Wherever we find ourselves…

The Spiritual Health of Children, Young People & Families

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ABOUT ME

• When we talk about spirituality I think it’s important to give something of ourselves, so I’ll start my paper with a bit about me and where I’m coming from on the subject of spiritual health.

• I have been supporting children and young people with a wide range of abilities, identities and backgrounds for the past 30 years, in different countries and settings.

• I have research degrees in community and youth work and in education, and have researched into children’s spirituality in the North and South of Ireland, as well as England and Wales.

• In recent years I have been running a small children’s services consultancy called Child’s World. We chose this name because we have come to realise that enabling children and young people to reach their full potential involves understanding their world, and the context in which they are experiencing life. It is only by working holistically with a child as a whole human being that we can truly see their view of the world and what motivates them, as well as the barriers that prevent them from thriving and achieving.

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Why ‘spiritual health’?

1. Need spiritual health to survive as well as thrive

Wright, S.G. (2005) Reflections on Spirituality and Health London: Whurr

2. Safer, neutral and less judgmental

3. Spiritual relationships fluctuate Eaude, T. (2008) Children's Spiritual, Moral, Social and Cultural Development: Primary and Early Years Exeter: Learning Matters

I am interested in spiritual health mainly for three reasons:• First because children and young people need their spiritual health in

order to survive as well as thrive. As Professor Stephen Wright tells us: ‘spirituality is part of health, not peripheral but core and central to it.’

• Second, because children and young people tend to understand the domain of ‘health’ as a relatively safe, neutral and less judgmental place where adults can engage with them about their spirituality.

• Third, because as Professor Tony Eaude (2008) puts it, the metaphor of health helps to reflect that spiritual relationships, including with God, tend to fluctuate, ‘affected by both internal resources and external factors.’

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How do we nurture spiritual health?

Our own understanding

Our effect on children

Attunement & Therapeutic support

Enabling & empowering

Respect individuality

TIME

Listening & learning

Accepting influence

So let’s focus back on the key question: How do we nurture spiritual health?On my own journey and from my professional experience, I have learned that we can nurture children’s spiritual health through 7 key approaches: 1. First, knowing and trying to stay clear about our own spirituality as adults, and what we understand by spiritual health;2. Being careful and honest about how our own spirituality is affecting or influencing children and young people (I do not believe we can be entirely objective and professional, since spirituality is such a personal and subjective part of life.)3. Being emotionally attuned to children and young people and supporting them in an emotionally safe place, through therapeutically being there with them, as well as ‘doing’;4. Enabling and empowering children and young people to:• Be clear, honest and confident about their spiritual awareness and

beliefs, as whole human beings • Come to know and feel worthy about who they are, what they really

believe and what they themselves mean by spiritual health• Apply their spiritual awareness in their human relationships and their

connections with the community & the world• Love and respect nature and the environment• Avoid spiritual UNhealthiness.5. Respecting children’s needs, individualities and differences

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6. Giving time to children, listening to them and learning from them, and showing that you’ve listened and learned from them. This further empowers and strengthens their self esteem and spiritual development.7. Accepting that what we learn from children may influence our own understanding of spiritual health and well-being. It certainly has in my case, as I will show in a short while.

I shall now look a bit more closely at how some of these areas have linked in with my practice along the way.

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MY OWN SPIRITUALITY

• My own spirituality centres around my spiritual awareness. This came to me way back in the spring of 1987, after a certain amount of trauma and ill health (both mental and physical), while I was distracted from my introspection by a cherry tree in blossom.

• This was what I would now term as a moment of grace and epiphany. However at the time I was not a religious person, so it was purely a moment of ‘Ah!’, of ‘Wow’, a revelation that the spirit was there in and around us all along.

• This was a glimpse of enlightenment, and it came with a sense of wholeness and connectedness, but also love: love for myself and others, love for nature and all that lives.

• There were also quite a few moments of awe and mystery about some universal and transcendent power beyond my understanding, but impossible to ignore.

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MY SPIRITUAL JOURNEY

JOURNEY

UPWARDS

OUTWARDS

DOWNWARDS

INWARDS

• This moment of awareness came during what felt – even at the wise old age of 23! – like a long search for meaning in a dark period of angst and alienation, all very common to young people.

• Yet from the moment of this epiphany, this search of mind became a journey of spirit, a mission to apply my spiritual awareness in my life.

• Since then this journey has aligned pretty much with what has become termed as:

• The journey upwards – to God / Higher power• The journey downwards – to earth and nature• The journey inwards - to inner self • The journey outwards – to other people .

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The Spirit of the Child

‘Relational consciousness’:

• awareness of self;

• awareness of others;

• awareness of the environment / world;

• (for some people) awareness of a Transcendent Other.

Hay, D. and Nye, R. (1998) The Spirit of the Child

London: Harper Collins

In terms of children’s spirituality this paradigm was developed, as many here will know, by David Hay and Rebecca Nye in describing children’s spiritual development as ‘Relational consciousness’- awareness of self;- awareness of others;- awareness of the environment / world;- (for some people) awareness of a Transcendent Other.Hay, D. and Nye, R. (1998) The Spirit of the Child London: Harper Collins

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Children’s ‘spiritual health’PERSONAL - Developing:

• sense of identity

• self-awareness

• joy in life

• inner peace

• meaning in life

COMMUNAL – Developing:

• love of other people

• forgiveness toward others

• trust between individuals

• respect for others

• kindness toward other people

ENVIRONMENTAL - Developing:

• connection with nature

• awe at a breath-taking view

• oneness with nature

• harmony in the environment

• sense of ‘magic’ in the

environment

TRANSCENDENTAL - Developing:

• personal relation with the

Divine/God

• worship of the Creator

• oneness with God

• peace with God

• prayer life

Spiritual Health and Life-Orientation measure: SHALOM (Fisher, 2006)

• Down in Australia, Dr John Fisher has since used these four domains as a framework for measuring children’s spiritual health. While I join Tony Eaude in finding such quantifying of spirituality unhelpful, this model has been used by a number of other researchers studying children’s spiritual health and well-being. I have highlighted the aspects which particularly resonate with children and young people in my own qualitative research and experience..

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MY UNDERSTANDING OF SPIRITUAL HEALTH

1. Whole human healing

2. Self development:

• identity, values, beliefs, faith

• belonging, self-worth, motivation

• connected to, clear about awakening,

3. Capacity for applying spiritual awareness : relationships, enabling spiritual development of children, environment.

Along these 4 planes, I have personally found the healthy aspect of this spiritual journey growing in three places:1. My healing as a whole human being: my spirit healing my mind, body and emotions2. My self-development: • Forming and staying true to my identity, my beliefs and values, and my

spiritual faith• Having a stronger sense of belonging, self worth and motivation• Trying to stay connected to, and clear about my awakening, my moment

of awareness – despite lots of cloudiness and doubts along the way!3. My capacity for applying my spiritual awareness in my relationships (both personal and professional); in my enabling the spiritual development of children, young people and families; and in my care and work for the environment.

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‘Rainforest People’s Support Group’

It was in 1988 that I set out, rather nervously, on a mission to apply my new-found spiritual awareness, through an ecological journey ‘downwards’ which partly met my spiritual health need to stay grounded. So at the start of my working journey, I co-ordinated the Rainforest People’s Support Group at the Gaia Foundation in London.

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“We all live in the same maloca”

I was privileged to help support the children and families of the Kayapo people from the Xingu River basin in the Brazilian rainforest, as they prepared for their protest against logging in their forest.I learned from the children how they, and all human beings, can only survive by living in harmony with nature and the ecosystem. As they said, “we all live in the same maloca”, which is their word for a round lodging, their home; but also for global hemisphere.At the time, these children reassured me that my recently discovered spiritual connection with the natural world was quite normal, not weird or something to fear; and that it was actually not just healthy but essential. They have inspired me ever since to try to stay whole, balanced and healthy in body, mind and spirit.

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WHOLE HUMAN HEALTH

BODY

SPIRITMIND

So our challenge in nurturing children’s whole human health is to enable them to stay balanced and centred physically, mentally and spiritually [point to centre]

For many children and young people in my research, the spirit does overlap with mind and body.

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SPIRIT: BODY & MIND

• “It’s connected to your mind somehow”

• “What you believe in your own mind”

• “All in your heart and mind.. The part of the body that connects people with God”

• Jackson et al. (2010): ‘Exploring spirituality among youth in foster care: findings from the Casey Field Office Mental Health Study’ Child Fam Soc Work 15(1): 107–117

• They say for example:• “It’s connected to your mind somehow”• “What you believe in your own mind”• “All in your heart and mind.. The part of the body that connects people

with God”• Research also tells us that spirituality impacts positively on children’s

mental as well as physical health:Jackson et al. (2010): ‘Exploring spirituality among youth in foster care: findings from the Casey Field Office Mental Health Study’ Child Fam Soc Work 15(1): 107–117

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The Mental Health – Mental Illness Continuum

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Health Distress Problem Disorder Illness

OrdinaryDevelopment

HealthPromotion

Comfort andsupport (family, peers& school)

Tier 1

NormalResolution

Voluntary Bodies

Tier 1

Primary

Care

Self Help

Voluntary

Bodies

Tier 1

Primary Care

Tier 1

(Tier 2 Service)

Specialist CAMHSService Tier 3

VoluntaryBodies Tier 2

SpecialistCAMHSService

Tier 4 Service

It is generally accepted in the health services that mental health is to be seen as a continuum, ranging from healthy ‘ordinary development’ to ‘disorder’ and mental illness.

SPIRITUAL HEALTH SPECTRUM

SPIRITUALLY HEALTHY

SPIRITUALLY UNHEALTHY

In a similar vein, I have come to see spiritual health as a spectrum of being human, ranging from being spiritually unhealthy to being ‘spiritually healthy’. However I do not see children’s spiritual health in terms of what is ‘ordinary’ or ‘disordered‘, requiring prescription to prevent or heal illness. As one young person said in my research project last month, “You can’t diagnose spiritual health”. And as another one put it: “Spiritual health isn’t so clinical.”Rather I view children’s spiritual health as personal, individual and quite literally extra-ordinary. In order to nurture children’s spiritual health, I believe we need to take a descriptive rather than prescriptive approach, listening to children’s understandings and experiences of what spiritual health means to them and their families.Please note at this point, I have formed these perspectives mainly from my professional experience, and it is not yet validated by peer reviewed and published research. However there is some evidence from my own case studies and literature search that would support my view.

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SPIRITUALLY HEALTHY

SPIRITUAL AWARENESS

SURVIVE –LESS RISK

SPIRITUAL HEALTH : NEED

SPIRITUAL WELL-BEING:

ASPIRE

THRIVE

On the spiritually healthy side, I have found that a child’s journey into spiritual health starts with their spiritual awareness, which helps them to survive and thrive through childhood and adolescence, growing in spiritual health as a human need. It is children’s spiritual awareness which informs what they believe, value and choose in terms of healthy behaviour, decisions and actions. Children and young people may then journey on to aspire to spiritual well-being, for some a state of deep meaning, enlightenment and transcendence, of inner peace, harmony and contentment.However for others such well-being comes with driven purpose, self-discipline and dedicated social vocation, which can be quite daunting and challenging. Here I am reminded of an ancient anecdote published in Stepehen Wrights’ Reflections on Spirituality and Health:One day it was announced around the monastery that a young Buddhist monk had attained enlightenment. Greatly impressed by this news, several of the other monks hurried to speak to him. “We’ve heard you’re enlightened. Is this indeed true?” they asked excitedly. “Yes,” replied the monk. “How do you feel now?” they enquired in wonder. “As miserable as ever” he said.And let’s not forget the Bhuddha does weep!So focusing back to the spectrum of spiritual health, my understanding

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accords with Hay and Nye when they tell us that the enhancement of relational consciousness, in which I have found children’s spiritual health is rooted, leads to increased spiritual well-being as part of a process.I also agree with writers such as Robert Bensley that spiritual health may be a factor in spiritual wellbeing, but they are not necessarily the same thing.

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Foster parents & ‘spiritual health’

• Change, transformation from ‘warped’ to ‘safe’ belief systems

• Self-worth, faith in ourselves

• Transitional process from background of confusion to awareness

• Behaviour – moral values

• Communication

I would like to focus a moment here on the beliefs and values side of spiritual health.I carried out a small case study in March this year with foster parents in south west England. Some were from faith communities, others were not. However common to all was the view that spiritual health means supporting children through a process of change, helping them to transform from what they called ‘warped’ to ‘safe’ belief systems, including belief in themselves. Foster parents told me that for foster children in their families, spiritual health is a transitional process from a background of confusion to a state of awareness. It is their self-awareness which leads children to develop moral values and behaviour which is safe and healthy, rather than ‘high risk’. This spiritual journey requires communication, both listening to children as well as talking.

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Young people & ‘spiritual health’

“Can be linked to morality and how your actions make you feel.“

“Being able to find fulfilment from acting through your morals and ethics, almost with integrity.”

“Knowing that you are a good person, and that your soul has place in the world and purpose.”

“Whether things are moral - right or wrong.”

MORALITY

When I listen to children’s views on spirituality, I find that there is a also a strong moral dimension to their understandings. For example here in Wales last month, I carried out a small case study in a Church in Wales secondary school with Year 10s. They had little hesitation, far less than the adults I’ve researched, in telling me what they understood by spiritual health. [silent roll:]“Can be linked to morality and how your actions make you feel.““Being able to find fulfilment from acting through your morals and ethics, almost with integrity.”“Knowing that you are a good person, and that your soul has place in the world and purpose.”“Whether things are moral - right or wrong.”I had asked all the young people whether they would describe themselves as a religious person. It is interesting that this moral view came from an equal balance of those who saw themselves as religious and those who did not.

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Young people & ‘spiritual health’

• “Whether you are feeling disconnected or connected to God”

• “How connected a person feels with God.”

• “Having a healthy relationship with God.”

• “Having something beyond life to believe in.”

• “The way you present yourself: Beliefs.”

• “How you’re feeling in terms of religion. What you think will happen to you after life.”

• “Maybe you’re more likely to connect [with God] if you’re religious.”

FAITH AND BELIEF

Another key theme that emerged from both religious and non religious participants was faith and belief.Several young people perceived spiritual health as about:“Whether you are feeling disconnected or connected to God” “How connected a person feels with God.”“Having a healthy relationship with God.”“Having something beyond life to believe in.” “The way you present yourself: Beliefs.”

However only one young person saw spiritual health explicitly in terms of religion, despite this being a faith school and three quarters of the group saying they see themselves as religious.“How you’re feeling in terms of religion. What you think will happen to you after life.”This did remind me of a group in another faith school, a Church of England primary school, where none of the children identified the word spirit in terms of either God or religion.However in the Church in Wales school, one of the students, who was not religious, did wonder:“Maybe you’re more likely to connect [with God] if you’re religious.”Clearly there is some questioning and searching ‘upward’ here, but what I am hearing from these and many other young people from different countries

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and backgrounds is that their connection or relationship with God or the transcendent is personal. Their spirituality is healthy for them when this personal relationship comes from their inner self.

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Young people & ‘spiritual faith’

“If you’ve got proper faith in something, it comes from your soul.”

“Spiritual faith is a type of religion that’s based around spirit –because some aren’t. They say they are but they’re not.”

When it comes to faith, I have found that children and young people feel strongly that both self-belief and religious belief needs to be rooted in spiritual awareness. For example I carried out a case study as part of a youth project called Faith Factor, supported by the National Council for Voluntary Youth Services. This was with a non faith-based youth group from a deprived neighbourhood in south west England. The young people wanted to explore what we as a groups termed ‘spiritual faith’. There was a strong view that for faith to be genuine it has to be spiritual. As one young person put it: “If you’ve got proper faith in something, it comes from your soul.” And another one said “Spiritual faith is a type of religion that’s based around spirit – because some aren’t. They say they are but they’re not.” So clearly there’s no pulling the wool over young eyes!This youth group were also clear about the spirituality that link all faiths.

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KEEPING SAFE

“Keeping your emotions and feelings in a safe place.”

“Keeping your feelings safe.”

“Feeling secure and happy and keeping your spirit positive.”

“Main difference from mental health is that spiritual health is about keeping emotions safe.”

“Having a place to store emotions.”

“Spiritual health is more keeping emotions and feelings in a positive or safe way.”

What those young people needed in order to explore their spirituality was a safe place, where they were free to express themselves without being judged or controlled. This culture of feeling safe and flowing freely was also prominent among the young people in my recent Church in Wales school research. For students there, spiritual health is about keeping their spiritual feelings safe: • “Keeping your emotions and feelings in a safe place.”• “Keeping your feelings safe.”• “Feeling secure and happy and keeping your spirit positive.”• “Main difference from mental health is that spiritual health is about keeping emotions safe.”• “Having a place to store emotions.”• “Spiritual health is more keeping emotions and feelings in a positive or safe way.”

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IDENTITY

“Who you are as a person.”

“Who you truly are.”‘Identity health’: Rossiter, G. (2007) ‘Education in identity’, International Journal of Children's Spirituality, 12:2, 207-219,

For some young people in this study, this need for safety was linked to their realisation that spiritual health is very personal and all to do with individual identity: “Who you are as a person.”“Who you truly are.”These voices echo those of other young people in my studies in England and Ireland, both in faith-based and secular contexts. They also accord with writers such as Graham Rossiter (2007) who highlights the spiritual importance of what he calls ‘identity health’ : ‘a harmonious balance between internal and external identity resources’, including spiritual resources, such as beliefs, values and commitments.

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RELEASING & LETTING IN…

“You cannot control it.”

“Something you can’t control.”

“Maybe spiritual health is letting spirits in. Not having a mind block.”

“Being calm and relaxed.”

“Releasing your inner feelings.”

Some young people in the Church in Wales study were clear that you don’t keep your spiritual feelings safe or healthy by suppressing or controlling them:“You cannot control it.”“Something you can’t control.”But by being calm and still, letting go of thoughts, releasing the inner self and letting in the light:“Maybe spiritual health is letting spirits in. Not having a mind block.”“Being calm and relaxed.”“Releasing your inner feelings.”

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SPIRITUALLY UNHEALTHY

•Losing touch with ‘child-spirit’

•“Inside us. ..You’re born with it.”

•“Your inseparable part of yourself.”Minor, C. & Grant B. (2014) ‘Promoting spiritual well-being: a quasi-experimental test of an element of Hay and Nye’s theory of children’s spirituality’, International Journal of Children's Spirituality, 19:3-4, 213-227

It is when young people do not keep safe in their spiritual awareness and feelings that they may become spiritually UNhealthy.In my experience and research with a range of children from different countries, I feel heartened that most children and young people either know or wonder about what ‘spirit’ means to them as a human being. However, for a variety of personal reasons many may lack spiritual awareness; or they may have lost touch with their innate ‘child-spirit’, which so many children have told me is:“inside us. ..You’re born with it.”“Your inseparable part of yourself.”

Young people may also, as Cheryl Minor & Barry Grant (2014) put it in their analysis of Hay & Nye, ‘repress or discard the capacity for relational consciousness as they encounter cultural pressures that devalue it’.

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SPIRITUALLY UNHEALTHY

LACK / FEAR OF OF SPIRITUAL AWARENESS

SURVIVAL

- MORE RISK

DOGMA; INDOCTRINATION;

EXTREMISM; SPIRITUAL ABUSE

RADICALISATION;

DELUSION / ILLNESS

SIGNIFICANT HARM;

DEATH

If children ARE aware of their spirit, quite understandably they may be fearful of it – like me and many of us adults- over-awed or afraid of being different, or just not understanding what has come over them. In their fear and vulnerability, children and young people may become confused, deluded, misguided or even manipulated in their beliefs.I do promote the spiritual aspects of all religious centres. However, Jayne Ozanne, a member of the General Synod and the Royal College of Psychiatrists’ Spirituality and Psychiatry Special Interest Group, has recently warned against the Christian church’s spiritual abuse of children through the coercion and control of their faith.[Ozanne, J. ‘Spiritual abuse – the next great scandal for the Church’ Royal College of Psychiatrists’ Spirituality and Psychiatry Special Interest Group]In their desperate need to survive, belong and believe in something, we know that many thousands of children in the UK are becoming exploited in violent or extremist gangs. Many become indoctrinated under the guise of fundamentalist religion. Such indoctrination is one of the elements that can lead to radicalisation, as I have found in the research I use to train carers in how to prevent these kinds of spiritual unhealthiness which can lead to significant harm or death.

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‘SPIRITUAL ABUSE’

• 2006 Archbishops’ Council report ‘Promoting a Safe Church’

• ‘Churches need to be sensitive so that they do not, in their pastoral care, attempt to ‘force’ religious values or ideas onto people,particularly those who may be vulnerable to such practices.

• Within faith communities harm can be caused by the inappropriate use of religious belief or practice; this can include the misuse of the authority of leadership or penitential discipline, oppressive teaching, or intrusive healing and deliverance ministries, which may result in vulnerable people experiencing physical, emotional or sexual harm.

• Other forms of spiritual abuse include the denial to vulnerable people of the right to faith or the opportunity to grow in the knowledge and love of God.’

From ‘Spiritual abuse – the next great scandal for the Church’ by Jayne Ozanne, Royal College of Psychiatrists:‘Defining Spiritual Abuse:In 2013, Dr Lisa Oakely, Programme Leader of Abuse Studies at Manchester Metropolitan University, defined spiritual abuse in her book ‘Breaking the Silence on Spiritual Abuse’ as follows:‘Spiritual abuse is coercion and control of one individual by another in a spiritual context. The target experiences spiritual abuse as a deeply emotional personal attack. This abuse may include: manipulation and exploitation, enforced accountability, censorship of decision making, requirements for secrecy and silence, pressure to conform, misuse of scripture or the pulpit to control behaviour, requirement of obedience to the abuser, the suggestion that the abuser has a ‘divine’ position, isolation from others, especially those external to the abusive context.’This definition has since been adopted by the Churches’ Child Protection Advisory Service (CCPAS) and other church organisations. As such it focuses on the abuse perpetrated by an individual (normally someone ‘in power’) over another individual (normally a congregant).’

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Spiritual health in practice

However, I have found that through their spiritual awareness, albeit often brought to them through suffering, children do survive and thrive by finding a sense of meaning and place, connecting with the community and supporting it. They stand up for fairness and inclusion because they know our spirit makes us all equal and diverse as human beings. They are led by the spirit to gather in religious communion, rather than blindly conforming to religious dogma. Spiritually aware young people know the power of sacred silence, prayer and contemplation. They keep the material world in its place.They feel good about themselves, and enjoy healthy loving relationships, if of course they are given loving attachment by their parent or primary care-giver. Through my experience and research, I have also found that children’s spiritual development impacts positively on their behaviour, especially through self-belief and faithful, trusting relationships. With greater self-awareness, and through spiritual practices such as prayer, meditation, or mindfulness for the more secular; or through yoga and green therapy, I have found children can be more balanced, and connected with their spirit; more resilient and less vulnerable to the mental and emotional difficulties that lead to self harm and suicide.

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In my current community garden project, families with different needs and abilities tell me how horticulture helps them, in their words, be connected with God and do God’s work. It also helps their bereavement when they plant trees and flowers in memory of recently departed loved ones.

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So I do see spiritual health as an area of human need, including the needs for love, belonging, self esteem and self-actualisation identified by Abraham Maslow.

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LOVE

Ashley, M. (2000) ‘Secular Spirituality and Implicit Religion: the Realisation of Human Potential’ Implicit Religion 3 (1) 31-49Fisher, J.W. (2006) ‘Using secondary students’ views about influences on their spiritual well-being to inform pastoral care’ International Journal of Children’s Spirituality 11 (3) 347–356Lewis, J. (2000) ‘Spiritual Education as the Cultivation of Qualities of the Heart and Mind’ Oxford Review of Education 26 (2) 263 - 281Sagberg S. & Røen I. (2011) ‘Social practices of encountering death: a discussion of spiritual health in grief and the significance of worldview’ International Journal of Children's Spirituality, 16:4, 347-360

Although only a few children and young people in my research projects have explicitly mentioned love as an aspect of their spirituality (and let’s face it, talking about love can be rather uncool and embarrassing!), they have often described spirit as part of or linked to the heart. They have also identified love in spirituality more than adults in my studies. However, in the adult world many researchers do resonate with my own experience of love as fundamental to children’s spiritual health. In addition to Fisher placing ‘love for other people’ as a key aspect of the Communal domain in children’s spiritual health, Sagberg & Røen (2011) see love as one of the Experiential aspects of it. I absolutely agree with writers such as Martin Ashley (2000) and Jeff Lewis (2006) who voice the need for love in children’s education.

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SPIRITUAL HEALTH & ‘DEVELOPMENT’

CONDITIONED: ENVELOPED

ORGANIC:

DEVELOPED

DISCOVERY

In trying to come to some useful conclusion on today’s key question ‘How do we nurture people’s spirituality?’, I am reminded of Helen Bayes’ (2003) research into the attitudes of 17th and 18th Century Quaker Friends towards children. Of that era, she concludes:‘Children are still not generally seen as spiritually equal, even among Quakers, because spiritual wisdom is seen as the product of ‘years of seeking and experience’ rather than as the divine seed of truth planted in us all.’ [Bayes, H 2003 ‘Proud, stubborn and free: The earliest Quakers and their children,’ The Woodbrooke Journal, Winter 2003 No13, p29-30 Birmingham, in: Crompton, M. (2009) ‘Spiritual equality in the experience of Quaker children’, essay for ‘The future of the Religious Society of Friends in Britain.’]I wonder how much we have progressed since then, in both our religious and secular societies, towards children and young people having an equal and healthy place in our spiritual communities, which stems from that divine seed. I also recall the voice of one young person who was part of a school group I was researching on spiritual development, some years ago. I asked him how he perceived staff had enabled him to develop spiritually at school. He answered rather negatively: “More nurture than nature.”…I think that in parenting and working with children in any setting, whether we

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or they are from religious backgrounds or not, we need to strike a careful balance between nurturing children’s spirituality and enabling it to grow naturally and organically from within, and from wherever young people find themselves.In this way children may stay pure and true to their whole selves, identities and personal relationships with the divine, rather than being conditioned, polluted or smothered by spiritually unhealthy influences. Spiritual health is widely understood as having a developmental aspect to it. However, in order to really support children and young people to grow spiritually healthy, I believe we need to understand this development as the opposite of envelopment, and as a journey quite literally of dis-covery .

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZXL0YYiBVc

And I leave you with the words of the 13th century Sufi weaver poet Kabir. His wisdom was sung wonderfully by Smita Bellur, whose sacred music enhanced the spiritual health of my own family, at the Festival of Voice in Cardiff last month:

‘Lift the veilthat obscuresthe heartand thereyou will findwhat you arelooking for.’ Kabir (Dohas of Kabir)

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