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Seven Ancient Books For Accessible Church School

On Sunday, we wound up with only 20 minutes for Sunday school, so I had to prioritize our lesson. We acted out the story of St. Martin, whose feast day is this week, about the time that St. Martin was a mounted soldier who rode past a beggar calling out to him because of the cold. St. Martin got down from his horse, tore his military cloak in half, and gave half to the beggar, who later revealed himself in a dream to be Christ. Then we spent a few minutes losing and finding the sheep. As the kids were digging in the sand to find the tiniest lost sheep, I told them that God never stops looking for us. Then we thought about some of the ways that sheep get lost. We wound up wondering what a sheep would do if a dragon came after them. It turns out, we have a lot of dragon repellents in our faith. I pretended to be the dragon and told the kids to make their cross. They did, and it froze me in my tracks. Then I asked who had taken Communion. They raised their hands, and when I looked at them, I couldn’t see them. Lightning shot out from their faces, blinding me. The children decided to take advantage of my (the dragons) incapicity to pelt me (it) with the stuffed sheep, making their crosses and showing me their faces when I turned towards them.

This might seem like a silly game, but what I was teaching the children was straight out of patristic texts about spiritual warfare and the life of faith. Our baptisms make our faces unbearably bright to wicked things, and Holy Communion causes grace to shoot out from our mouths like lightning. Making the sign of the Cross runs off all sorts of evil.

When we got home from an after-church hike yesterday evening, I started thinking about the handful of texts that frame my approach to teaching children about the faith. They’re not equally simple to access, but they all play a strong role in my thinking and guide me in helping children connect to the faith, even on the fly, even when we’re pressed for time or need to battle dragons. Here they are, with Amazon affiliate links, in case you would like to pick up some of these foundational books for winter reading. I highly recommend that you buy them in these modern translations, but there are free antiquated versions available online if you search.

St. Athanasius ON THE INCARNATION OF THE WORD

This book is one of the most accessible explanations of the ancient and Orthodox view of salvation. It has concrete metaphors to describe God’s mercy, which is fitting for a book whose premise is that God meets us where we can find Him. It even answers sticky questions if you endure to the later chapters, such as why Christ died a violent death instead of via old age. (It was in order to end the cycle of violence by conquering death by death.) *If you only buy or read one book from this list, read this one.*

St. Athanasius THE LIFE OF ST. ANTHONY THE GREAT

Even if the idea of desert asceticism sounds distant and frightening to you, you as a Christian in the modern, magical thinking world ought to read this book. It contains stories of spiritual hope, examples of spiritual warfare, and it totally overthrows the “name it and claim it” nonsense that convinces so many that they don’t have faith, encouraging us instead to imitate Christ. It’s our virtues that we work out with Christ’s help, and working wonders is Christ’s alone. I love this book because I have gone through some scary times, and it’s a Good Wins book. There are also lovely one-liners, such as St. Anthony’s closing advice that “Christ be as the air you breathe.”

St. Augustine of Hippo THE CITY OF GOD

This book is huge, but here’s why I love it. It shows us how to read history looking for Christ. It shows us how all the ills of this world are mended in Christ. It shows us how to not fall into the trap of thinking we are to choose from one propaganda or another as guides to the Christian life. Rather, our citizenship is in heaven, and Christ is the touchstone for testing the worth of everything we encounter in this life. It’s also one of St. Augustine’s most pastoral works outside his sermons.

St. Cyril of Jerusalem CATECHETICAL LECTURES AND MYSTOGOGICAL LECTURES

These catechetical lectures are sheer joy to me. I have read them aloud several times over the years. Besides restoring joy and hope, these talks given to catechumens in Jerusalem on location at holy sites also teach typological reading of scripture, the way of discerning Christ in the whole Bible for our salvation that makes mercy so available to us in all of scripture. One of my favorite passages is on the Cross, where St. Cyril tells us that Christ was pierced in the side to heal the sins of Eve, who was taken from the first Adam’s side. If you thought that was beautiful, wait until you read about the sacraments in the Mystogogical Lectures! There you will find such poetic beauty in the healing of the world that you will carry hope with you unshakably.

St. Gregory of Nyssa ASCETICAL WORKS

Okay, this is a collection rather than one work. But repeated throughout is the deeply emotionally intelligent path to participation in God with our desires, our bodies, our intellect, our affections and tamable passionate faculties of the soul, all with a sure hope that God is with us and will continue to draw us nearer eternally as we seek Him. It’s hard to pick one passage to highlight, but I will point out something very needful: St. Gregory shows us how to direct grief, regret, and past dissolution back towards the wholeness that we were made for that can only come about or find its fulfillment in communion with God in Christ. (This volume includes the treatises On Virginity, On What it Means to Call Oneself a Christian, On Perfection, On the Christian Mode of Life, The Life of St. Macrina, and On the Soul and Resurrection.)

St. Gregory the Theologian (Nazianzus) FIVE THEOLOGICAL ORATIONS

Not only will you read the humbling description of what is required for attempting theology, but there are such high views of the union of God and humans here that, like lembas bread, a small morsel will fill your stomach for days. I come back to these exalted beauties whenever I want to know something to big for me to understand but that grows my love and hope and faith and joy just by my trying. Imagine: the fullness of the Godhead in the human heart. Wow.

St. John Chrysostom BAPTISMAL INSTRUCTIONS

St. John Chrysostom will show you practical virtue like no one else. If you have a struggle with vanity, swearing, spectacles, even boredom, you’ll find direct medicine in the advice in the catechetical lectures. Where St. Cyril focuses on connecting the dots with Christ’s life and the Creeds and the whole of salvation history, St. John Chrysostom shows you how to live in a manner that suits the love and power of God in Christ. He doesn’t pull his punches, y’all. But his are wounds that heal. When it comes to the Mystogogical instructions, which are explanations of the sacraments to the newly baptized, St. John C greets the people with such tenderness and love that you will pine for the days when Christians welcomed each other like newborn babies, with sweetened milk and softest pillows.

Those seven will do for now. We have other books we read in our family, of course, and I love lots of other patristic texts. But for teaching faith to children, I find that I go back to these seven over and over again. Which old books (besides the Bible) are foundational for you when you teach?

Don’t forget to check out my book, Of Such is the Kingdom: A Practical Theology of Disability to learn a lot more about best practices to include all learners.

The post Seven Ancient Books For Accessible Church School appeared first on Summer Kinard.

unspeakable

It’s rare these days for mortals to experience the terror of encountering the unspeakably ancient ones. We tend to relate to the old ones via watered-down customs or habits we stopped examining so long ago that they don’t even seem like choices. Not all of the old ones are kind. Most of them want to scare you and control you. There’s one, though, that is older than the others, and that one gives life. You will recognize the smell and the ease and joy that comes upon you, along with the terror.

Imagine a man who thought it was a good idea to wrestle with one of the ancient ones. He had seen the old ones going up and down a ladder to heaven. He knew better than to trifle with the terrible, fierce beings with eyes of fire and unmoving expressions. But he went and wrassled the oldest one. He smelled the life giver and grabbed hold. He didn’t let go. When the morning came, the ancient life-giver without beginning didn’t squash him flat or hasten his journey back to dust. That older than oldest one touched his thigh, and the wrestler limped his whole life after.

The story gets weirder. Most people (besides that wrestler and a man with a glowing face and a few prophets who had seen it all) fell flat on their faces when so much as a whisper of the beyond ancient Name sounded in their vicinity. But there was a young woman, hardly grown, an orphan. One of the oldest ones came to her and offered something more than wrestling. The very presence, the very life-giving one would overshadow her, and she, a virgin, would bear a son who would also be beyond ancient, would also be the unspeakable holiness from whom most people flee. Maybe the Psalm was still upon her lips from her youth of study, and the refuge of the wings of the almighty had more shine than a good reputation. It could have gone sour for her, but she chose the holy terror, the supernal joy, of becoming the mother of God.

And here we are, kin to these brave ones, with multitudes between them and us who also chose the unpredictable embrace of the holy to an uninterrupted journey. We call the ones who hold Him “saints,” and we know few of their names. Some are only faces, some only bones, and some only the words of a song we can sing together without knowing whose faithful life brought it forward to us, carrying it, bound up in garments that smelled of the life-giver, across the time they were given and the paths laid at their feet, to deposit their gift into the hands of the next one, and the next. Some of them passed for normal, but all of them had fire in their bones.

I like to remember old things. I like to let my mind carress old places and tales and objects, to learn the shape of the human heart by what captivated it. There’s a limestone impress in an archaeology film I like that makes no sense to me. There’s nothing left of the people who lived there for thousands of years except shards and a few scraps of rope mats and animal bones. My mind goes there to stand and wonder about the ancient ones. And further back, when humans first walked the clay, what must they have thought of the strange ancient ones who tempted and consoled them face to face? For surely at some point it would have all been more straightforward, like with the wrestler and prophet and the mother. There are people still today who withdraw into wildness so they can spit in the eye of the cruel ones and grab hold of the fierce and holy one. But those old places and wild places have a symmetry here, too, in my eddies of work and parenthood and reading. I can’t make myself believe that any of these materials of dailiness insulate me in the least from the old ones.

If I light a prayer candle in my home–sheltered, plentiful, cozy–the light still shines in other people’s darknesses. The watchers in the wilderness grab hold of the bad and good together, putting the bad to flight by the power of the good one. And I, here, unknown as they, offer my weakness as they offer their strength. I grab hold of God like a child, holding His hands, hugging His neck, grabbing His feet, like a child, petulant and naive and foolish but correct. They are the harps of the Spirit, and I am the preschooler who won’t get off Jesus’ foot so He can leave through the door. There’s a ferocity to me, too, in my persistence. I want God to stay with me, even when it means reciprocating.

“Stay with me.” “I’m here.” These are the call and response of family, of friends, of parent and child, of every type of love. No matter how terrible, tremendous, trembling is the presence of the creator, it is most intimate prayer, the desire for which we were made, which was and is and will be fulfilled.

I’m here. I’m here. I’m here. That is the beat of the heart and the soul’s heart that doesn’t stop. It rhymes with “holy,” even when it means reciprocating. Even when those words won’t come to my lips. It’s a through and through prayer, and it’s what I know about the terror and the joy and the ancient ones and the cloud of witnesses. Hold this truth with me for a while until we both know it. If you forget it, pick it back up. It’ll keep.

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Autistic Extroverts: INFJs?

Every now and then the MBTI makes its rounds on social media, and I’m surprised to see many of my friends identify as the “rarest” type, INFJ. But those same friends tend to be autistic, too. And very friendly. So I started to wonder if type indicators just don’t know what to make of autistic extroverts. What if my huge cohort of INFJ friends is really a huge group of ENFJ autistics?

What makes us different from other extroverts?

Many of the characteristics of introverts are also common among autists. We need a lot of down time to recharge, we spurn shallow conversation, we like quiet, and we prefer smaller groups or being on stage to being in the midst of a crowd. But for autistics, the reasons tend to be due to sensory regulation and our built-in need for sincerity.

Autistic people love other people, and we’re often interested in their lives, but in our own particular idiom. Here are some of the traits I’ve observed in autistic extroverts:

No nonsense conversations. We might be good storytellers, but our sense of humor is based in truth rather than deception. We might seem to have a wry or dry style. We might say awkward things or state our ideas and opinions in very strong terms. If we talk to you, it’s a matter of respect, and we don’t want to waste the effort of coordinating ourselves to communicate by saying something we don’t mean.Accepting people as they are. We accept people as they are, not as they aspire to be or as they pretend to be. This can be disturbing to people who like to put up a front or who like to evade reality-based conversations. But for people who see this trait as the strength it is, this trait makes for very honest friendships.Lacking favoritism. We don’t seek out friends based on their prestige or popularity, and we don’t suck up to people in power. This can be perceived as insubordination or rudeness by people who prefer sycophants or who long to be acknowledged as better than someone else. But it’s actually part of trait two, accepting people as they are: humans, with whom we might have goals and values in common, or not. We respect everyone as humans, but it takes demonstrable acts of justice or injustice to move up or down in an autistic person’s regard. We don’t like or dislike people just because someone tells us to.Using lots of analogies and pop cultural references in order to be understood. We have to find ways to bridge the gap between our visual or spatial thinking and speaking or writing for people who seem to need things spelled out for them differently. It’s easier to use analogies and pop culture frames to make sure we have a common touchstone in our communicating.Working a lot harder to communicate. I can’t speak for all autistic extroverts, but I know that my desire to make friends has often been waylaid by my needing to do so much math to predict what the other person does and doesn’t know or is or isn’t asking. When you have an autistic brain, sometimes it’s hard to know which stimuli or information is the focus of the group’s attention. For me and many others, apraxia (difficulty coordinating speech) adds to the challenge. I am fluently verbal–apparently–but have to expend a great deal of effort to plan my speaking to make it understandable to others. I love talking with people, though, so I make the effort when I can. I also have to plan ahead and take time to recover after I have big speaking events or social times. We don’t like loud noises, including loud voices. Sometimes neurotypical extroverts are incredibly loud, but this is not so common among autistic extroverts. We will have a harder time talking with loud people in the room. This might make us seem reserved when we’re actually just overwhelmed or unable to process our thoughts in the presence of louder voices. We love to share joy. I’ve met autistic extroverts from across the spectrum, some who use speech output devices, some who talk, some who do a bit of both, and sharing joy effusively is a common trait. It’s unfiltered, sincere joy over anything or anyone we love.

What would you add? What does autistic extroversion look like to you?

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Exalting the Valley of Accessibility

Welcome! I’m Summer Kinard, author of Of Such is the Kingdom: A Practical Theology of Disability. This post provides supporting materials that I covered in tonight’s Antiochian East PLC virtual workshop. Scroll down to click on the free printables! I’ll be updating this post later in the week with a printable set of Sensory Anchor Tiles. Make sure to follow my blog for updates. You should also sign up for my ACCESSIBLE CHURCH SCHOOL newsletter for ongoing inforamtion and free resources about different disabilities.

Watch this video tour of the St. Hilda Accessible Church School classroom

PRAYER

Pop over to my post on Nurturing Independence in Prayer for free printable visual versions of the Lord’s Prayer, the Jesus Prayer, and a visual Confession communication board.

Stop by my Accessible Prayer Corner Tutorial for details on building a classroom or home accessible prayer area.

VISUAL SCHEDULES

class-plansDownloadChrysostom-Divine-Liturgy-VisualDownloadVisual-Schedule-Divine-Liturgy-of-St.-GregoryDownload

VISUAL SEQUENCE EXAMPLE

loaves-and-fishesDownload

COMMUNICATION AIDS

staywithgroupDownloadChurchSchoolCommunicationBoardDownload

PLEASE ONLY PRINT OUT THE ABOVE COMMUNICATION BOARD ON A 3’X2′ BANNER! SIZE MATTERS IN ACCESSIBLE LANGUAGE AIDS! We like Banners on the Cheap for our banner printing (not affiliated, just a place with good quality and great deals).

ChurchCore-OnlyDownloadChurch-Core-BookletDownload

MY SCRIPT & SLIDES FOR TONIGHT’S PRESENTATION:

Every-Valley-Shall-Be-ExaltedDownloadPhysical-AccessDownloadEXALTING-THE-VALLEYDownload

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Nurturing Independence in Prayer

Welcome! This post provides supporting materials for my contribution to the GOARCH Center for Family Care webinar, “Nurturing Independence in Families with Disabilities.”

Encouraging Independence in Prayer

ACTION PRAYERS

Start with an Accessible Prayer Corner so that everyone in your family or classroom is able to reach the holy icons and interact with them. See my tutorial here.

Next, incorporate action prayers into your home prayer life and church school settings. We already recognize some action prayers from church: lighting candles, kissing icons, bringing flowers, bowing, receiving the blessing form incense, bringing vigil candles, making our cross. We can build on those central action prayers in our homes and classrooms, too. Here are a few slides with examples:

VISUAL PRAYERS

For many people with disabilities, AAC (augmentative and alternative communication) is a helpful tool. You might have a type of AAC called a speech output device (or an app) for yourself or a family member. To help make prayer together easier, you might also print out, make readily available, and pray with these four visual prayer aids:

THE LORD’S PRAYER

THE JESUS PRAYER

LORD, HELP

CONFESSION COMMUNICATION AID

The communication board for Confession is to be used to help nonverbal or situationally mute people communicate wiht the priest during Confession. It has been reviewed and approved by my spiritual father as a helpful tool. For simplicity’s sake, I based the pages on the parts of the prayer before Communion in the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom.

For more about praying and learning with people with disabilities, follow this blog and purchase my book, Of Such is the Kingdom: A Practical Theology of Disability, now available as an audiobook on Audible (aff link)!

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The Question Everyone Asks About Autistic Kids at Church

When I speak at conferences and workshops, there’s one question that someone always asks. They pull me over to the side after a talk or whisper it to me as I sign a copy of my book. Sometimes it’s a family member, sometimes a member of the church ministry team, and sometimes it’s someone who feels they’ve always done the wrong thing. (Don’t worry! The people who come to me not knowing often go on to be some of the steadiest advocates for autistic children in a parish.) You might have already guessed it.

What do I do if an autistic child has a meltdown at church?

If you’re welcoming enough for a family with autistic members to attend your parish, you’ve probably encountered a meltdown (or a shutdown). The autistic person might be loud, wiggly, or unpredictable. They might seem to be defiant and “not listening.” They might go silent and stare and not move out of the way or answer you or their caregiver or family members. If you’re not autistic, it’s likely that you didn’t know what to do to help.

If you read my book, you’ll know a couple of things NOT to do:Don’t shush! The annoying noise of shushing will make everything a thousand times worse. (And you sound like the serpent, so, probably not great for you to imitate the evil one.)Don’t give the stink eye! Any kind of staring is unhelpful, but dirty looks (any looks less than you would direct at an image of the Lord Jesus) are harmful.

But never fear. There are simple things anyone can do to help an autistic person get themselves centered and back into self-regulation.

6 Ways to Help Calm a Meltdown at Church

Why sitting? It’s a de-escalating action. The floor is best for several reasons, including the fact that you are non-threatening there, you can’t fall off of it, and you are either at the other person’s level or looking up slightly at them. Looking up slightly at someone is another de-escalating (calming) form of body language. Don’t get inside someone’s personal space. Sit about one meter from them, and relax your hands and shoulders.

AAC stands for Augmentative and Alternative Communication, usually some sort of pictoral language system. Though it’s not 100% universal (since everyone is a little different!), most autistic people (me included) think in pictures and will sometimes have trouble translating them into communication if we’re stressed. AAC can provide a mooring line between our sensory-overloaded bodies and our thinking. It can help us to steer ourselves through a sensory overload storm. If you aren’t familiar with AAC, you can still have a Meltdown Calming Card on hand (

If you don’t know the person who’s overwhelmed, stick to something neutral like noise-canceling earmuffs that your church keeps on hand. Or if it’s very bright, offer a pair of sunglasses. Don’t talk about it. Just go get them and calmly hold them out, staying a meter away after you sit. If you know the person, offer to retrieve a sensory tool from their church bag. If your church has stretchy silicone sensory strings (aff link) or other quiet calming tools like sensory brushes (aff link) on hand in a sensory station (hint: This is a great idea! Please do it.), you can bring those, too. It’s up to the autistic person to decide if they want the sensory tools, but it’s up to you to offer if they or a family member can’t get to them on their own. If and ONLY if you are friends with the person and family and know how to do so safely, you can offer to do hand squeezes or shoulder presses or strong hugs or holding and rocking. These last type of sensory soothing are generally parental territory, but I’m including it because parents (and godparents) might need to learn these things, too.

What? I want you to pretend to be bored? Nope. I want you to engage the mirror neurons in everyone around you, including the autistic person who’s overwhelmed. Yawning is hardwired into everyone. It doesn’t always work on its own, but if you can get the person to yawn with you, you might be able to calmly offer one or more of the other helpful techniques. There are louder ways to mirror that we tend to use at home if one of our children is having a big overload, (for instance, matching pitch on their cry but at a low volume slowly dropping to a low tone, and calmly, quietly repeating any phrases they repeat, or sometimes first saying their name until they interrupt their crying to tell us to be quiet, whereupon we repeat what they were saying). But that’s loud, complicated, and not often feasible in public. Try yawning.

Once a person is able to mirror, or their family members are able to look at you to ask for help, calmly offer to lead them through the crowd to a calm space. This might be a bride room or an empty classroom or an office or even an empty corner of the parish hall. It’s most certainly NOT a loud cry room or anywhere where people might stare or shush. Churches who want to welcome families with autistic members should plan ahead and pick a space that’s set aside for quiet calming. You’ll need to avoid flourescent lights in that space, and add a rocking chair and maybe a weighted blanket or a tent. (If you visit my church, I will show you the calming tools in my classroom.)

If other people are already helping by sitting and offering aid, you still have a very important role! Calmly place yourself between the overwhelmed person’s group and prying (or stink) eyes. Keep a perimeter of at least a meter for safety and comfort. By limiting the stimuli coming at the family group, you help them sort through the already-too-much sensory input without adding to the burden. You can also calmly invite people who try to shush or act superior/rude/judgmental to be quiet and pray for the family instead. In fact, acting with assertive grace is exactly the best thing you can do to help mitigate the situation if the other bases are covered.

Please share this post with your friends and family and church members! The more prepared you are to welcome autistic families in all their joys and graces and occasional overwhelm, the more prepared you are to welcome Christ.

Have anything to add? Please continue the conversation in the comments!

The post The Question Everyone Asks About Autistic Kids at Church appeared first on Summer Kinard.

Visual Schedule for the Divine Liturgy of St. Gregory

This spring, we began attending our local Western Rite Orthodox Church, where the Divine Liturgy of St. Gregory is celebrated. Yes! The Gregory of “Gregorian chant,” which we sing at church. This ancient rite has a lot of key differences from the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom that is celebrated in the Eastern Rite Orthodox Church, so we needed a new visual schedule. After review and revisions and a blessing from our priest, I offer you this printable visual schedule for the Divine Liturgy of St. Gregory.

The transparent icon (not included) gives the children another way to pray, as they can hold it over their heads. Like the visual schedule for the Divine Liturgy of St. John Chrysostom, this visual schedule tracks 30 action or attention cues. The last page is a communication board. We printed our copies along with a transparent icon of the Protection of the Theotokos so that the children can look through the icon in church.

DOWNLOAD THE VISUAL SCHEDULE FOR THE DIVINE LITURGY OF ST. GREGORY HERE

Don’t forget to read my book, Of Such is the Kingdom: A Practical Theology of Disability, where you will find lots of other ways to include all people at church. It’s now available as an audiobook! (Link sends you to audible.)

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Under the Fig Tree

I was not the first person to hide from God, and I didn’t know that my hiding place was darkened by the shade of that tree. There was a garden once where people hid from God. They picked the prickly leaves of that tree and fashioned the first and most uncomfortable clothes from fig leaves. I have imagined them hovering behind the thick leaves, trembling fruit between them, perhaps grown bitter like everything must have grown bitter after what they had done, or perhaps still sweet since it had always been allowed. The people might have hidden under any tree, but in my mind it was the fig tree.

They were hiding there, and then time jumped to a day when Nathaniel was under a fig tree, pondering those first people, wondering at how he himself was hiding from God. Would he hide from God, he asked himself, if God walked by? Then Jesus called him and said to him, “I saw you when you were under the fig tree,” and Nathaniel knew that Jesus was God, and God had seen him under the tree, not only the tree where he pondered, but its ancient ancestor whose roots stood under his ancient ancestors. Nathaniel immediately confessed that Jesus was the Son of God. I can hear the smile in Jesus’ words when He tells Nathaniel to expect to see greater things than this.

And then we arrive at Holy Week, when a fig tree does not bear fruit and receives a curse and withers down to its roots. Who can know all the meanings of that sign? I know only one of them, the meaning to the people who were hiding in the shadow of that tree. They were suddenly set free from their hiding place. Well, almost set free. Because many of them had grown so used to hiding that they had its roots growing through their veins, its leaves covering their faces, it’s sticky fruits souring in their dusty mouths. Those people needed someone to walk into the shade of the tree to get them. They needed someone to unhide them, face to face.

The Bridegroom came for them, for we, for I, who sat under that tree, trembling. He was bound by the withered roots on the way in, and He plucked up the tree when He came up from the dark.

I say this to you casually, as though it doesn’t sting and sear our eyes to be so exposed to light after so long hiding. Forgive my tone. It’s not flippancy, but the result of an unspilled secret. See, my fellow hiders, He has given us a new tree to hide under!

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Evidence-Based Practices to Welcome People with ADD/ADHD at Church

At the request of a kind friend and Orthodox priest, I have researched evidence-based practices that help people with ADD and ADHD to self-regulate and manage their attention best and have applied them here in this blog post to church learning and worship settings. I have included examples relevant to catechesis for everyone but have naturally focused on an Orthodox Christian context.

SUBSCRIBE to my Accessible Church School newsletter by March 15th to receive even more great tips on making your church truly accessible to people with ADD/ADHD. By subscribing, you’ll receive a quarterly (and special holiday edition) newsletter filled with free lessons and accessible activity ideas that will help you include everyone fully in learning, prayer, church services, and church community. In this month’s newsletter, I go into detail about how you can set up your classroom and entry prayers to engage everyone, with a special focus on people with ADD/ADHD.

Include ADD/ADHD Students and Church Members in LEARNING & SERVICES Invite people with ADD/ADHD to sit up front in class and church.Provide activity choices, such as coloring, movement, music, building.Singing (or playing music) in church helps to engage and coordinate attention.If your parish has only a few options for everyone to sing, find ways to expand the practice.Build in “normal” movement options like stretch breaks, skits, demonstrations, gather-arounds, scavenger hunts, tours of the space, and restroom breaks.For church services, give tips on best places to move around if needed and when to stay in place (for instance, if the priest is censing or if there’s a procession).Invite people with ADD/ADHD to help collect the offering.Provide options for active participation in the service for men and women, boys and girls. If your church only allows male Altar servers, for instance, consider having the girls bring up flowers or candles to the front of the church at a particular part of the service (in honor of the myrrh-bearers and the 5 wise virgins). ADD/ADHD is equally prevalent among men and women.Piggyback learning onto gross motor (big movement) activities to engage attention.Learn a prayer or Bible verse by chalking the words writ large on the sidewalk  and then hopping to them or bouncing a basketball on each word.Use balloons or floor spots to make a prayer rope/rosary that the student can walk around while praying the Jesus Prayer, Hail Mary, or other simple prayer.Build a prayer garden by your church with round stones that can be walked in a circuit like a prayer rope or rosary.When giving group instructions, keep things brief.Use fewer, more specific words when giving instructions. Demonstrate and give simple directions first and explain later while the students are acting out instructions.For example, say, “We make the sign of the Cross here. We stand here. We bow here. We call God, “Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.” This sets expectations and gives an action plan. Avoid leading with “Don’t do…” because people with attention challenges might not hear the “Don’t” part and might find the instructions confusing and disengage. Avoid long explanations before you have given the actionable tasks.Break tasks and lessons into shorter parts and provide options for breaks.For instance, if you want to teach someone with ADD/ADHD about the Divine Liturgy, focus on what they can DO at different parts. (My Visual Schedule for the Orthodox Divine Liturgy helps with this, as it’s broken into transitions of movement/focus.)Give options for movement breaks, such as “Here you can venerate the icons. Here you can go light another candle. Here you can prostrate or make a metania (half-prostration with touching the ground while bowing).”When teaching or talking, provide one on one time/discussion instead of having the person with ADD/ADHD sit alone and undirected. (Self-direction without fun/interesting  activity choices often results in attention lag.)Provide planned productive physical activitiesIn services, this might mean lighting candles, venerating, making the sign of the Cross, singing, bowing, or going to a different icon along a different wall to venerate during each of the litanies.In lessons, this might mean building lessons around skits or acting out scenes in the Bible, saint’s life, or instruction. (Have someone climb on a chair to be Zacchaeus or a Stylite.)If you have a bulletin with space for notes for the sermon time, make the blank page in two columns: One column for bullet point notes, one for drawing and doodling to illustrate what is heard.Teach catechumens to take notes in two columns in classes to normalize the pattern of writing and drawing.Consider giving a blessing to parishioners with ADD/ADHD (and other disabilities) to sit and illustrate some part of the prayers in the Divine Liturgy (or Mass or Sunday services) or Orthros (Morning Prayers) in a notebook.Enhance learning activities and prayers with sensory stimuliWhen you talk about icons, obviously teach veneration. But also bring in iconography pigments and gold foil (or imitation gold foil as budget requires) for students to touch and experience with their senses.Cross the midline of the body (the imaginary line dividing your body into left and right) with your hands when learning or praying in order to coordinate attention.Making the sign of the cross is a wonderful prayer practice, one of the oldest parts of Christian spiritual life (and spiritual warfare and wellbeing), and it also helps to coordinate the faculties.When teaching with students seated, have them pass objects around the room/table.Mix the medium of prompts and responses.If you ask a question verbally (speaking), have the students write their response. If you write or display a prompt visually, have students speak their responses.Have students act out or demonstrate an action in response to you writing on the board or saying the prompt aloud.If a student answers a question, write it on the white board or chalk board in the room. You can reinforce this by saying “Yes” and adding a checkmark to the list, too.Have students take turns writing group responses on the white board.Have students draw stick figures to illustrate something you’re teaching. (This can be humorous, and laughter for everyone is also great for attention.)Make sure your church has adequate hymnals or service books for people to follow along.Provide visual schedules and sequences in your instruction and for your learning and worship times. See my posts for free printable visual schedules for the Orthodox Divine Liturgy, the Roman Catholic Mass , and Episcopal Eucharist Rite II .Provide and model the use of prayer ropes, rosaries, or spinning prayer rings (aff. link) with knots in place of beads. These can be used in and out of church services.Allow for and normalize walking or working with the hands while praying.Medieval monasticism was built around customs of walking long distances for water, tending gardens, or walking in contemplative circuits around cloisters (covered walkways surrounding a central courtyard).Working with your hands while praying is an ancient custom, whether the handwork is rope-making, prayer rope knotting, crocheting, knitting, or other repetitive work. Prayers fall into the rhythm of the work and vice versa, strengthening one’s attention regulation and weaving thoughts, prayers, and actions together.

BUBBLE WRAP ACTIVITY TO FOLLOW LONG PRAYERS

You might be surprised at how many people zone out during church services and don’t know what’s being prayed. I remember leading a small group of very devout people several years ago and pointing out the references to the crucifixion and resurrection in the service. Many people were surprised. They had absorbed the feeling of church but had not learned to attend to the content of the prayers. When we’re teaching, we have the opportunity to highlight themes in scriptures, prayers, and the Divine Liturgy by associating them with actions.

For further reading, see Of Such is the Kingdom: A Practical Theology of Disability by Summer Kinard.

Here are More Insights From my Twitter connections:

Jennie S, MD, FAAP, IBCLC @DrScogs
I struggled for decades with not being able to fully attend to audible lectures/sermons. Crocheting during sermons has helped me immensely. I’d like for pastors to know/accept that someone working quietly with their fingers is probably trying to be more attentive not less.

EternallyGrowing @EternallyGrowi1
Sing. I can’t focus unless I’m singing. Worship is physical not just mental. All the crossing and prostration are helpful. If a parish has lots of physical worship it’s helpful (for kids too!) “Let us attend” is a good time to refocus.

alex the dame @adotdam
I came here to say singing as well!

Lindsay @LindsayImrie
Also singing with motions and interactive and engaging sermons!

pam white @Phwji
Take outline-form notes/doodle during sermon to keep focused. Have gum, candy, tissues, pen, paper. Allow myself bathroom break. Sit close to front so not distracted by looking at people. Follow along in Bible/hymnal/prayer book. Participate/sing. Wear layers so not hot or cold.

Father Philip Kontos @FatherKontos
I hear a lot of people saying they do hand work. This is helpful… maybe some can learn to make prayer ropes. I have sleep apnea and I have found sometimes that making prayer ropes during lectures was the only thing to keep me awake. I couldn’t help falling asleep until then.

AKshells @shelleyfinkler
Summer I train orthodox people in CGS. Last year we had 3 boys in L 2 who were undiagnosed but either on the spectrum or ADHD. We read a Montessori book called Children Who Are Not Yet Peaceful. It states over and over that handwork aids children to participate

AKshells @shelleyfinkler
So we taught the children finger knitting, polishing and stitching and WOW it helped them so much to focus, to act, to listen, to find peace.

KatherineSandersIcons @sjksanders
Oh. Easy access to doors (we don’t have pews so that’s a huge help); being in choir (serving if appropriate), chotki for Jesus prayer/moving/destressing; not wearing smart uncomfortable clothing/shoes; secure cotton/linen headscarf that won’t budge; book to follow when zoned out.

Bethany Juliana Childress @Be_Thy_Grace
For me I can only think of one and that is wearing a prayer rope around my wrist most days and during church services to keep my mind from wandering so much. Thank you for doing this. I can’t wait to see what you write

Hope @orthocorvid
Give people something to do! Sing, chant, serve in the altar, set up communion, greet visitors, etc. I sing because I love it, and because it keeps me focused and engaged.

Comment below with what helps you stay focused in learning and worshipping at church! Please share this post so others can benefit, and remember to follow this blog and SUBSCRIBE to the free Accessible Church School newsletter for premium content!

The post Evidence-Based Practices to Welcome People with ADD/ADHD at Church appeared first on Summer Kinard.

Myrrh-Bearing for My Little Lost One

I call upon the Equals to the Apostles

to bear myrrh with me

For the innocent ones lost, for my

Small one whose face I cannot kiss.

You bold ones, you tender mother

evangelists,

Kiss the face of her angel in heaven.

Let down your tresses, you who

wiped Christ’s feet with your hair,

and let me dry my eyes there beside you.

You who poured out the jar of nard,

Put your fragrant hands around my little one and tell her that I love her.

You nameless one who swept up the shards of that jar,

Come help me pick up the pieces.

And You, our Mother, You who among us knows best

What it’s like to lose an innocent son,

Warm me with the fire of the Seraphim

Who sing around You,

For my heart has gone cold.

I cannot let my heart leave the grave of my child.

I have to walk in both worlds now.

I need your wisest cherubim to guide me.

I need you to hold my hand, o Holy Mother.

All of my failings come to mind, but

They are nonsense against my love

for this one who is gone.

The little twist of fear, the shadow of the

serpent by my ear, tries to make me

take the blame for my empty womb.

But I will take up the faithfulness of God instead–

the shield and buckler of God with me and with my child–

And that shadow had better run for it.

I am mourning with the warriors–

the women who carried spices to the Tomb,

who met an angel and were not afraid

but nodded and did what needed doing.

I am crying in the company of a woman

with the spring of Living Waters pouring

from her lips and hands.

I am weeping with the Most Blessed

woman whose presence fills the air with roses.

Her tears are pure myrrh from heaven.

They teach me to stand firm in grief,

The virtuous vigil of Mothers.

They will look after my baby till I am

done with what needs doing here.

In memoriam, Seraphim.

When I was first grieving for our baby lost to miscarriage at 8 weeks, I searched for prayers online. They were cruel or stupid or distant, with nothing of the immediacy of pain and grace and ferocity that I felt and needed from God and His saints. I offer this prayer reflection here today on this feast of St. Photine, the Woman at the Well, the memorial day for our little lost one whom we name Seraphim because we never knew if she was a boy or girl (but all babies look like girls till about 12 weeks). May it help other mothers going through the bright sadness of grief to know that God and all the holy mothers (and His Mother) are nearby, sharing the grief and the burden and the love.

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