On The Second Day Of Christmas: Praying Shalom

source

This is the second in a series of posts  for each of  the twelve days of Christmas. I'll be adapting these from some emails I've sent to our three adult children--beloved uncles, aunts and parents of our six grandchildren:

My father led us in the mandatory reading of a scripture and a long (I thought) prayer every morning after breakfast. I know that's a hard practice to maintain with the kinds of schedules we all have, leaving us with primarily our bedtime stories and prayers. I frankly don't remember getting much out of these morning gatherings at the time, but what did make a lasting impression was my dad's commitment to his family's spiritual nurturing, demonstrated his priorities when it came to our being prayed for and read to every day, no matter how urgent the farm work was. 

In hindsight I wish we would have put more thought into own meal time rituals that reflected and reinforced our faith and values. For example, hymn #16 in Sing The Story keeps singing itself in my mind:

Peace before us

Peace behind us

Peace under our feet (or I prefer, Peace the path for our feet)

Peace within us

Peace over us

Let all around us be peace

Other words, like "love", "Christ", "Praise", "Light", "Joy" can be substituted for the word peace. The word chosen for a given meal might be associated with a "virtue of the week" a family may be emphasizing, another idea I've been pondering.

I remember with great fondness the bedtime singing and the reading of Bible and other stories as we tucked our younger children to bed each night. Precious memories indeed.

Here's a YouTube link to a slowish, meditative rendition of the song 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dkPu_nwHQ-w

Much love, many blessings.