The Value of Prayer

Parents are eager for ways to take their faith home.  Family rituals such as a shared meal, a prayer before bed, or a time of silence and meditation can have a profound effect on religious formation.  In one simple ritual for the home, a family lights a candle at the dinner table, holds hands, and names things for which they are grateful that day.

The importance of prayer is well-expressed by Unitarian Universalist pre-eminent religious educator, the late Sophia Lyon Fahs:

"Many of the past generation and many today have found three abiding values in prayer:

   the quiet mediation on life,
   the reaching out toward the universal and the infinite,
   and the courageous facing of one's profoundest wishes.

Let parents sense and share with their children the glory and mystery of everyday things.
Let them look with sympathy upon humanity's age-long dilemmas.
Let no question be taboo.
The next generation can ill afford to have the deeper values deleted from the book of life."