At the beginning of July St Mary’s Church Tickhill hosted an event on prayer for the children of St Mary’s School. Over three days 180 children visited the church and the prayer stations. The plan was to introduce the children to the reason why we pray and creative and interactive ways of praying.
We started off with the reasons why we pray using our five fingers to prompt awareness. To be closer to God, to say thank you, to say sorry and seek forgiveness, to ask for help and to pray for other people. Around the church were different prayer stations for the different types of prayer. We had 15 different prayer stations around the church.
To help the children be aware of the presence of God we created a comfortable space in St Helen’s Chapel. There were calm jars – full of glitter in suspension that settles as you let yourself become calm and feel the presence of God. Prays to let go of anger and hurt by putting stones into water and candles to light.
To remember the plight of refugees and the homeless we had cardboard boxes outside the vestry with some blankets. The children were invited to lie on the cardboard and imagine what it would be like to sleep rough carrying all your possessions in a rucksack. They tied yellow cords around a candle to pray for prisoners of conscience and played hopeful hopscotch where they landed on bible verses where God promises to care for his children. The children put plasters on an outline of a person to pray for the hurt of racism to be healed and put paper doves onto images of war and hatred to pray for peace.
They said thank you to God for the environment by creating their carbon footprint and pledging to do their bit to reduce carbon emissions and blew bubbles of hopefulness.
To say thank you we had the wall of strength where the children wrote their thanks on the bricks for the things that make them feels safe and secure.
However, the highlight was the prayer station in St Luke’s Chapel. Iman Habeeb from the central Doncaster Mosque came to talk to the children about prayer in Islam. He explained how Muslims pray five times a day, reciting verses from the Quran. He showed them the Wudu, the ritual of washing hands arms, feet and head before prayer. The children were given opportunities to try on types of dress that children wear for prayer and prayer mats. He showed the children the basic prayer positions for boys and girls. It was very moving for our church and the Mosque to come together to show children how those of faith can have warm and respectful relationships.
