Song As Prayer — A Lower School Reflection

Below is the weekly chaplain's newsletter called 'Table Talk' that I write for the Lower School division of Holy Innocents' Episcopal School.

(Student Singing by 1st grader)

Before Thursday, September's chapel theme had been 'ways of praying without words.' Under the inspiration of the paper artist Alice Ball, we explored art as prayer and we learned to pray with our eyes and hands. We also discovered what it means to pray with nature by taking spiritual walks. Using the parable of the Good Samaritan, we discovered that faithfully showing kindness and helping those in need is also a way to pray.

 (5th graders assist in acting out the Good Samaritan during chapel)

In preparation for Rosh Hashanah – the celebration of the Jewish new year—special chapel guest Rabbi Brad Levenberg, our neighbor from Temple Sinai, showed us the tradition of blowing the shofar. A shofar is a horn from a ram or another horned animal. To sound in the new year and wake people up to showing one another God’s goodness and peace, rabbis around the world raise their shofars and make sounds of praise. 

(Rabbi Brad Levenberg of Temple Sinai blows the shofar)

This week, we shifted our attention to using songs as prayer. 

Praising God using music is one of the oldest, most common forms of prayer. During Thursday’s chapel, 1st grader Jay McKown and his teacher, Ms. Betts, helped me retell the story from the book of Acts where the apostles Paul and Silas are beaten and imprisoned for trying to share God’s love in a town that wasn’t interested in hearing good news.

Although they were in pain and in jail, Paul and Silas didn’t blame God for their situation and they didn’t give up, either. To remind themselves of God’s ever-present love and goodness, they began to sing. I asked Jay what song he’d sing in that situation and he began singing ‘Sanctuary’ (a Lower School favorite that we sing each week before reading from scripture). Once he started, rest of the school joined in and sang with him.

Paul and Silas’ song of love was contagious, too, and the other prisoners became a choir. After an unforeseeable turn of events, the earthquake of song ends up melting their jailor’s hopeless heart, and he takes Paul and Silas back to his house where he tends their wounds, shares a meal with them, and, united in God’s love, they become friends.

This week’s Chapel Challenge is to answer these three questions:

What would you have sung if you were Paul or Silas?

Do you have songs that help you recognize God’s love and goodness?

What’s a good song you can share with others to pass on God’s love or to lift them up when they’re feeling lonesome or sad?

If I were Paul or Silas I would have sung ‘I Need You To Survive’, a gospel favorite by Hezekiah Walker. I hear God’s love and goodness in Marvin Gaye’s ‘God Is Love,’ Sufjan Steven’s ‘Impossible Soul,’ Beethoven’s 9^th symphony, ‘Dive’ by Tycho, ‘A Love Supreme’ by Coltrane, ‘Seasons of Love’ from Rent, ‘Boy 1904’ by Jonsi and Alex, ‘Spem in Alium Nanquam Habui’ by the Choir of King’s College, ‘Afterlife’ by Arcade Fire, and countless other songs.

Try sharing your Chapel Challenge answers with your family, your spiritual friends, and/or with me. Listen for God in music and lyrics, and remember the words from Psalm 146 that we say together each week in chapel:

Hallelujah

Praise the Lord, O my soul!

I will praise the Lord as long as I live;

I will sing praises to my God.

With Love and Prayers,

Chaplain Timothy

(More 1st grade art)

P.S.

October is National Bullying Prevention Month, and as we move into a new month we are transitioning from the chapel theme of prayer to that of preventing bullying.

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Art As Prayer — A Lower School Reflection

Below is the weekly chaplain's newsletter called 'Table Talk' that I write for the Lower School division of Holy Innocents' Episcopal School.

Art and faith have always gone hand in hand. This week in chapel, artist and Holy Innocents’ parishioner Mrs. Alice Ball joined us to share how she used the art of origami as a way to pray.

In the aftermath of 9/11, when the United States began its war in Iraq, Mrs. Ball found herself overcome with anger, grief, and an irrepressible desire for peace in a conflicted world. She felt led to pray, but, instead of words paving her path to God, her prayers slowly took flight in the form of origami paper cranes.

(Origami cranes are an international sign of peace made popular by Sadako Sasaki, the young Japanese girl from Hiroshima who was dying of cancer caused by the fallout of the atomic bomb. As a sign of hope, Sadako undertook a major project of folding 1000 peace cranes.)

Mrs. Ball began her prayer for peace without any idea how long it would last. She only knew that she'd continue praying as long as there were US troops on the ground in Iraq. Her origami prayer went on for 3192 days and took her just short of nine years to complete.

In its final form, the prayer is nothing short of breathtaking. All of the students had the chance to view Mrs. Ball’s cranes while they were on display in the small glass chapel at Holy Innocents’. During class, I taught how the artwork's beauty and goodness can be used to help us pray with our eyes.

Mrs. Ball’s art highlights the powerful relationship between prayer and perseverance. "When you begin to pray, you don’t have to know how your prayer is going to end,” said Mrs. Ball. “I began these origami prayers out of anger and frustration, but eventually they took the form of something quite beautiful.”

“What does your prayer look like?” asked Mrs. Ball.

This week, I also invite you to consider what your prayers look like. Think of a time when a work of art has drawn you closer to God. When has a song, movie, meal, poem, piece of architecture, or any other work of art struck you at the level of your soul—the spiritual level that opens you up to unexpected, divine depths of beauty, joy, peace, honesty, compassion, community, understanding, or forgiveness in the world? Talk about your answers with a spiritual friend, share a piece of art with that person, and, if you're willing, try creating an artful prayer yourself.

With Love and Prayers,

Chaplain Timothy

('Origami Crane' by Aidan Ziolo, 1st Grade)

Spiritual Walks — A Lower School Reflection

Below is the weekly chaplain's newsletter called 'Table Talk' that I write for the Lower School division of Holy Innocents' Episcopal School.

What are your favorite ways to pray?

What are you doing when you feel closest to God?

These were two guiding questions that I asked students during our FISH classes this past week as we continued our exploration of what it means to pray without words.

Previously, we’d talked about how, by repeating the line “and God saw how good it was,” the Bible’s first creation story underlines the holy practice of seeing. I called this practice ‘praying with your eyes.’ This week we talked about how walking can also be a holy practice of prayer.

Just as the narrator of the first creation story emphasizes God’s seeing, the narrator of the Bible’s second creation story underline’s God’s walking and says that God “was walking in the garden [of Eden] in the cool of the day.” In other words, walking can be a godly exercise—and, along with swimming and looking into the faces of other people, it’s among my favorite forms of prayer and feeling close to God.

(Labyrinth at Holy Innocents')

Spiritual walks can be a way of praying with your legs. Such walks are a strong reminder that we are journeying with God through life and that our spirituality is connected to our bodies. In the Episcopal tradition, labyrinths are a tool used to teach people how to take spiritual walks of prayer. Fortunately, Holy Innocents’ campus has a labyrinth in the church garden.

One enters the labyrinth on the circle’s periphery and, through many twists and turns (that represent the twist and turns of life), the maze eventually lead to the flower-shaped center that's in full bloom.

Labyrinths help reveal that God is with us with every step we take. In this respect, walking the labyrinth is similar to the breathing exercise called ‘centering’ that we begin and end each FISH class with. During that practice, we use our breath to center our minds on God’s peace, our hearts on God’s love, and our souls on God’s presence. It’s a reminder that God is with us with every breath we take. A key point that both the walking and the breathing practices highlight is that God’s love and peace are at the center of life.

I’ve found that in the Digital Age of smart phones, laptops, and iPads, it is crucial to take pauses to unplug from technology and go on spiritual walks. Praying with your legs—whether on or off of a labyrinth—puts us back in touch with the natural goodness and beauty of God’s creation. It helps us see God’s goodness in the outdoors, feel God’s goodness in the sunshine, hear God’s goodness in the birdsong and breeze, and smell God’s goodness in the flowers and trees.

The song ‘Draw The Circle Wide’ is a Lower School favorite during chapel. It’s a great reminder that we need to think outside the box—or the circle—when it comes to ways of connecting with God. This week I hope you make the time to take a spiritual walk with your kids and identify the goodness of God flowing through nature.  

With love and prayers,

Chaplain Timothy

(Labyrinth at the Cathedral of St. Philip)

For regular updates, photos, prayers, and glimpses of what's going on in the spiritual life of the HIES Lower School, you’re welcome check out the following:

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Praying With Your Eyes — A Lower School Reflection

Below is the weekly chaplain's newsletter called 'Table Talk' that I write for the Lower School division of Holy Innocents' Episcopal School.

“And God saw all that he made, and it was very good.” (Genesis 1:31)

Goodness and creation are inseparable. The divine goodness of created things is the overarching theme of the first creation story in the Bible. After each act of creation—night and day, water and land, plants and animals, women and men—the narrator repeats the line, “God saw how good it was.”

The story invites us to train our eyes to see the universe, the earth, and ourselves as divinely good. Just as each piece of art reflects the artist who made it, all creation reflects the infinite goodness of the Creator. Seeing God’s goodness shining in and through life is what it means to pray with your eyes.

Many people falsely assume that prayer is limited to words or thoughts and that the proper posture for prayer involves bowing your head and closing your eyes. The first story of creation reminds us that using our eyes to see God’s goodness is as essential as using our lips to name that goodness.

During class, we’ve been practicing seeing God’s goodness reflected in the beauty of created things. We look for it shining in the beautiful pieces of art located at Holy Innocents’, in the blueness of the sky, in the flickering of a candle flame, in the glow of the stained-glassed windows, in the symmetry of the church’s architecture, in the bloom of the flowers kept throughout the chapel, in the rustling of leaves…the list of visual goodness goes on.

Most of all, we looked for God’s goodness shining in the faces of our neighbors and in our own reflections. Thursday’s Chapel Challenge was to have a staring contest with some friends and find God's goodness shining through their eyes.

Like any form of prayer, praying with your eyes requires practice. Just as it is with practicing an instrument or world language, the more you practice prayer the easier it becomes to realize that God’s goodness is always shining all around us and within us, waiting to be acknowledged, celebrated, and shared.

God saw all that he made, and it was very good. This Labor Day weekend, I hope you take a good pause to see as God does and pray with your eyes.

With Love and Prayers,

Chaplain Timothy

"Since love grows within you, so beauty grows. For love is the beauty of the soul." - St. Augustine

For regular updates, photos, prayers, and glimpses of what's going on in the spiritual life of the HIES Lower School, you’re welcome check out the following:

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Many Fish, One School — A Lower School Reflection

Below is the weekly chaplain's newsletter called 'Table Talk' that I write for the Holy Innocents' Lower School.

Dear Golden Bears and Parents,

Like Episcopal schools across the country, Holy Innocents’ is characterized by the unity of its diverse student population. 'Diversity in Unity' was the theme of this past week’s chapel service entitled Many Fish, One School.

Keeping in mind that the new course I’m teaching is called F.I.S.H (short for Faith In Service & Humanity), I’ve been asking all of the students to consider what makes each of them unique. During class, I had each 1^st and 2^nd grader color in a fish so that it represented something special about him or herself. Similarly, each of the 3^rd, 4^th, and 5^th graders drew self-portraits and answered a worksheet with the following questions.

1. What do you like most about yourself?

2. What do you like most about other people?

3. What are your greatest gifts and talents?

4. What are your favorite things to do? 

5. If you could have one super-power what would it be?

6. If you could have God answer two questions what you ask?

I attempted this practice myself and realized that the overarching purpose of these exercises was not only to deepen one's self-understanding but also to help the students discover that, no matter how big the school is, each student—like each fish—is beautifully and wonderfully unique.

As St. Paul reminded us in this week’s reading from scripture, “Though we are many, we are one body,” and each member of the body plays a different but equally important role in sharing God’s love. The principle of diversity in unity applies to the Lower School as well. Like the many fish that make up our one school, our differences elevate and enhance one another.

Throughout the school year, I’ll be having a ‘Chapel Challenge’ each Thursday. The Chapel Challenge this past week was as follows:

Because God loves when we bring our differences together, share with a friend, teacher, or family member one thing you’re proud of that makes you special and different from others.

I’ve found that it’s best not to ask others questions if you’ve not already answered them yourself, so I encourage you to answer the 6 questions above, share your responses with your family, and discover what makes both you and your children special and unique.

One way to celebrate God's glory is by celebrating how God made each of us gloriously different; and our school’s ability to share God’s love depends on our willingness to claim what each of our different gifts are. 

Though we are many fish, we are one school.

With Love and Prayers,

Chaplain Timothy

P.S.

I encourage all students, parents, and staff to either stop by my office or email me to share what their gifts may be and discuss how these can be used to share God’s love with others.

For regular updates, photos, prayers, and glimpses of what's going on in the spiritual life of the HIES Lower School, you’re welcome check out the following:

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