CHILDREN'S SPIRITUALITY AND "THE GOOD SHEPHERD EXPERIENCE"

Religious Education, Spring 2004 by Hyde, Brendan

Abstract

This article aims to explore the connections between a religious education curriculum's methodology in the Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne, Australia and some contemporary theories about children's spirituality. "The Good Shepherd Experience" curriculum is intended for use with 5- and 6-year-old children in the first years of formal schooling. It forms a part of the To Know, Worship and Love religious education text based curriculum, directed for use by schools in the Archdiocese of Melbourne as a key text in the religious education curricula. In exploring connections with children's spirituality, this article analyzes "The Good Shepherd Experience" in terms of wonder (mystery-sensing, contingency, and dependability), play and imagination, and the ability to use religious language and concepts.

The spiritual life of children is of rapidly developing interest in many western countries, including Australia. Catholic religious educators in particular have begun to question whether they can undertake contemporary religious education without a deeper understanding ol the worldviews and meaning-making systems of Australian Catholic children (Liddy 2002). Students who attend Catholic schools in Australia come from a variety of secular and religious backgrounds. As one of its fundamental tasks, the classroom religious education program seeks not only to present systematically and rigorously the content of the Catholic faith tradition, but also to nurture the spiritual life of each child. It is therefore imposant that religious educators know something of the ways in which children search for and make meaning in their lives.

This article will explore the connections between a recently developed religious education curriculum, "The Cood Shepherd Experience" and some contemporary theories about children's spirituality. Materials for "The Good Shepherd Experience" have been developed as a part of the new religious education text-based curriculum To Know, Worship and Love, levels 1, 2a, and 2b, in the Catholic Archdiocese of Melbourne in Australia, with the hope that this series may have the potential to nurture the spirituality of children within the religious education classroom.

SPIRITUALITY

While it is beyond the scope of this article to present an exhaustive outline of what is understood by the term "spirituality," this section will briefly detail the authors understanding of this word, and may help the reader to discern the authors theoretical orientation.

The majority of recent scholarship suggests that spirituality is concerned with an individuals connectedness and relationship with self, others, the world, or universe, and with the Transcendent (Bosacki 2001; Fisher 1997; Hay and Nye 1998; O'Murchu 1997; Scott 2001). While some have advocated dualistic notions of spirituality; particularly with reference to the sacred and the secular (Beringer 2000; Griffin 1998), many writers understand spirituality to be holistic (O'Murchu 1997, 2000; Tacey 2000). Spirituality is "a dynamic wholeness of self in which the self is at one with itself and with the whole of creation" (Zohar and Marshall 2000,124). It requires people to regard others as whole beings and to respond to them with their own sense of wholeness (Priestly 2002).

The majority of research also suggests that spirituality is an inherent and fundamental quality of what it means to be human-that it is an innate feature of human life and existence (O'Murchu 1997; Scott 2001; Tacey 2000; Zohar and Marshall 2000). O'Murchu (1997) has understood spirituality to be something that all people are bom with, and something that seeks expression in human living. Hay and Nye (1998) have maintained that spirituality is biologically natural. It is a quality that has been continually selected for in the biological evolution of the human species. They have coined the term "relational consciousness" to describe this phenomenon in terms of the dual patterns of I-Self, I-Others, I-World, and I-God. They have argued that because relational consciousness is so primal, it is something that can be seen particularly in children. They also have maintained that this capacity for relational consciousness that is so evident in children is repressed, in Western society, by socially constructed processes. The human potential for spirituality is natural. The discarding or repression of spiritual awareness is a social construction of Western culture that needs to be counteracted (Hay 2001).

Given that spirituality is then an attribute of all human beings, it is not the exclusive property of any one religious tradition. Most researchers have distinguished between religion and spirituality (Bosacki 2001; O'Murchu 1997, 2000; Priestly 2002; Scott 2001; Tacey 2000). Spirituality is much larger and older than any iorm oi organized formal religion (Hay and Nye 1998; O'Murchu 1997; Tacey 2000). The spiritual history of the human species is at least 70,000 years old, by comparison of which formal, organized religions have been in existence for only 4,500 years (O'Murchu 1997). While formal religion encompasses the organized structures, rituals, and beliefs belonging to the official religious systems (Hinduism, Buddhism, judaism, Christianity, Islam, Sikhism), spirituality concerns that "ancient and primal search for meaning that is as old as humanity itseli... and... belongs to the evolutionary unfolding of creation itseli" (O'Murchu 1997, vii). Tacey (2000) has suggested that iormal religions have developed as a means by which communities of people have given voice to their primal spiritual experiences.