Spiritual book discussion - The Spiritual Child, What to call your Higher Power?

 

Do you have a vocabulary to name aspects of your interior spiritual life?

As we have discussed, adolescence is a precious window for locking in a fluid front-and-back brain capacity for spiritual awareness, the transcendent relationship, and integration of transcendence into relationship, calling, meaning, and purpose. Together these create your teen’s spiritual identity. Identity formation, as we know, is another hallmark task of adolescence. Spiritual identity is a deeply felt sense of Who I am spiritually, how I set course and navigate, see my guideposts and calling in the world spiritually. As spiritual identity can become such a deep and lasting aspect of the self, this central developmental task needs to be a top priority. This doesn’t mean a forced march to religious services. It means engaging the spiritual dimension in everyday life, cultivating your teen’s capacity for engaging the Big Questions, as well as the seemingly smallest or subtle wonders or complexities of life. The fully integrated command-control process and spiritual identity may include religious involvement or it may not.

Miller, Dr. Lisa. The Spiritual Child (pp. 222-223). St. Martin's Publishing Group. Kindle Edition. 

Whether a teen goes to church and engages in religious instruction is up to the parent, the teen, and the church. The point is that spiritual development is what is important with or without religious training.

Spiritual development is facilitated by having a vocabulary to name spiritual concepts, values, and practices. Some people refer to this as an interior spiritual life which includes a spiritual compass with which to make life decisions about what to think, to value, and to do.

Some basic spiritual questions are: What do you name your Higher Power? How do you access your awareness of this Higher Power? How does your discernment of your Higher Power guide and influence the decisions about you conduct your life?

Editor's note: The discussion of the Spiritual Child will continue into November and we will also begin discussing Scripture Unbound. We will be discussing both books over the next couple of months.