March 5, 2014, by Richard Dancey:
Rev. Richard Dancey inaugurated a month-long Christian Community southern states speaking tour in Chapel Hill on March 4 with two nights of public talks designed to reach beyond members and friends to the wider community. Friday night’s theme, “Reincarnation, Karma and Christianity,” is covered in another post. In this post we cover Saturday night’s theme, “Strengthening the Spiritual Life of Children”.
In this technological age, we are immersed in electricity and we don’t know what this means for human souls, how it impacts our feeling, thinking and willing, the ability of our “I” to be present, connected and engaged. Electricity is dying light. There are forces of death in electricity. Could there be causes here for the growing rate of ADD, autism and depression being seen now in children?
Richard touched on the furor surrounding Amy Chua’s recent book, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, bringing to public consciousness the questions: how do we raise children? are we too permissive? do we challenge them enough?
He cited the findings of brain research on the effect of electronic images on young children: prolonged exposure hardens and fixes some brain synapses in children under two.
Yet, we live in the modern world and can’t create a fortress to protect children from the world as it is. What parents can do is to create balance, to create environments that nurture the spirit. The examples we set by working on ourselves—how we pray, mediate, study; the places where we can come to stillness and openness within ourselves creates access to the angels.
Establishing form and rhythm is a means of accomplishing the task: Be still and know, an atmosphere of turning to the spiritual world and asking the angels for help, for insight to find the right balance.
Telling and reading stories to children helps to counteract the negative effects of electronic images that come to them ready- made. The human voice and facial expressions of the storyteller feed the soul with life substance and develop in children the capacity to imagine. It is creating vs. consuming.
The power of sacrifice, to love the world in service, sets a powerful example for children of conscience and compassion. What we do doesn’t have to be perfect. Children want us to be active. They don’t demand perfection. What they need is our working honestly out of ourselves.
This is how we’ll create a culture of free human beings in the future. The human potential to meet the challenges of the future, whatever they are, is great The spiritual world unites with us, too. It is there to help us in the task of raising free human beings.
(summarized by Linda Finigan)