I grew up praying often.  My family regularly prayed together – saying and singing blessings before meals, saying the Lord’s Prayer together, using the offices in the liturgy for the call-and-response-style formal prayers during family worship, or even singing a little prayerful tune while stopped at a red light that my Mom made up because we were late for one thing or another.

“Lord, we need a green light; please let the light turn green, thank you!”

And even today I find myself quietly talking to the Lord, asking for patience, or energy, or perhaps more accurately – just company as I bumble through a sticky interaction.  I find it very centering to talk to Someone throughout my day.

Recently one of my kids was upset about thing after thing going wrong and tearfully said something to the effect of hoping that the Lord would bless him by giving him what he wanted.  He was having a moment of feeling clear that he was working hard at doing the right thing and surely if the Lord loved him this should be demonstrated by getting what he wanted.

I didn’t have the answer I wanted in that moment, but I said something about it being always good to pray and to talk to the Lord about things, but that even if we don’t get what we want that isn’t a sign that the Lord doesn’t love us.

In the weeks since that conversation I’ve been thinking about prayer.  Even as a kid I didn’t love the song praying for the light to turn green. It felt technically wrong to me – the traffic patterns had to flow and follow their rules, and it wasn’t any kind of fair for the Lord to change that for us! What would that mean for the other drivers who were probably also late?

Although I don’t believe in ghosts, and I’m not sure about the paranormal, I definitely do believe that a spiritual world exists, peopled by … people! And sometimes, the natural world and the spiritual one seem exceptionally close.

(The rather lengthy book extract that inspired this article is at the end. It’s from Vera Brittain’s autobiographical Testament of Youth, first published in 1933 – a conversation between soldier patients she overheard while working at a French hospital not far from the front line during WW1.)

Two personal experiences: When I visited my husband’s elderly aunt shortly before she died, she mentioned recognising some of the people she saw walking around (although they had died years previously). She was on her own in a small room at a nursing home at the time. 

My father-in-law was in hospital, for about the third time in short succession. In fact, he was nearing death though we weren’t sure of that. When he stopped breathing, my husband replaced the small ventilator tubes into his nose, and he did come round, but he said, ‘What? Why am I still here??’ 

I’ve been thinking about answering this question from the standpoint that the New Church is so sensible and inspiring that it’s easy to recommend.  Obviously, this is a question that can come up in a deep conversation with a friend, or talking about where you send your kids for school, or in a conversation at a memorial service, or even when you’re just standing in the grocery store line.  Sometimes it’s just a passing question to make conversation, and other times it is asked with an actual desire to know more.  I want to be ready to happily discuss the New Church as something that’s made my life much better.

One good piece of advice I heard is to focus on something you like about the New Church: “It’s a new Christianity and one thing I really like about it is …”

Other possible ways to answer the question might include:

“It’s a really awesome form of Christianity that makes sense to me, appeals to both my head and my heart, and holds out hope for all people on the planet.”  

“It’s a worldwide Christian community devoted to living the teachings of the Lord Jesus Christ in His Word and its deeper spiritual meaning.”

“It’s Christian, and it relies on the Bible and also teachings that help us understand the Bible’s deeper meaning.  It makes clear the Bible’s messages about one God who created us in His image, loves us, and actually came Himself into the world to show us the path out of any dark places in which we might find ourselves.”

My husband and I have four kids, ages 5-13, and it feels to me like we’ve reached the golden age of family music appreciation. I can get nostalgic about the simpler days of Raffi and Lori songs—although no one is ever too old for Raffi and Lori songs—but these days it’s so fun to discover and listen to music together. We make playlists for sing-alongs in the car or kitchen—or groan-alongs when musical tastes conflict. We sit in church together while the organ postlude vibrates through our bodies and the space (and some of the kids groan along to this too).

I like watching my kids’s taste develop as they pick up songs from outside sources, although that has its challenges. Sometimes a new song doesn’t line up with my own idea of what makes good music. A wise sister-in-law said that when her kids are consuming media she doesn’t prefer, she tries to find out what they like about it. Maybe I don’t like the overuse of pitch correction in a pop hit my daughter likes or the heavy bass in my son’s latest earworm, but when it’s not a moral issue, I think of my sister-in-law and try to be curious rather than critical.