Faith Timeline

Our church does a series of workshops for second graders, for "welcoming children to worship," which I have many Opinions about, but let's just suffice it to say: I think second graders are way too old to be "welcomed" into worship (could/should be much much younger than that), and if we are going to do a weeks-long education and welcome, we could do it a lot better than we do. (Nathan literally learned nothing new. Know where learned about worship? IN WORSHIP. Where he has been for YEARS.) (But! Maybe it was great or helpful for some other people. I don't want to discount that. Also I don't want to take on the whole re-thinking of what/how they do what they do, so I am shutting up.)

ANYWAY.

As part of the workshop, they did some good activities with the kids and parents together, and one of them was for Nathan to make a timeline of his faith, with Mark and me helping note important markers - like his baptism, or when he started sunday school, or started singing in choir, or when he will do communion and confirmation and such.

But besides those more obvious ones, we talked through lots of ideas, and the things important enough to make it onto his faith timeline are things like:
- the first time he held a real candle on Christmas Eve
- when he started sitting in the chancel area with me (in the choir) on Sunday mornings when Mark isn't there
- when he sat at the organ in worship (with Another Nathan)
- the first time he went to Montreat

It's really lovely to see the things that he has noticed and internalized and assigned meaning to. I like seeing our traditional/educational/parental ideas of what makes an important milestone, all mashed up together with his. I think it's cool and I think it's beautiful, and he makes me melt.