Guarding Your Children's and Grandchildren’s Spiritual Heritage

I am writing this article while on vacation at Kanuga, a church Conference Center in Hendersonville, NC.  In many ways I spiritually grew up in this place, and I continue to encounter God on each return visit.  I return year after year seeking his face, the touch of His hand and the sound of His voice.  I seem to always find it.  As I have shared with many of you at Holy Trinity, there is a particular place on the trail on the far side of the lake that I consider, as the Celtic Christians say, my Thin Place; that is, it is that place for me where the fabric between heaven and earth is drawn so thinly that it seems I can almost reach through and touch the face of God.  What happens instead, however, God always reaches through and touches me first.

This year among all the years has a special significance.  My son, his wonderful wife and my two extraordinarily perfect grandsons (a grandfather’s perspective) are here with Nancy and me this year.  It is a special time because I was coming here with my parents when I was my three-year-old grandson’s age.  Nancy and I summer after summer brought our children here. Now our son is bringing his children here.  This week at Kanuga thus represents four generations of Hartley’s who have been blessed by this place.  Kanuga in that sense has become part of my family’s spiritual inheritance. 

As I was walking to my Thin Place before Eucharist yesterday morning, it came to me how extraordinarily important it is that we indeed pass on to our children and grandchildren their spiritual inheritance.  I am not just talking about a spiritually significant place like this place; I am talking about something much more important.  I am talking about handing down the Faith to the next generations- telling them that Old, Old Story, introducing them to Jesus, witnessing to the blessings of the Christian life. This is their true spiritual inheritance.   Perhaps as you are reading this you are thinking that your spiritual heritage got short-circuited somewhere along the way, or never existed in your family to begin with, but it is not too late for you to make your Faith your children’s and grandchildren’s inheritance.                                                                  Father Rob