Spiritually-Nourishing Family Life

As I researched the last several posts on saying grace, I came across Rev. Phillip Lund’s article “What Does a Unitarian Universalist Home Look Like?”, on the UUA website. Lund offers this list, from Robert Wuthnow’s Growing Up Religious: Christians and Jews and Their Journeys of Faith, of ways to incorporate religious identity and spiritual growth into one’s home:

• Sharing family meals and saying grace;
• Spending a few moments before bedtime to share the joys and worries of the day;
• Having real conversations about what matters most in life;
• Adorning your living spaces with symbols of your faith tradition;
• Celebrating holidays in ways that the religious significance comes through;
• Participating in your community of faith in ways that make it part of your family’s emotional support system.

When I look at this list, I wonder how Unitarian Universalist families actually live out some or all of these things in practice. It seems to me that these suggestions could take many different forms, and that UU families might have other great ways of incorporating faith into their lives together that are not on the list.

Within Unitarian Universalism, families come in many different configurations and with members of different identities. Although I think “families” is sometimes assumed to mean “couples with children,” my husband and I consider the two of us together as a family. We are also an interfaith family; my husband identifies as Jewish, while I identify as both Unitarian Universalist and Jewish. And we have had different experiences of Judaism in our families of origin.

And yet, in our own way, we do many of things on the list above. We talk about our troubles and joys at the end of each day, even if we’re not lighting candles while doing so. We both volunteer at church, albeit for different reasons and in different ways. And while I’m not sure if this counts as “adorning your living spaces,” we do have illustrations of the seven principles taped to our refrigerator door!

There’s no strict formula for how to incorporate faith into family life — a spiritually-nourishing family life can take many forms. So I ask readers who are willing to share — What does your family life look like? How do you incorporate spiritual development and/or religious expression into the time you spend with your loved ones?

Update 11/9/07 — In the comments, Terri (of UU Intersections) shares her insights:

My kids are young (3 and 1), but we are always looking for ways of sharing our UU faith and values with them. We share lots of time and meals together and have a practice of “gratitudes” at dinner. My 3 year old comes up with great things to be thankful for. We also take them out into nature A LOT–gardening and hiking and just looking around. Just sharing our love for nature and preserving their awareness of the natural world is spiritual. In the home: I hadn’t thought of posting the principles–that’s a great idea. I guess the closest I have to adornment is a cross-stitched Chief Seattle quote about the Web of Life…