the conversation need direction where we have the same group every day composed largely of immature persons! When you have thought of all the portions and all the plates, have you thought of the food for the spirit?

Before suggesting methods of selection and direction, let a word of explanation be said: food for the spirit is not confined to theology, to hymns and the Bible; it is whatever will help us to feel and think of life as an affair of the spirit. And this must come in very simple terms, by the elementary steps, for young folks. It will be whatever will in any way help us to live more kindly, more cheerfully, more as though this really were G.o.d's world and all folks his family. Whatever does this is truly religious.

-- 3. METHODS

Plan for the food of the spirit as seriously at least as for the food of the body. Learn to recognize poisons and also indigestibles. The first are subjects of scandal, bitterness of spirit, malice, impatience, tale-bearing, unkindly criticism, and discontent. The second are subjects too heavy for children: your formal theology would be one of them, your judgments on some intricate subjects may be among them. It is seldom wise to announce negative injunctions, but we can make up our own minds to avoid the conversational poisons and, when they appear, it is always easy to push them out. Even when the unpleasant subject is so common to all and has been so impressive in the day's experience that it threatens to become the sole, absorbing topic, we can say, "We won't talk of it at table! Let's find something better." But we must then have ready the something better; that will be possible only by forethought.

First, save up during the day, or between the meals, the best thoughts, the cheering, kind, ideal, and amusing incidents. Cultivate the habit of saying to yourself, "This is something for us all to enjoy tonight at the table."

Secondly, expect the other members to bring their best. Ask for "the best news of the day" from one and another. Encourage them to tell of good things seen and done and of pleasant and ideal things heard and spoken.

Thirdly, use the incidents as the basis of discussion. Let children tell what they think of moral situations. Often they will quote the opinions of teachers and others. Always you will secure under these circ.u.mstances the unreserved expression of what they actually think. A free, informal conversation of this sort where opinions are kindly examined and compared is the finest kind of teaching.

Fourthly, do not forget the grace of humor. To see the odd, whimsical, startling side of the incident or experience trains one to see the interplay of life, to catch a ray of light from all things, and to moderate our tendency to permit our tragedies to pull the heavens down.

Fifthly, use this period to strengthen the consciousness of family unity by recounting past happy experiences and discussing plans of family life. In one family there are few meals from October to Christmas that do not include reminiscences of the summer in the woods and by the water, or from Christmas to June without plans for the next summer in the same place. Then, too, if you are contemplating something new, a piano, a chair, an automobile, talk it all over here. Let each one have his share in the planning. The effect is most important for character; the children acquire the sense of a share in the family community life.

They get their first lessons in citizens.h.i.+p in this group, and they thus learn social living. Then when the chair, or what not, is bought, it is not alone the parents' possession; it belongs to all and all treat it as the property of all.

Sixthly, introduce great guests who cannot come in person. It is fine fun to say, "We have with us tonight a man who loved bees and wrote books." Let them guess who it was; help, if necessary, by an allusion to _The Life of the Bee_ and _The Blue Bird_. They will want to know more about Maeterlinck and they will joyously imagine what they would say to him and how he would answer, what he would eat and how he would behave. In this way we may enjoy knowing better Lincoln, Whittier, Florence Nightingale, and an innumerable company.

Seventhly, this is the place to remind ourselves that table-manners are no small part of the moral life. By the habituation of custom we can establish lives in att.i.tudes of everyday thoughtfulness for others, in the underlying consideration of others which is the basis of all courtesy. Children's questions on table-etiquette must be met, not only by the formal rules, but also by their explanation in the intent of every gentle life to give pleasure and not pain to others, so to live in all things as to find helpful harmony with other lives and to help them to find and be the best. It is not only impolite to grab and guzzle, it is unsocial and so unmoral, because it is both a bad example and a distressing sight to others. It is irreligious, because whatever tends to make this life less beautiful must be offensive to the G.o.d who made all things good.

If we ourselves seek to maintain beauty, order, and kindliness in the conduct of the table, our children acquire a love of all that makes for beauty and order and kindliness, for righteousness in the little things of life. A clean tablecloth may be a means of grace. You have to try to live up to it. Order and quietness in eating are not separable from the rest of the life. To lift up life at any point is to raise the whole level. To let it down at any point is to let all down. But to lift up the level of conversation at the table is to raise the level of the entire occasion and to make it more than a period of eating, to convert it into a festival, a joyous occasion of the spirit. The meal should be in all things worthy of the unseen guest.

How near we all come together at the table! In its freedom how clearly are we seen by our children! Here they know us for what we are and so learn to interpret life.

I. Reference for Study

_Table Talk._ Pamphlet. American Inst.i.tute of Child Life, Philadelphia, Pa.

II. Topics Tor Discussion

1. The relation of mental conditions to digestion.

2. The relation of table-etiquette to life-habits.

3. The table as an opportunity for the grace of courtesy, and the relation of this grace to Christian character.

4. Training children in listening as well as in talking at table.

5. Do you regard table-talk and table-manners as having any directly religious values? Why?

CHAPTER XV

THE BOY AND GIRL IN THE FAMILY