Parenting as a Spiritual Practice

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Religious Education for children and youth happens during worship on Sundays. Children and youth arrive in the Sanctuary for the just a little bit and welcome in Sunday with a story and song. Then, they attend their own programs in the Education building. Learn more here!

If you don’t have a chalice, but want to light one, check out our Making a Chalice at Home page.

Both virtual and in person services are followed by coffee hour.

Children’s Story

Sermon Audio

Sermon Text

​Good morning. How are you? Parenting as a spiritual path…phew! Reverenda, you picked a good topic. One that we are excited to bring into bring into East Shore and the sacred faith community to talk about some more together and to really give some space to bear witness to ourselves and each other, the testimonials you’ll hear today are powerful. We’re joined together in community to accompany one another on all of our spiritual  journeys and to learn more about how parenting is too one of those.  

Now, before we get started let’s have a round of applause for anyone who has parented, and anyone who has been parented to. ….. either side of these, I know, are not Easy! Let’s call out the names of the people who parented us, and who we have and are parenting….. all together now…. 

Thank you.  

Now the call today though is for parenting as a spiritual path, right, the way that parenting changes us and shapes us, even as we change how we parent. Parenting gives you glimpses into the joys, challenges, beauty, and miracle of life. Like any spiritual path, if you allow to be, it will be a practice, a practice where we are learning and unlearning more about ourselves as imperfect beautiful humans, and that parenting accompanied with an awareness of the spiritual, can bring us closer to awareness, to love, to peace, to each other.  

I remember the first week after we had Carl, I kept thinking to myself and saying to anyone who would listen, why on Gods green Earth do humans let each other do this? This is the hardest thing I have ever done. And I meant it. It brought me to my knees, tears to my eyes. That initiation into parenting was in and of itself a rite of passage. Something that took who I was before and made me anew.  

Parenting is also an opportunity to heal our inner child, and to bless the world with our love. Trauma informed parenting can remind us that we need to do our own work, and to have ourselves rooted in spiritual practices and a spiritual community, to be reminded often of our values and to have an opportunity to love and cherish the parts of ourselves that need to be healed.  

Parenting necessarily relies on persons more than you. what you parent, is a relationship. Not like the monks meditating in a cave, of buddha sitting under his bodhi tree, or Jesus fasting in the desert. No, Parenting can awaken you- Like zazen meditation- the clap right in your face saying hello! Wake up! What if you show up as your best self, right now, to be in right relationship with this other person?   

That relationship between the parent and the parented is a delicate one. That sense that my liberation is bound up in yours also has a sense of power. After all, babies, and toddlers, the stage of parenting I am in right now, reminds me often of how careful I must be to respect and bring balance to a relationship that I am so obviously larger, stronger, and more resourced than the child. It is in those moments of awe and challenge that we are really called to be kind, and loving, and generous. Parenting is an ongoing opportunity to remember who we want to be, and try to show up more free to be that. That’s what transforms me, making that choice right there, when there’s pasta and milk splattering all around the kitchen, to be free of punishment and criticism and perfection, and find joy and wonder and laughter in that everyday moment. So that when you’re there, on the mat, in the parenting situation, can you remember that it is not about perfection, right? That’s what holds you back. That’s what tries to keep taking and taking from us. No, it’s about relationships, about practice, returning over and over to that practice of parenting. 

When you enter a spiritual path, you often take a vow. An expression of commitment, an installation. Right, so when you become a parent in all the expected and unexpected ways that can happen in one’s life, you can make a vow.  Let’s take a moment inward to think about what vow we want to make, either as parents, or as someone being parented, about this sacred relationship. How might we show up differently today or tomorrow to honor each other a little bit more?  

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